Montessori Junior Schools

In this article, Mario Montessori illustrates how children at the elementary level become ready to take on responsibility for their own education in the widest sense and how the school can help prepare an environment conducive to self-steered research and exploration of many subjects. To explain how the school can stimulate auto-education, he has dipped extensively into the on-the-ground experiences gained at the Scuola Montessori di Bergamo, a school which was founded in 1949. Eleonora Honegger Caprotti (1902-1992) directed this school for the first twenty years of its existence. Together with Mario Montessori she was instrumental in setting up and running the Bergamo Training Centre (Centro Internazionale Studi Montessoriani) from its inception in 1961 until 1972, during which period she was sole director of training.

L'autoeducazione nelle scuole elementari is the only book by Dr. Maria Montessori which deals with the psychology of the children from six to twelve years. Illustrating her first experiences with children of this age and the material she used at the time, the book was originally published in 1916. Several books would be necessary to illustrate her subsequent experience and the material developed since then, but a partial view may be gathered from the following exposition. It has been compounded from parts of a report by Mrs. Eleonora Honegger. Each part is preceded by an explanation that connects it to Dr. Montessori's theories. The great variety of examples and the concrete way in which they are presented make intresting reading.