Montessori Celebrates 50 Years in Anderson

Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer

The Montessori School of Anderson marked 50 years of service to the community on Friday, in a ceremony that featured one of the school’s founders along with other local representatives and dignitaries.

A group made up mostly of volunteers founded the school in Anderson in the basement of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, starting with 14 preschoolers. Today 130 students are enrolled in preschool through twelfth grade at the campus on Sam McGee Road.

In 1973 the Montessori School of Anderson was founded and taught its first group of fourteen preschoolers in basement rooms rented from a local church. Since then, we have become an incorporated nonprofit school and a leader in the Montessori educational philosophy on the national stage.

Today’s celebration was also held on the birthday of Maria Montessori, the founder of the educational movement which bears her name. Born in 1870 in Chiaravalle, Italy, Maria was a bright student, studying engineering when she was 13, and — against her father's wishes — she entered a technical school, where all her classmates were boys. This led to a decision to pursue medicine, and she became the first woman in Italy to earn a medical degree (she had to get the approval of the pope in order to study medicine).

As a doctor, she worked with children with special needs, and through that work became increasingly interested in education, believing that children were not blank slates, but that they each had inherent, individual gifts. She saw it as a teacher's job to help children find these gifts, rather than dictating what a child should know, emphasizing independence, self-directed learning, and learning from peers. Children were encouraged to make decisions. 

She was also the first educator to use child-sized tables and chairs in the classroom. Her 1912 book,  “The Montessori Method,” led to her position as a major innovator in education theory and practice.