Montessori Education And Indifferentism

 

In 2018, I published a post regarding the occult dangers inherent in Waldorf Schools; I also discussed same with Mr. Kevin Davis of the always excellent Catholic Family Podcast. 

(See catholicfamilypodcast.podbean.com/e/waldorf-schools-and-occultism).

(See also introiboadaltaredei2.blogspot.com/2018/06/an-education-in-evil.html).

I was a middle school science teacher here in New York City prior to becoming a lawyer. However, my research into Waldorf Schools was recent and not from my studies in education. Both as an undergraduate and graduate student, my classes centered on traditional public school education. Only a brief and shallow overview was given regarding Waldorf and Montessori methods of learning, and we were never tested on it. I therefore took at face value what my professors claimed as true of these alternate methods of imparting knowledge. 

One of my readers suggested that if I looked deeper into Montessori Schools, I would find disturbing truths there as well. Dr. Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori (1870-1952) was born in Italy, and became the first Italian woman to earn a medical degree from the University of Rome. As a doctor, Montessori became involved in the treatment of children with disabilities and devised a special method of treating and educating them. Her method soon proved suitable for more general application and became known as the Montessori Method. I was a bit skeptical that I would find something wrong, as Dr. Montessori had always been presented as a devout Catholic and she wrote a book explaining the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass to children. 

Nevertheless, I've come to expect the unexpected, and when I dug beneath the surface, Maria Montessori proved to be deceptive, and her pedagogy is rife with problems. This post will deal with Montessori and the educational system that bears her name.  

What is Montessori Education?

According to one Montessori website, the conventional method is explained thus:

Montessori is a scientifically based education approach that emphasizes independence, freedom within limits, and respect for a child’s natural psychological, physical, and social development. It was developed by Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori.

Montessori education is based on the belief that all children are unique individuals, that they all have immense potential, that they want to learn and be busy. Therefore the teacher needs to guide each child through the learning process by using materials that fit their specific needs and pace.

A Montessori education is based on the seven principles:

FREE CHOICE

Learning and well-being are improved when children have a sense of control over their lives. Although Montessori programs impose definite limits on this freedom, children are free to make many more decisions than are children in traditional classrooms: what to work on, how long to work on it, with whom to work on it, and so on.

ORDER

Recent research in psychology has proven that order in the environment is indeed very helpful to learning and development. Montessori classrooms are very organized, both physically (in terms of lay-out) and conceptually (in terms of how the use of materials progresses).

INTEREST

Your gut feeling is right: Research has shown that when people learn with the goal of doing well on a test, their learning is superficial and quickly forgotten. Children (and yes, adults, too) learn better when they are interested in what they are learning.

LEARNING FROM PEERS

Children in Montessori classrooms learn by imitation models, through peer tutoring, and in collaboration. In mixed age classes, younger children learn from older ones by asking them questions while watching them work. Older children who are teaching younger children repeat and consolidate their knowledge and skills and obtain social skills.

MOVEMENT

Our brains evolved in a world in which we move and do, not a world in which we sit at desks. Movement and cognition are closely entwined. Education, therefore, would involve movement to enhance learning.

CONTEXT

Rather than learning largely from what teachers and texts say to them, children in Montessori programs learn largely by doing. Because they are doing things, rather than merely hearing and writing, their learning is situated in the context of actions and objects. For example, children go out of the classroom and into the world to research their interests.

TEACHER GUIDANCE

Montessori teachers provide clear limits but set children free within these boundaries. They sensitively respond to children’s needs while maintaining high expectations. This kind of ‘authoritative parenting’ seeks a middle ground between a traditional, authoritarian attitude (“Do it because we say so”) and an overly permissive, child-centered approach of other progressive schools.

(See montessorimallorca.org/montessori-seven-principles). 

This is what is commonly sold to parents. However, there is no proof that Montessori education is in any way superior to traditional methods. In Nature, a peer-reviewed article entitled Montessori education: a review of the evidence base [2017] by Chloe Marshall, had this to say:

There are few peer-reviewed evaluations of Montessori education, and the majority have been carried out in the USA. Some have evaluated children’s outcomes while those children were in Montessori settings, and others have evaluated Montessori-educated children after a period of subsequent conventional schooling. As a whole this body of research suffers from several methodological limitations. (See nature.com/articles/s41539-017-0012-7; Emphasis mine). 

So there is no definitive evidence that Montessori Schools will better educate children. Some religious parents send their children to such a school because if Dr. Montessori developed the methods, they must be based on Catholic principles. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Maria Montessori: Modernist and Occultist

Maria Montessori was raised in a devout Catholic home. She received a papal blessing from Pope Benedict XV (r. 1914-1922) and published The Mass Explained to Children in 1933. In accordance with Italian law, her first schools taught the One True Faith (Catholicism was the State religion). These are the parts of her life that get touted, and the appearance of a "good Catholic" served her well. What she really believed and did tell another story.

Montessori joined Theosophy, the occult sect of Madame Helena Blavatsky, founded in 1875. Theosophy, among other tenets,  teaches that knowledge of God may be achieved through spiritual ecstasy, or direct intuition, known as vital immanence, a teaching of Modernism. Theosophy also teaches reincarnation and incorporates many pagan Hindu ideas. According to Joy Dixon, Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England, [2001], pgs. 3-4, Theosophy has as its goal "to form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color." (Emphasis mine). 

According to The Theosophical Society in America:

MARIA MONTESSORI had her first acquaintance with Theosophy, early in the twentieth century, when she went to hear Annie Besant speak in London in 1907 after Montessori had established her first Casa dei Bambini (i.e., Children's House). Annie Besant spoke in praise of Montessori's work in education which pleased Montessori, and thus sealed their friendship...

My own acquaintance with Montessori began through the Theosophical Society and reading her writings. In 1940, when I was seven years old, my family moved to a farm northeast of Ann Arbor, Michigan. My father's dream was to make it a Theosophical community and, for a while, it was. In 1956 my former sister-in-law, Barbara Bailey, and I started the first Montessori school in Michigan. In 1970, I took the Montessori Elementary training course for teachers in Bergamo, Italy and while there learned that some of the Montessori Elementary educational materials had been designed while Montessori was in India. (Hindu/Theosophy influence; See theosophical.org/publications/quest-magazine/42-publications/quest-magazine/1409-montessori-and-the-theosophical-society; Emphasis mine). 

Following her death in 1952, the [Theosophical] Society President, C. Jinarajadasa, reported that Maria Montessori did in fact join the Theosophical Society on May 23, 1899. Her original application had been found by the Recording Secretary's Office at Adyar. There being no Italian Section the time, Montessori joined the European Section and was admitted by the General Secretary, Mr Otway Cuffe. Her membership was later dropped... 

It is now clear, however, that Montessori's connection with Theosophy was older than the Method. The Dottoressa [i.e., female medical doctor] thus may have been influenced by early Theosophical literature on education. Indeed, in 1889 one of the Society's founders, the Russian mystic Madame Blavatsky, seemed almost to prophesy the future Montessori Children's Houses in the slums of Rome: I quite agree that there is a great advantage to a small child bred in the slums, having the gutter for playground, and living amid continued coarseness of gesture and word, in being placed daily in a bright, clean school-room hung with pictures, and often gay with flowers. There it is taught to be clean, gentle, orderly; there it learns to sing and play; has toys that awaken its intelligence; learns to use its fingers deftly; is spoken to with a smile instead of a frown; is gently rebuked or coaxed instead of cursed. All this humanizes the children, arouses their brains, and renders them susceptible, to intellectual and moral influences.

It is unlikely that the fiercely independent Dottoressa would have enabled Theosophists to claim her as their own by admitting that she had once been a member of their Society, or that she had been inspired by the writings of Madame Blavatsky. Montessori had also returned to Catholicism and Theosophy, with its belief in Karma and reincarnation, 'has been categorized "as being at heart Hindu" and hence antithetical to Catholic orthodoxy'.  Indeed Jinarajadasa presumed that Montessori failed to acknowledge the efforts of the Theosophical Society in furthering her work, particularly in India, 'because she was a Roman Catholic, and to have mentioned the work of 'The Theosophical Society', would have drawn upon her the wrath of the Catholic hierarchy'. 

(See kelpin.nl/fred/download/montessori/english/theosophist.pdf; History of Education Society Bulletin (1985) Vol. 36 pp 52 -54 "Montessori was a Theosophist;" Emphasis mine). 

During the reign of Pope St. Pius X (1903-1914), many theologians suspect of Modernism held Montessori in high esteem. She was a leading proponent of feminism, and denigrated marriage and motherhood. In an article entitled Dr. Maria Montessori, Feminist, the doctor is quoted as saying:

...the woman of the future will have equal rights as well as equal duties…Family life as we know it may change, but it is absurd to think the feminism will destroy maternal feelings. The new woman will marry and have children out of choice, not because matrimony and maternity are imposed on her.(See thenewinquiry.com/blog/dr-maria-montessori-feminist). 

The idea that marriage and family are "imposed" by society, and is not a vocation from God, can only be described as repugnant. The 1917 Code of Canon Law, Canon 1013, section 1 states: "The primary end of marriage is the procreation and education of children. Its secondary end is mutual help and the allaying of concupiscence." It's easier to understand her position when you know she conceived a son with a fellow doctor via fornication. They agreed not to marry, and Montessori put her son Mario into foster care to continue her career. Later, he would work with her when he was an adult. 

Montessori spent time in India, and let her occultism show full force. In an age without computers and easy communication, Montessori felt safe in the pagan country. (I have seen pictures of her sporting the Hindu "bindi"—-a red dot in the middle of the forehead that symbolizes the pagan/occult "third eye"). She wrote for the Theosophy Journal in India, and became convinced of Indifferentism (i.e., one religion is as good as another as they all contain some truth--Vatican II anyone?). 

Montessori stated: Just as language has many expressions: English, Swedish, Swahili, and so forth, so does elevation express itself by way of different creeds: Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and many different belief systems in order to communicate with and about God. 

(See lifesongmontessori.com/montessori-philosophy.html). 

Also, she believed in the Modernist doctrine of vital immanence: We must remember that religion is a universal sentiment which is inside everybody and has been inside every person since the beginning of the world. It is not something which we must give to the child. (See The Child, Society and the World: Unpublished Speeches and Writings by Montessori; Emphasis mine). 

Vital immanence is a doctrine of the Modernists forcefully condemned by Pope St. Pius X:

However, this Agnosticism is only the negative part of the system of the Modernist: the positive side of it consists in what they call vital immanence. This is how they advance from one to the other. Religion, whether natural or supernatural, must, like every other fact, admit of some explanation. But when Natural theology has been destroyed, the road to revelation closed through the rejection of the arguments of credibility, and all external revelation absolutely denied, it is clear that this explanation will be sought in vain outside man himself. It must, therefore, be looked for in man; and since religion is a form of life, the explanation must certainly be found in the life of man. Hence the principle of religious immanence is formulated. Moreover, the first actuation, so to say, of every vital phenomenon, and religion, as has been said, belongs to this category, is due to a certain necessity or impulsion; but it has its origin, speaking more particularly of life, in a movement of the heart, which movement is called a sentiment. Therefore, since God is the object of religion, we must conclude that faith, which is the basis and the foundation of all religion, consists in a sentiment which originates from a need of the divine. This need of the divine, which is experienced only in special and favorable circumstances, cannot, of itself, appertain to the domain of consciousness; it is at first latent within the consciousness, or, to borrow a term from modern philosophy, in the subconsciousness, where also its roots lies hidden and undetected. (See Pascendi Dominici Gregis, para. #7; Emphasis mine).

Montessori's Indifferentism is Inherent in the Curriculum

Once Catholic countries were destroyed by Vatican II, Montessori Schools wasted no time implementing their founder's poison:

As you would expect of an Italian woman at the turn of the twentieth century, Dr. Montessori grew up in the Catholic faith and its influence can be clearly observed throughout her life: threaded throughout all of her work are the unshakeable beliefs in the sanctity of the human spirit, the fraternity of all humankind, and the pursuit of peace as the noblest effort we must undertake.

Already during her studies and especially after the success of her early work, Dr. Montessori began to travel extensively. During her lifetime she met with leaders in all areas of human accomplishments: scientists, artists, political and religious leaders, and those encounters and relationships deeply influenced her work and thinking. It is unclear how exactly Dr. Montessori’s religious beliefs continued to develop as she kept this part of her life private, but there is evidence she came to a principal dissent with the Catholic church, and also that she had meaningful ties to non-European religions and even esoteric philosophies, particularly through the Theosophic Society.

Ultimately though, as they say, the proof is in the pudding, and the legacy Dr. Montessori left us is one of profound humanism. Now, as a century ago, her work encourages and empowers children and adults alike to celebrate, develop and uphold our shared humanity.

In Montessori theory, spirituality is listed as of the the five fundamental human tendencies: alongside and interconnected with the other four (work, exploration, group behavior and the mathematical mind) it is understood as one of the universal drives shaping our shared human experience. The four chief aspects of Spirituality, usually given as Art, Music, Dance and Religion (including its secular, atheist or humanistic manifestations), are considered as present and innate to every human culture throughout the history of our existence.  Dr. Montessori thus explicitly named religious and spiritual life as something that connects us rather than divides us.

Most Montessori schools choose to present religion as a part of our cultural curriculum, both in the set materials and resources present in the classroom, and through actively involving the student body. As we encourage children from different language, ethnic or national backgrounds to study, share and celebrate each others heritage, so do we invite them to share their faiths, if they wish to: students are invited to bring photographs, artifacts, special clothing or stories and songs to the classrooms and learn to share their unique identity with pride.

Some schools (especially international schools with a diverse student body) organize cultural fairs when students act as ambassadors of their nations and cultures and teach attendees about them, including their faith backgrounds. Festivals and events are held as a way to honor and explore each other’s heritage. The same school might thus have special activities to celebrate Diwali, Mawlid, Hanukkah, Christmas and Chinese New Year in quick succession, allowing its students to experience wonder and beauty in each. (See montessoriparenting.org/montessori-and-religion: Emphasis mine).

Conclusion

Dr. Maria Montessori was a Modernist and occultist posing as a Catholic. Her teaching methodology is based on the false ideas that one religion is as good as another, and all children have a universal sentiment inside that lets them experience God. There is no body of research to prove Montessori education is in any way superior to traditional education. Save your money and your child's soul by keeping them out of these learning institutions. Warn other parents who send their children to a Montessori School. After learning about Dr. Maria Montessori, I'll be putting my copy of The Mass Explained to Children next to my Fulton Sheen Missal, in my library section "Know Thy Enemy."