Addams and Montessori

F O R E R U N N E R S O F E D U C AT I O N

Faye G. Tubola - EDUC102 W

Jane Addams
“MOTHER OF SOCIAL WORK”
Jane Addams
Nobel Peace Prize (1931)
Hall of Fame for Great
Americans (1965)
Jane Addams
• Born September 8, 1860, Cedarville, Illinois, U.S.A
• Died May 21, 1935, Chicago Illinois, at age 74
• 8th of nine children
• Diagnosed with congenital spinal defect at an early age.
Parents
• John H. Addams
– Businessman and politician.
– Served 16 years as state senator
– Fought as an officer in the Civil War
– A friend of Abraham Lincoln
– Died of Acute Appendicitis while on a family vacation
• He was 59 years old

• Sarah Weber-Addams
– Homemaker
– Midwife
– Died a week after giving birth to her 9th child (born dead)
• She was 45 years old
John Addams & Sarah Weber
Education
• In 1881, she graduated Valedictorian from the Rockford Female
Seminary
– Granted with the degree a year later, when the institution became
Rockford College for Women (presently known as Rockford University)

• Studied medicine for 6 years but left it due to poor health

– Hospitalized intermittently

• Traveled and studied in Europe for 21 months

• Spent 2 years in reading and writing her objectives
Legacy
• At 27, with her Rockford classmate, Ellen Starr, she visited a
settlement house, Toynbee Hall, London’s East End
• Finalized an idea of opening a similar house in Chicago
• In 1889, she and Starr leased a large home built by Charles
Hull, and moved in with a purpose:
– “to provide a center for a higher civic and social life; to institute and
maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises and to investigate and
improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago”

• Addams and Starr raised money by convincing well-off families

to cater the needs of the neighborhood.
Hull House
• One of the first social settlements in North America
• On its second year, it hosts two thousand people every week
– There were kindergarten classes in the morning, club meetings for older
children in the afternoon, and for adults in the evening more clubs or
courses in what became virtually a night school.

• Through increased donations, more buildings were purchased.

• Became a complex, contains:
– An art gallery, a public kitchen, a coffee house, a gymnasium, a swimming
pool, a cooperative boarding club for girls, a book bindery, an art studio, a
music school, a drama group, a circulating library, an employment bureau,
a labor museum.
Hull House, 1889
Jane Addams Hull House Museum
Reputation
• In 1905, she was appointed to Chicago’s Board of Education
– Subsequently made chairman of the School Management Committee
• In 1908, she participated in the founding of the Chicago School of
Civics and Philanthropy
• The next year, she became the first woman president of the
National Conference of Charities and Corrections
• In Chicago, she led investigations on:
– Midwifery, narcotics consumption, milk supplies, and sanitary conditions
– Accepted the post as official garbage inspector (1000$ annual salary)
• In 1910, she received the first honorary degree ever awarded to
woman by Yale University
Advocacy
• Peace
– In 1915, she accepted the chairmanship of the Women’s Peace Party, an
American organization
– Four months later, she also became president of the International
Congress of Women
• This congress founded the organization, Women’s International League for
Peace and Freedom, where Addams served as president until 1929

• Internationalism
– She opposed America’s entry into the war.
– She assisted in providing relief supplies of food to the women and children
of enemy nations.
 After sustaining a heart
attack in 1926, she never
fully regained her health.
On the very day of her being
awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize on 1931 in Oslo, she
was admitted to a hospital
in Baltimore.
In 1935, she died three days
after an operation revealed
unsuspected cancer.
Jane Addams
September 6, 1860 - May 21, 1935
References
• Addams, Jane, Twenty Years at Hull-House, New York Macmillan,
1910, p. 112
• Fox, Richard Wrightman and Kloppenberg, James T. A Companion to
American Thought, Blackwell Publishing, 1995, p. 14
• https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1931/addams-
bio.html
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jane-Addams
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hull-House
• https://www.theguardian.com/personal-investments/ng-
interactive/2017/oct/24/jane-addams-activist-foundation-social-work-
hull-house
• http://media.pfeiffer.edu/lridener/DSS/Addams/2hhplate.html
Maria Montessori
Italian physician and educator
Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori

▪ Nobel Peace Prize

Nominee
▪ Founder of the Montessori
Education Method
Maria Montessori

▪ Born August 31, 1870, Chiaravalle, Italy

▪ Died May 6, 1652, Noordwijk aan Zee, Netherlands, at age 81
Parents

▪ Alessandro Montessori
– An accountant in the civil service

▪ Renilde Stoppani-Montessori
– Well educated
– Had a passion for reading

▪ The Montessori Family moved to Rome in 1870

Education

▪ She attended a local state school, at the beginning, she wanted to

become an engineer
– At 13, she entered an all-boys technical institute to pursue engineering

▪ Her parents encouraged her to enter teaching

▪ She changed her mind and decided to become a doctor instead.
– She applied to the University of Rome’s medical program, but was rejected.
– She took additional courses to better prepare her for entrance to medical
school. Eventually, she was given admittance.

▪ Maria graduated medicine from the University of Rome in 1896.

Movement

▪ Her early medical focus was psychiatry

▪ She developed interest in education, attending classes in pedagogy
and immersing herself in educational theory
▪ Her studies led her to observe, and call into question, the prevailing
methods of teaching children with intellectual and developmental
disabilities
▪ In 1900, she was appointed co-director of a new training institute for
special education teachers
▪ In 1901, Montessori began her own studies of education philosophy
and anthropology, lecturing and teaching students
Movement

▪ In 1907 Montessori opened the first Casa dei Bambini (“Children’s House”),
a preschool for children ages three to six from a slum district of Rome,
applying her methods now to children of normal intelligence.
▪ Maria put many different activities and other materials into the children’s
environment but kept only those that engaged them.
▪ By 1909 Dr Montessori gave her first training course in her new approach to
around 100 students.
– Her notes from this period provided the material for her first book published that
same year in Italy, appearing in translation in the United States in 1912 as The
Montessori Method, and later translated into 20 languages.

▪ News of the school’s success soon spread through Italy and by 1910
Montessori schools were acclaimed worldwide.
Casa dei Bambini, 1907
Montessori Schools around the world

Cambridge Montessori School Montessori Oberschule Potsdam

Massachusetts, USA Potsdam, Germany
Montessori Schools around the world

Seisen International School Southernside Montessori School

Tokyo, Japan Muntinlupa, Philippines
Advocacy

▪ Innovation
– Maria dedicated the rest of her years in advanceing her child-centered approach
to education
– She lectured widely, authored books and articles, and developed a program for
teachers in a Montessori Method
▪ Feminism
– Montessori wrote and spoke on the need for greater opportunities for women
▪ She was recognized in Italy as a leading feminist voice

▪ Idealism
– As she and her son, Mario, travelled to India to lecture, they lived in exile as a
war broke out.
▪ While there, she trained over a thousand Indian teachers
At war’s end, she returned to Europe, spending her final years in
Amsterdam.
Maria Montessori
August 31, 1870 - May 6, 1652
References

▪ https://montessori.org.au/biography-dr-maria-montessori
▪ https://amshq.org/Montessori-Education/History-of-Montessori-
Education/Biography-of-Maria-Montessori
▪ https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maria-Montessori
▪ http://www.nndb.com/people/189/000108862/
▪ https://montessori-nw.org/maria-montessori-and-ami/
▪ https://ami-global.org/gallery/maria-montessori-portraits
Montessori Method of Education
Maria Montessori
What is the Montessori Method?
• The Montessori Method of education, developed by Dr. Maria Montessori, is a
child-centered educational approach based on scientific observations of
children from birth to adulthood.
• It is a view of the child as one who is naturally eager for knowledge and
capable of initiating learning in a supportive, thoughtfully prepared learning
environment. It is an approach that values the human spirit and the
development of the whole child—physical, social, emotional, cognitive.
• Dr. Montessori’s Method has been time tested, with over 100 years of
success in diverse cultures throughout the world.
5 Core Components of
Montessori Education
American Montessori Society
• properly trained Montessori
teachers
• multi-age classrooms
• use of Montessori materials
• child-directed work
• uninterrupted work periods.
Properly Trained Montessori Teachers
• Properly trained Montessori teachers understand the importance of allowing
the child to develop naturally.
• They are able to observe children within a specific age range and introduce
them to challenging and developmentally appropriate lessons and materials
based on observations of each child’s unique interests, abilities, and
development (social, emotional, cognitive, and physical).
• The teacher serves as a guide rather than a giver of information. She
prepares the classroom environment in order to support and inspire the
developmental progress of each student and guide each child’s learning
through purposeful activity.
• Multi-age Classrooms
• Multi-age groupings enable younger children to learn from older children and
experience new challenges through observation; older children reinforce their
learning by teaching concepts they have already mastered, develop
leadership skills, and serve as role models.
• This arrangement mirrors the real world, in which individuals work and
socialize with people of all ages and dispositions.
• Use Of Montessori Materials
• A hallmark of Montessori education is its hands-on approach to learning and
the use of scientifically designed instructive materials.
• Beautifully crafted and begging to be touched, Montessori’s distinctive
learning materials each teach a single skill or concept and include a built-in
mechanism, a “control of error”, for providing the student with a way of
assessing progress and correcting mistakes, independent of the teacher.
• The concrete materials provide passages to abstraction and introduce
concepts that become increasingly complex.
• Child-directed Work
• Montessori education supports children in choosing meaningful and
challenging work of their own interest, leading to engagement, intrinsic
motivation, sustained attention, and the development of responsibility to
oneself and others.
• This child-directed work is supported by the design and flow of the Montessori
classroom, which is created to arouse each child’s curiosity and to provide
the opportunity to work in calm, uncluttered spaces either individually or as
part of a group; the availability and presentation of enticing, self-correcting
materials in specified curricular areas; teachers who serve as guides and
mentors rather than dispensers of knowledge; and uninterrupted work
periods.
• Uninterrupted Work Periods
• The uninterrupted work period recognizes and respects individual variations in
the learning process.
• During the work period, students are given time to work through various tasks
and responsibilities at their own pace without interruption.
• A child’s work cycle involves selecting an activity, performing the activity for as
long as s/he is interested in it, cleaning up the activity and returning it to the shelf,
then selecting another activity.
• During the work period, teachers support and monitor the students’ work and
provide individual and small-group lessons.
• The uninterrupted work period facilitates the development of coordination,
concentration, independence and order, and the assimilation of information.
How can children learn if they are
free to do whatever they want?
Dr. Montessori observed that children are more
motivated to learn when working on something of
their own choosing. A Montessori student may choose
his focus of learning on any given day, but his
decision is limited by the materials and activities—in
each area of the curriculum—that his teacher has
prepared and presented to him.
If children work at their own
pace, don't they fall behind?
Although students are free to work at their own pace,
they’re not going it alone. The Montessori teacher
closely observes each child and provides materials and
activities that advance his learning by building on
skills and knowledge already gained. This gentle
guidance helps him master the challenge at hand—and
protects him from moving on before he’s ready, which
is what actually causes children to “fall behind.”
References
• https://amshq.org/Montessori-Education/Introduction-to-Montessori
• https://montessori-nw.org/inside-a-montessori-classroom
• http://www.theshulpreschool.org/about/the-montessori-method-2