The Montessori Potential by Paula Lillard Preschlack

Author:Paula Lillard Preschlack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2022-11-07T09:11:31+00:00

The Roots of Montessori in the United States:

AMI and AMS

There are several organizations that represent Montessori and train teachers in the United States, but I am going to focus on the two chief ones. You may anticipate that the existence of these two accrediting organizations clarifies what Montessori schools and teacher training consist of. However, their history and their divergent interpretations of Dr. Montessori’s work have actually furthered public confusion.

Even in the very early years when Dr. Montessori traveled and explained her approach, variations in Montessori practices sprang up. Dr. Montessori recognized right away that while her ideas were enthusiastically accepted by audiences in theory, many educators surged ahead without fully understanding how her findings translated to practical implementation. She also received criticism and contrastingly—but equally troubling to her—misplaced praise. The public fixated on Dr. Montessori, not her proposal, and viewed her as the creator of a new method of education. She insisted they were missing the point: the children were the ones showing what children are capable of, what their true psychology is, and she was merely the one who made the initial discovery. She called for scientific study of how children learn as a continuation of her observations. This research would transform education to match children’s natures more accurately than most educational practices we have today.

Dr. Montessori’s logical response to the public’s misinterpretations was to establish an organization in 1929 with the help of her son and collaborator, Mario Montessori. The goal of this organization, named the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI), was to define the principles of the Montessori educational approach and to clearly uphold them. The purpose was to protect the authenticity of the philosophy and reliable implementation of the educational approach as designed by Dr. Montessori and her colleagues. AMI was to serve as the source for information about the Montessori approach in all its details.4 The organization’s most important aim was to train teachers to implement the approach authentically.

To serve this need, Dr. Montessori went to every country she could, giving numerous training courses for teachers and using language translators where appropriate. As a result teachers who traveled long distances to receive this training started Montessori schools all over the world. A dramatic ebb and flow of school openings and closures ensued. Through decades of international turmoil, revolutions, and world wars, Dr. Montessori actively lectured throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas right up until the day she died in 1952, while planning a trip to Africa. The Association Montessori Internationale continues to operate from its base in Amsterdam and has affiliates all over the world, including in the United States (called AMI/USA).

In the United States there is another large organization promoting Montessori education, founded by an American shortly after Dr. Montessori’s death. In 1953 Nancy McCormick Rambusch, a highly educated young woman and a whirlwind of charismatic energy, became increasingly interested in Montessori education as an alternative to the conventional school model. Eagerly Rambusch traveled to Paris to attend the tenth International Montessori Congress, where

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