New Education- A concept by Maria Montessori

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Describe what Maria Montessori meant by “New Education?

Dr: Maria Montessori The founder of ‘Montessori Education System’ devoted her life to improve the education of children. Maria Montessori lived in an era marked with war and conflicts. The world was torn to pieces and she felt an urgent need for reconstruction. Montessori believed that the primary factor in this direction would be reforming the education. She pitied that even though men were educated; they failed to control the events and became their victims. “Noble Ideas great sentiments have always found utterance, but wars have not ceased”, (Education for a New World, Chapter 1, p.1). Since the child is the constructor of man and of the society, she believed, the salvation would be from the child. She discovered that every child has a spontaneous urge to learn through their own way. She believed that the child has got such an immense power which can be transformed to positive energy, and a good future. According to Maria the education should aim at human potentialities not just for gaining mere knowledge. . “It is the spirit of the child that can determine the course human progress and lead it perhaps even to a higher form of civilization” (The Essential Montessori, Chapter 6, p.64).

Montessori believed that education should be a natural process. It has to focus on the child. She felt that the current education system is teacher oriented.”If education is to be reformed, it must be based upon the children. {Education for the new world, chapter2 p 24}. She wanted the education should be in a natural way, in which every children has got total freedom to learn .She felt that it’s time to have a new education’ which gives importance to child.

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The first step would be to change the wrong assumption that parents and teachers had about children. Montessori felt that adults must always understand their relations with the child. She was of the opinion that the faults in the system of the education of her time were due to the failure on the part of the adults to understand the child. She asserted that the fundamental problem in the education was a social one. She said “It consists in the establishment of a new and better relationship between the two great sections of society – children and adults”, (Her ...

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