Shaheen Syed of West Windsor spoke at the American Montessori Society’s annual conference in New York city on March 2. In commemoration of the centennial of Maria Montessori starting her first school in Rome, Syed, .director of New Horizons Montessori of Princeton Junction, presented “One Hundred Years of Montessori Early childhood Education.”##M:[more]##
Montessori opened her first “Casa dei Bambini” in the housing projects of San Lorenzo district of Rome, Italy. The first woman to practice medicine in Italy, she graduated from the University of Rome in 1896. “Through her experience and exhaustive scrutiny, she realized that children construct their own personalities as they interact with their environment,” says Syed. “Her approach to education stemmed from her background in biology, psychiatry, and anthropology.”
“Dr. Montessori believed that the goal of early childhood education should not be to fill the child with facts from a pre-selected course of studies, but rather to cultivate the child’s own natural desire to learn,” she says. “The children’s innate passion for learning is encouraged by giving them opportunities to engage in spontaneous, purposeful activities with the guidance of a trained teacher.”
“The transformation of children from birth to adulthood occurs through a series of developmental planes,” she says. “Montessori believed that the first plane of development occurs from birth to age six when children are constructing their intellects by absorbing every aspect of their environment, their language, and their culture.”
