On Top of the World
Maria Montessori takes some of her pupils up onto a roof terrace, and witnesses a eureka moment.
1912
King George V 1910-1936
By Tomhannen, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
Looking across London through a window in the Kensington Roof Garden. The accompanying anecdote appeared in a pamphlet written in 1912 by Edmond Holmes for the Board of Education, a year after he was sent to Italy to research Dr Montessori’s methods. Holmes, an Inspector of Schools since 1874, had long nurtured a deep antipathy for bureaucracy and knuckle-rapping authority, which he blamed on the doctrine of original sin shared by both Protestants and Roman Catholics (though frowned on in the East). Montessori’s vision thus appealed to Holmes personally as well as professionally.
Introduction
Whereas many educators in her day ran classrooms like battlegrounds between teachers and unwilling pupils, Italian doctor Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was convinced that children rejoice in learning so long as teachers do not meddle. The following anecdote appeared in a pamphlet written for the Board of Education in 1912, and shows that joy in abundance.
ONE beautiful December day when the sun shone and the air was like spring, I went up on the roof with the children. They were playing freely about, and a number of them were gathered about me. I was sitting near a chimney, and said to a little five-year old boy who sat beside me, ‘Draw me a picture of this chimney,’ giving him as I spoke a piece of chalk. He got down obediently and made a rough sketch of the chimney on the tiles which formed the floor of this roof terrace.
As is my custom with little children I encouraged him, praising his work. The child looked at me, smiled, remained for a moment as if on the point of bursting into some joyous act, and then cried out, ‘I can write! I can write!’ and kneeling down again he wrote on the pavement the word ‘hand.’
