The Montessori educational method was established by a woman called Dr. Maria Montessori. Apart from this accomplishment, she was Italy’s first woman to get a physician’s degree while teaching a class of 50 poor students back in 1907. She had a background in working with special needs students and based her philosophy around the principle that children were not born as “blank slates,” but instead had absorbent minds that could engage in self-directed learning.
Thus she developed a new school framework. Rather than kids just learning from school desks, Montessori developed a revolutionary framework in her time. In her ideal learning environment, newly-empowered children would be able to choose how to spend their time in school, looking for opportunities to learn by themselves. The work she did was what led to the Montessori classroom that exists in both preschool and elementary schools today.