Maria Montessori
"The secret of good teaching is to regard the child's intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination" - Dr. Maria Montessori.
Maria Montessori was born in Italy in 1870 and was the first woman to qualify in Italy as a doctor of Medicine. In her medical practice, her clinical observations led her to analyze how children learn, and she observed that they build themselves from what they find in their environment. Shifting her focus from the body to the mind, she returned to the university in 1901, this time to study psychology and philosophy. It was after this she gave up her medical practice and university chair to embrace her passion to educate young children. In 1907 she opened up her first Montessori House of Children, named ‘Casa di Bambini’ in the slumps of San Lorenzo in Rome, Italy.
Dr. Maria Montessori described the child's mind between the time of birth and six years of age as the "absorbent mind". She concluded that during this stage a child has a tremendous ability to learn and absorb from the world around him, without conscious effort.