Montessori and the mainstream: A century of reform on the margins

Teachers College Record

Volumn 110, Issue 12, 2008, Pages 2571-2600

  Whitesgarver, Keith ^a   Cossentino, Jacqueline ^a  

^a The College of William and Mary   (United States)

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EID: 58049182355     PISSN: 01614681     EISSN: 14679620     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. Statistics on Montessori schools, unfortunately, are imprecise. Difficulties in determining numbers of schools or students in attendance arise from two primary factors: (1) Montessori is not a registered trademark. Any organization, or any individual, can start a school and advertise it as using the Montessori method. There is no requirement to affiliate with a Montessori organizing body. (2) There are dozens of Montessori organizations around the world. Each is independent with its own standards for membership and methodology in reporting members. Our figures come from the Centenary of the Montessori Movement Web site: "Media Briefing: Montessori Around the World," December 2006, http://montessoricentenary.org/(accessed February 21, 2007).
2. Randi Lynn Mrvos, "Gentle Hands, Quiet Voices: Secrets of Montessori," Mothering, May/June 2003, http://www.mothering.com/ articles/growing-child/education/montessori.html (accessed February 17, 2007); Jacqueline Cossentino, "Ritualizing Expertise: A Non-Montessorian View of the Montessori Method," American Journal of Education 111 (2005): 211-44; Angeline Stoll Lillard, Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
3. Sol Cohen, "Montessori Comes to America," Notre Dame Journal of Education 2, no. 4 (1972): 358-72.
4. Lillard, Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius, 3-37.
5. Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind (Oxford: ABC-Clio Ltd., 1988).
6. Froeble's kindergarten shared Montessori's focus on materials (called "gifts" in the Froebel system) but did not span the developmental continuum from birth to adulthood.
7. Lillard, Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius, 18-28.
8. Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method, trans. Anne E. George (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1912), 346-47, http://digital.library.upenn.edu/ women/montessori/method/method-XXI.html (accessed February 17, 2007).
9. According to McClure documents, the circulation was 660, 000 in October 1911. Those figures may have been exaggerated, however, as the leading directory of newspapers and journals put the circulation at 410,000 in 1910 and 425,000 in 1912. See James Woodress, Willa Cather: A Literary Life (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 532-33. All three of this trio of muckrakers had moved on to other journals by 1911 after falling out with McClure's quirky owner.
10. Josephine Tozier, "An Educational Wonder-Worker: The Methods of Maria Montessori," McClure's Magazine, May 1911, 3-19; Rita Kramer, Maria Montessori: A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 160-62; S. S. McClure, My Autobiography (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1914), 252-53.
11. Peter Lyon, The Life and Times of S. S. McClure (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963).
12. "Information about the Montessori Method," McClure's Magazine, October 1911, 702-04.
13. "A School without Desks, or Classes, or Recitations," New York Times, December 24, 1911; Anne E. George, "The First Montessori School in America," McClure's Magazine (June 1912): 178; Citigroup, "Citibank, N.A," http://www.citigroup.com/citigroup/corporate/history/ citibank.htm (accessed February 17, 2007)
14. George, "First Montessori School in America," 178.
15. Dorothy Canfield Fisher (February 17, 1878-November 9, 1958) was already a wellknown American author when she published her two books on Montessori education in 1912 and 1913. In addition to her popular writing, she was a staunch advocate of women's rights and championed the education of children. For twenty-five years, she was on the editorial board of the Book-of-the-Month Club and helped shape the literary taste of the middle class. Dr. Montessori took umbrage at her Montessori publications, fearing that the unqualified dispersal of her ideas might lead to their dilution. "Dorothy Canfield Fisher Dead; Author of Vermont Novels, 79," New York Times, November 10, 1958; Kramer, Maria Montessori, 173-74.
16. Dorothy Canfield Fisher, The Montessori Manual for Teachers and Parents (New York: W. E. Richardson, 1913), 9-10, 16-17.
17. Gilbert E. Donahue, "Dr. Maria Montessori and the Montessori Movement: A General Bibliography of Materials in the English Language, 1909-1961," in Learning How to Learn: An American Approach to Montessori, ed. Nancy McCormick Rambusch (Baltimore: Halicon Press, 1962), 139-75.
18. "Learn Montessori Method," New York Times, March 16, 1913.
19. Virginia Tatnall Peacock, "Society," Washington Post, December 7, 1913; "Entertain Dr. Montessori," New York Times, December 7, 1913; "Dr. Montessori's Aim," New York Times, December 9, 1913.
20. Lorene K. Wills, "Conditions Associated with the Rise and Decline of the Montessori Method of Kindergarten-Nursery Education in the United States from 1911-1921" (Ph.D. dissertation, Southern Illinois University, 1966), 37-39.
21. "The Montessori Cult's Eclipse," Sunset, October 1915, 657-58.
22. Tinkering toward Utopia, the marvelously titled book by historians David Tyack and Larry Cuban, argued that incremental reform, in contrast to millennial patter that usually accompanies the rhetoric of schooling in this country, generally served the country well. David Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
23. Barbara Beatty, Preschool Education in America: The Culture of Young Children from the Colonial Era to the Present (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995); Ann Taylor Allen, "Let Us Live with Our Children": Kindergarten Movements in Germany and the United States, 1840-1914," History of Education Quarterly 28, no. 1 (1988): 23-48.
24. Jenny B. Merrill, "A New Method in Infant Education," The Kindergarten-Primary Magazine 23, no. 5 (1910): 143.
25. Henry W. Holmes, "Introduction," in Montessori, The Montessori Method, pp. xix-xx.
26. Patricia Albjerg Graham, Progressive Education: From Arcady to Academe: A History of the Progressive Education Association, 1919-1955 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1967), 1-16.
27. Harold Rugg exemplifies this latter progressive. Originally trained as a civil engineer, Rugg studied sociology and psychology in graduate school, graduating with a Ph.D. in 1915.
28. Kilpatrick, The Montessori System Examined. A sympathetic portrait of the Kilpatrick critique is offered in Robert H. Beck, "Kilpatrick's Critique of Montessori's Method and Theory," Studies in Philosophy and Education 1, no. 4-5 (1961): 153-162.
29. John A. Beineke, And There Were Giants in the Land: The Life of William Heard Kilpatrick (New York: Peter Lang, 1998), 66-74; Geraldine Joncich Clifford and James W. Guthrie, Ed School: A Brief for Professional Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); David F. Labaree, The Trouble with Ed Schools (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); Walter N. Halsey, "A Valuation of the Montessori Experiments," Journal of Education 77 (January 1913): 63, cited in Gerald Lee Gutek, ed., The Montessori Method: The Origins of an Educational Innovation: Including an Abridged and Annotated Edition of Maria Montessori's The Montessori Method (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 32.
30. William Heard Kilpatrick continually referred to Maria Montessori as Madame Montessori, not Dr. Montessori, in his book.
31. Sol Cohen, "Maria Montessori: Priestess or Pedagogue?" Teachers College Record 71, no. 2 (1969): 313-26.
32. To avoid confusion surrounding use of the name "Montessori," we observe the following conventions: when referring to Montessori as a movement or method, we use the term "Montessori" or "Montessori education"; when referring to the founder of the movement, we use the honorific term "Dr. Montessori"; and when referring to Maria Montessori's son, Mario, we use his first name because these are the terms most often used by Montessorians themselves.
33. Nancy McCormick Rambusch, "The 'American Montessori' Experience," American Montessori Society Bulletin 5, no. 2 (1977): 1-27. The quote is from p. 8.
34. Rambusch, "The 'American Montessori' Experience," 8.
35. Nancy McCormick Rambusch to Mario M. Montessori, December 19, 1962. American Montessori Society Records, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, Storrs, Connecticut (hereafter known as AMS Records).
36. Rambusch, Learning How to Learn; Rambusch, "The 'American Montessori' Experience," 16.
37. David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972).
38. John F. Kennedy, "Address of Senator John F. Kennedy Accepting the Democratic Party Nomination for the Presidency of the United States," Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, July 15, 1960, in John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Historical Resources, http://www.jfklibrary.org (accessed February 17, 2007).
39. Pope John XXIII was named Time magazine's Man of the Year for 1962, a year that featured President Kennedy's resolute management of the Cuban Missile Crisis and John Glenn becoming the first American to orbit the earth. The article celebrating the Pope's selection is representative of American beliefs in promise and possibility. "Man of the Year," Time, January 4, 1963, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,829723,00.html (accessed February 23, 2007). The most complete history of Vatican II is the five-volume series edited by Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph A Komonchak, History of Vatican II, 5 vols. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995-2005). A good summary is Giuseppe Alberigo, A Brief History of Vatican II (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006).
40. Nancy McCormick Rambusch, "Montessori Insights and American Children Today," Catholic Reporter, May 31, 1963.
41. 4 1 (2006): 63-93, for a fuller discussion of Montessori and its connections to a Catholic worldview.
42. Oona Burke, "Whitby School: Catholic Laymen follow the Montessori Method in a New Venture in American Education," fubilee, February 1959, 22.
43. Nancy McCormick Rambusch, "Learning Made Easy," fubilee, September 1953, 47.
44. Montessori, The Montessori Method.
45. Phyllis Povell (née Appelbaum), personal communication, September 2004.
46. Mario Montessori, "A Long Letter to Montessorians in America, in Answer to Some of the Many Questions I Receive" (Amsterdam: M. J. Portielje, 1963), 8. The letter is frequendy referred to as the Yellow Letter because in the first printing, the message was printed on yellow paper.
47. Mario Montessori to Nancy Rambusch, June 15, 1959, AMS Records.
48. AMS seminar, Greenwich, Connecticut, June 4,1962, tape recording cited in Phyllis Appelbaum, The Growth of the Montessori Movement in the United States, 1909-1970, (unpublished doctoral dissertation, New York University, 1971), 150-57.
49. Nancy McCormick Rambusch, The American Montessori Picture: Some Reconsiderations," The American Montessori Society Bulletin 1, no. 1 (1963): 1.
50. John J. McDermott, "Montessori and the New America," in Building the Foundations for Creative Learning, ed. Urban H. Fleege (New York: American Montessori Society, 1964), 25.
51. Appelbaum, The Growth of the Montessori Movement in the United States, 1999.
52. "Calendar of Events with Reference to Organization of AMS Course in Washington, D.C., p.l (n.d.), AMS Records.
53. Mario Montessori, telegram to American Montessori Society, September 11, 1962, AMS Records.
54. Lakshmi A. Kripalani, "Rambusch Sparked Montessori Renaissance," Public School Montessorian 7, no. 2 (1995): 2.
55. In addition to Stephenson, AMI approved Montessorians such as Lena Wikramaratne and, later, Hildegard Solzbacher, to be granted the status of Trainer by Mario Montessori either prior to or soon after the AMI/AMS split, thereby ensuring AMI- approved teacher training at various locations in the United States.
56. The best example of a fully integrated Montessori mainstream teacher training program can be found at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. Other programs, such as the Washington Montessori Institute at Loyola College in Maryland, function as self-contained Montessori programs within degree-granting graduate institutions.
57. American Montessori Society, "Standards for American Montessori Society Schools" (n.d.), http://www.amshq.org/scanda/std.pol.html (accessed February 26, 2007); Association Montessori Internationale, "AMI School Standards" (unpublished document). See Carolyn J. Daoust, "An Examination of Implementation Practices in Montessori Early Childhood Education" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2005) for the first systematic account of varieties of Montessori practice.
58. Throughout the AMI/AMS collaboration, Mario Montessori expressed mounting dismay at the manner in which AMS was attempting to "Americanize" Montessori. By early 1963, he was particularly disturbed by the dissolution of the AMS Pedagogical Committee, a move made in response to disagreements over the structure and format of training courses. Whereas Rambusch maintained that her position constituted fidelity to the method, Mario insisted that Rambusch's disagreements were the result of her lack of "experience" as a Montessorian. Mario Montessori to Nancy McCormick Rambusch, February 4, 1963, AMS Records.
59. Centenary of the Montessori Movement, 1907-2007, "Champion the Cause of All Children," http://montessoricentenary.org/(accessed February 17, 2007).
60. Data gathered from the following online databases: National Center for Education Statistics, "Search for Schools, Colleges, and Libraries," http://nces.ed.gov/globallocator/; Jola-Montessori.com, "Search the Jola Database," http://everythingmontessori.com/search/index.php; Association Montessori Internationale, "AMI/USA Schools' Listing," http://www.montessori-ami.org/; American Montessori Society, "AMS Member Schools," http://www.amshq.org/schools.htm; and searches of major metropolitan school systems known to have public Montessori schools.
61. André Roberfroid, "Address to the Montessori Centenary Conference" (lecture, Association Montessori Internationale and Opera Nazionale Montessori, Rome, Italy, January 6, 2007).
62. Along widi Maria Montessori's voluminous corpus of writings and lectures, work by Montessori teachers and promoters continue to appear on the reading lists of Montessori training centers and in the librarians of practicing Montessorians. See, for example, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, A Montessori Mother (New York: Henry Holt, 1912); Florence Elizabeth Ward, The Montessori Method and the American School (New York: Macmillan, 1913); Anna Maccheroni, True Romance: Dr. Maria Montessori as I Knew Her (Edinburgh, UK: Darien Press, 1947); Paula Polk Lillard, Montessori: A Modern Approach (New York: Schocken Books, 1972); and John P. Blessington, Let My Children Work (New York: Anchor Press, 1974).
63. See Jane Roland Martin, Schoolhome (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); and Nell Noddings, The Challenge to Care in School (New York: Teachers College Press, 1992).
64. MontessoriConnections, http://montessoriconnections.com (accessed February 20, 2007); April Jones, Montessori Education in America: An Analysis of Research Conducted from 2000-2005 (unpublished master's project, the College of William and Mary, 2005).
65. Angeline Lillard and Nicole Else-Quest, "Evaluating Montessori Education," Science, September 29, 2006, 1893-94.
66. Joke Verheul, e-mail correspondence with authors, February 26, 2007; Marlene Barron and Marie Dugan, interview with authors, West Side Montessori School, February 4, 2005.
67. A listing of the six major organizations in the United States today may be found at the Montessori Accreditation Council Teacher Education (MACTE) Web site: http://www.macte.org/organizations.htm (accessed February 26, 2007).
68. See Kieran Egan, Getting It Wrong from the Beginning: Our Progressivist Inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002) for a fuller discussion of dominance of progressive ideology in American educational culture.
69. "The First Progressive," Time, October 20, 1947, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,804340,00.html(accessed February 20, 2007).
70. Lillard, Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius, vii-ix.