In her research, Dr Montessori noted specific characteristics associated with the child’s interest and abilities at each plane of development.  She argued that a school carefully designed to meet the needs and interest of the child will work more effectively because it doesn’t fight with human nature.  Montessori taught teachers how to “follow the child” through careful observation, allowing each student to reveal her strength and weaknesses, interest and anxieties, and strategies that work best to facilitate the development of her human potential.

This focus on the “whole child” led Dr Montessori to develop a very different sort of school from the traditional adult centered classroom.  To emphasize this difference, she named her first school “the Casa Dei Bambini” or the “Children’s House”.

There is something profound in the choice of words, for the Montessori classroom is not the domain of the adults in charge, but rather it is a care-fully prepared environment designed to facilitate the development of the children’s independence and sense of personnel empowerment.  This is the children’s community. They move freely within it, selecting work that captures their interest, rather than participating in all day lessons and projects selected by the teachers. 

In a very real sense, even very small children are responsible for the care of their own child sized environment.  When they are hungry, they prepare their own snack and drink.  They go to the bathroom without assistance.  When something spills, they carefully help each other clean it up.  Four generations of parents have been amazed to see small children in Montessori classrooms cut raw fruits and vegetables, sweep and dust, carry pitchers of water and pour liquids with barely a drop spilled. The children normally go about their work so calmly and purposely that it is clear to even the casual observer that they are the masters in this environment: a “Children Community”.

Montessori’s first “Children Community” opened 1907 was made up of 60 inner city children who largely came from dysfunctional family. In her book “The Montessori Method”, Dr. Montessori describes the transformation that took place during the first few months, as the children evolved into a “Family”. They prepared and served the daily meals, washed the pots and dishes, help the younger children bath and change the clothes, swept, cleaned, and worked in the garden. These very young children developed a sense of maturity and connectedness that help them realize a much higher level of their potential as human beings.

While times have changed the need to be connected is still as strong as ever. In fact, for today’s children it is probably even more important. Whether it is an inner city child or a child from an affluent suburb, the sense of community has all but disappeared from our children life. Families regularly move from house to house and from town to town, Grandparent generally live in other city or other states.  Both parents work out of necessity and when they are at home, they are very busy.  The “latch-key” child has become the norm of this generation.  Many children have the sense that they do not belong to anything or any body which is why gangs, which gives a sense of belonging have always had a certain appeal for some children.

Along with whatever else Montessori gives our children, it definitely gives them the message that they belong- that their school is like a second family.  Studies on the moral and emotional development of children strongly suggest that while there are probably a few children in every thousand who are truly little ‘gangster” at heart, a child sense of normal reasoning and sense of self are directly related.

Children will normally grow up to be productive, happy, positive individual if given the right emotional environment. It seems clear that our attitude about people, the ability to overcome our tendency to be ego-centric, our willingness to share, to compromise, to resolve conflict nonviolently, and our ability to discover a basic sense of self worth are not quality that human being develop spontaneously but rather through years of experience with caring people who convince us that we belong and give us the opportunity to practice and master these skills of every day living.  As in all things, children learn to be kind and compassionate.  Taken from the “The Montessori Foundation”