© Alari Raieste

"Adolescents and young people almost right up to maturity are treated like babies in the elementary schools. The adolescent must be never treated as a child, for that is a stage of life that he has surpassed." (Maria Montessori). The Montessori method was never trademarked or patented, so private or public schools will vary from one to another in terms of how much they adhere to Maria Montessori’s original ethos. Today, all Early Childhood programmes also teach Montessori as one of learning of many learning methods. It's a child's personal growth and can also be taught at home by parents. Home schooling is not a new thing; it has existed for more than 4,000 years already. 1/3 of the basic schools in the world have multi-age classrooms, an extreme form is a one-room school with one teacher with all subjects, but pupils are on different levels and grades at the same time. Normally, we can find some Montessori schools in all international cities. But it is the first child-centred education philosophy and practised for more than 100 years now. Cosmic Education starts with the whole (i.e., the universe), and works toward the parts (i.e., individual cultures, history, geography, life forms, etc.). This gives the child a foundational sense of perspective and human life on earth, where everything is mathematical and in order, and nothing on earth is fortuitous. 90% of a child's brain develops by the time they're 5 years old. By eight, your child will be able to have adult-like conversations. Bilingual teaching is often practised because only young children can learn any language quite naturally. The physical body (fine motor, gross motor) and mental processes (perception, memory, attention, thinking) are body-mind-brain units and cannot be viewed separately. Authentic Montessori schools are international and expensive, which means these schools are usually private schools for children from wealthy families. All these people will never do any low-paid jobs, and maybe pupils having already have a family business to run in the future. Chocolate milk does not come from brown cows in the USA; it is made by adding chocolate flavouring to regular cow’s milk, regardless of the cow’s colour. The idea that chocolate milk comes from brown cows is a misconception held by some individuals. A survey conducted by the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy revealed that 7% of American adults mistakenly believe this to be true today. This percentage translates to approximately 17.3 million people who may not fully understand where chocolate flavouring originates. Montessori’s idea for teens was to teach them in a boarding school where they can run a farm as a business, not to train the cow milkers but to give them a deeper understanding of community life, work, and economics before they start their independent adult life in cities. Montessori did not open any upper secondary schools in her lifetime, but today you can see various educational settings with different points of view. In Brussels, for example, they follow the International Baccalaureate (IB), which is one standard of worldwide education, but in Sweden, they have a farm school in Rydet. Montessori schools have standards only for teachers to think in a box. Finally, just good study materials without Montessori's educators are absolutely nothing to recognize. All Montessori schools have the same study materials, and all Montessori qualifications (AMI) are the same in the world. They receive there a global vision about people and other living or non-living things on planet Earth, which Montessori talked about in 1938 in Edinburgh, Scotland, after visiting different spots and places in the world. Originally, the method was practised from birth to 12, and later added additional years up to 24. And years of elderly people with dementia. Dementia is the loss of cognitive functioning — thinking, remembering, and reasoning — to such an extent that it interferes with a person's daily life and activities. Teachers start to teach farm animals and their babies at age 4 in classrooms. Sometimes children get judged for not knowing all of them. And one teacher said once, “I’ve been living in a city flat all my life, my grandparents lived in a city. I saw 'the caw' for the first time in my life when I was about 30 while visiting fields, and I stayed there for about 5 minutes.” Montessori teachers first teach essential skills and knowledge related to places where children will grow up, still, they all follow state core and regulated standards, and children will pass exams. Agricultural work is often cited as one of the most physically demanding and challenging forms of labour. When considering all these factors—physical demands, hazardous working conditions, economic struggles, lack of rights and protections, as well as psychological stress—it becomes evident that farm work is indeed one of the hardest types of work available today. Academic learning and intellectual work may be much easier and more flexible, including free days off and long holidays. Montessori talked about hard manual work, not machines and technology used in modern farms. Estonia, for example, has a long history of teaching agriculture in boarding schools. Studies can vary from agriculture, horticulture, logistics, accounting, secretarial work, forestry, and construction to food production, cooking, bakery or blacksmithing, or handiwork (textile and handicrafts). They can also apply to study at the Estonian University of Life Sciences to study veterinary medicine, economics, or technology. Montessori pointed out that the teenage years are so hard for them because of body changes and physical development, therefore the school is the wrong energy to teach only academic things at that age for children, they are not able to study yet and young people want to spend time together with youth and not with grandparents, or old-fashioned teachers. Correctional farm programs, from prison to farm, such as those implemented by organizations like Growing Change, provide a unique opportunity for youth involved in the juvenile justice system. These programs aim to rehabilitate young individuals through agricultural work, offering them skills and experiences that can lead to personal growth and community reintegration. In addition, horse therapy can be beneficial for a wide range of populations, including children with behavioural issues or autism spectrum disorders, veterans coping with PTSD, individuals recovering from addiction or trauma, and those seeking general emotional support or personal development. Today, mature students in the UK can go to vocational school at age 19 or university at age 21, even if they do not meet formal standards and qualifications. Recognized forms of post-secondary learning activities within the domain include degree credit courses by non-traditional students, non-degree career training, college remediation, workforce training, and formal personal enrichment courses (both on-campus and online). There are several more opportunities now to learn new things. In opposed, the Amish people in the USA are a group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss and Alsatian origins, keeping tradition since 1639, having only babies, doing manual work, and having a little formal school education based on the Bible. You may wonder, but they also work as self-employed and autodidactic architects in the USA, making a lot of money, and building modern structures, but construction workers are the Amish boys. In conclusion, the evolving landscape of employment suggests that many companies are increasingly valuing qualities such as practical skills and relevant experience, and company values or ethics over traditional educational qualifications when making hiring decisions. Learning outcomes are specific statements that articulate what students are expected to know, be able to do, or value upon completion of a course or program. Learning by doing is a theory that places heavy emphasis on student engagement and is a hands-on, task-oriented process to education. Montessori was a physician who worked with mentally disabled children in Rome, she visited hospitals in Paris (1899) and translated sensorial teaching from French into Italian (Traitement moral, hygiène et education des idiotes, 1846, Seguin, Itard), translation was handwritten and the world by the world and never really published as a book while teaching some of them in Rome had the same results on state examinations as the “normal one”. Anyway, every teacher in state-funded schools can use many elements of her philosophy in their classrooms because Montessori herself worked with very poor families in Rome. Montessori herself worked in different countries in Europe such as Italy, Germany, France, Spain, The Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, the UK, and India (was a part of the UK) where she developed her elementary education system as known as the Cosmic Education and took part of developing general state founded education in India (1939-1952) and visited also the USA (1913, 1915) and Argentina (1926) to train teachers. After a short time in Barcelona (1914-1934), among others, London and Amsterdam were the main cities where Montessori trained teachers or books were published, and her method was practiced more than 100 years ago. Still, it is used. Japan is famous for producing Montessori study materials globally, but schools there are rare. The first schools for normal children opened in Rome (1907), Milan (1908), and New York soon after, because children learned to read at age 4. Montessori herself did not teach children. She worked at the University of Rome until 1914 and at its hospitals. She observed children, guided educators, and designed study materials all her life. This method is often criticised by scholars and remains in alternative education. That traditional education should be closed and competitive to serve just the elite. Normally, without education, there is no competition in the workforce. Usually, these educators of elite educators cannot accept the human rights of all. Montessori schools have interest-based lessons about 1-10 humans and gathering activities of up to 20 students from a learning group or social interaction, for everyone, such as 130 pupils may take part in the same activity in a school. Mainstream school is a factory pattern and model where children are often put into the same categories, like producing shoes. Montessori never said it’s a school, but rather the development of human beings based on scientific observations and learning outcomes. Nazi Germany burned all her books and closed schools as well after the spread of fascism in Italy she lived in exile for the rest of her life, she made a state visit in 1947 and stayed in Italy for about two months to reopen schools and her last work was to found the Institute of Education in UNESCO (1951) in Paris (nowadays the Institute for Lifelong Learning in Hamburg). There was a Montessori classroom even in the basement of the White House during Wilson's presidency. Her son, Mario studied in a countryside "boarding school" in Italy and was the principal of a school in Hollywood for some years in his twenties, he had no formal education and was married to an American girl and Mario worked most of his adult life with mother, he attended teacher training courses in London and later founded Maria Montessori Institute in London (1961) with schools for children and teacher training staff. Mario was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in 1970 by Edgecliffe College (Ohio), a remarkable accomplishment for a man with little formal education. An honorary degree is often conferred as a way of honouring a distinguished visitor's contributions to a specific field or to society in general in English-speaking countries for people who have not enrolled in academic studies. Usually, it's given as an addition to C.V. for people who do not need formal qualifications. Sometimes, academic learning can be impractical. In ancient Athens, for example, only adult male citizens who owned land were allowed to vote; ancient Greek philosophy is still studied in universities. New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world to grant all women the right to vote in parliamentary elections in 1893. Finland followed suit by granting equal suffrage rights to both men and women in 1906, making it the first place in continental Europe to do so. Finland stands out as a model for gender equality, showcasing substantial progress over more than a century while continuing to strive towards eliminating remaining inequalities in the 21st century. In addition to academic studies, today, all AMI Montessori teacher training staff work as Montessori leads with children or youth, and they have also passed examinations about teaching adults to become Montessori educators. Maria grew up in a rich family in Rome, and Rome itself has had a rich spiritual, intellectual, and artistic background already a thousand years. She had the luck to study and travel around the world. Maria Montessori, who transitioned from this world on May 6, 1952, in Noordwijk, the popular seaside resort town in the Netherlands, left behind incredible accomplishments in the fields of teaching and learning. Mario continued Maria’s work for the next 30 years. It has become more popular now, but never meant to be suitable for every child or every teacher. Ancient Rome was a civilization that began as a small settlement on the banks of the Tiber River in central Italy around 753 BC. Ancient Rome made significant contributions across various fields, including law, politics, engineering, architecture, literature, art, and language. Often, Montessori schools have been unofficially called the schools of secrets from Rome. Original writings of philosophy or didactics (Il Metodo della Pedagogia Scientifica applicato all’educazione infantile nelle Case dei Bambini, 1909) were written only in Italian and translated into old-fashioned English; therefore, old English is not used anymore, but these books are still printed out, and they have changed the facts if a scientist discovers something new, or theories are banned or wrong. Her early writings and activities were supported by Margherita of Savoy (Queen of Italy). By the way, in English, all information is more than 10 years old, except history is too old to make reference during master's and doctoral level students are using only information from the present time and not writings published more than 3 or 4 years ago. These books are study materials for teachers to work with children, and some elements of teaching are more than a hundred years old and are still used (music, mathematics, poetry, etc.)

Not all of her teaching materials are made by her alone. For example, music education is written by her lifelong friend, Anna Maria Maccheroni, who was a well-known music teacher in Milan and later lived in Barcelona. Often is used title Dr Maria Montessori and it means she was a Doctor of Medicine (MD), and not to be confused but the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) is usually written also as the Dr. As an educator of teachers, Montessori herself had a degree in medicine, and studied psychology under the part of philosophy because the science of education or psychology did not exist at that time, but she knew Sigmund Freud very well as well Mahatma Gandhi or Queen Victoria, for example. Montessori, Gandhi, and Freud also stayed in London for many years. At age 29, Montessori attended the International Women's Congress in London (1899). In her eighties, in 1951, she gave the last training in London, and the ninth international Montessori congress was held there. London provided access to higher education to students from less affluent backgrounds. The External Program was chartered by Queen Victoria in 1858, making the University of London the first university in the world to offer distance learning degrees to students. Among others, Queen College in London is one of the first secondary-level schools in the world to give university-level liberal arts training to girls (anno 1848), and in the 19th century, London was one of the richest and most innovative cities in the world. You really cannot buy knowledge and skills, but Queen College was the highest, and they still have guest educators from the University of London. There were many more boarding schools for girls, especially in Switzerland and France. The Smolny Institute (1764-1917) in Saint Petersburg, for example, was where Russian girls aged 6 to 18 lived and studied. They were separated from their families for about 12 years. By the way, around 500 CE, Christian women's monastics were established across various regions of Europe. Female monasteries contributed significantly to the cultural fabric of mediaeval Europe, such activities as preserving knowledge through manuscript copying and providing education for women at a time when formal schooling was largely unavailable. In 1774, Maria Theresa introduced a general school ordinance (Allgemeine Schulordnung) in Austria. Napoleon Bonaparte’s reforms in education were pivotal in shaping the modern educational landscape of France. In 1903, Polish Marie Curie shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel for their work on radioactivity. This made her the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. In 1911, she won a second Nobel Prize—this time in Chemistry—for her isolation of radium and polonium. She was educated at the Sorbonne, Paris. At the beginning of the 20th century, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and T.S. Eliot made the London of the period the centre of the literary world. Montessori was involved in the feminist movement, and a lot of women did not have any political power, but a lot of money. Deafblind writer and political activist Helen Keller was also surrounded by millionaires and sponsors before becoming famous in the USA. After an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, Keller attended Radcliffe College (women's education) of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person in the United States to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1904. Montessori was one of the first women in Europe to graduate from university as a physician in 1896 (University of Rome) because married women did not work at the beginning of the 20th century in Europe, and at the beginning she did a lot of voluntary work, or paid less than men in her profession. During her studies in medicine, her father did not talk with her all these years, and as an unmarried mother, she could not have a child; her son was raised in a foster family, and Maria's parents even "did not know" that Maria had a child. Her son, Mario Montessori, went to live with her after the death of Maria's mother. They started to travel together. Publicly, he was represented as a relative, much later, when society changed, as her real biological son. Maria Montessori studied in a mathematical-technical school with boys (the only girl in Rome), and graduated in natural sciences before being accepted to study medicine. She started to work with mentally disabled children because they just stayed in hospitals with adults in Rome, and no one was teaching them. She later studied philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and pedagogy and lectured at the University of Rome (a few paying jobs) and founded her one method of education, and started to train teachers worldwide. Multimillionaire Alexander Bell, the inventor of the telephone, sponsored both Keller and Montessori. Maria Montessori sailed to America, lived there briefly during WWI, and took her first plane journey to India during WWII. Many of her books were written down from lectures or speeches without any pictures, but in a style of everlasting information. In her last year, Maria received the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Amsterdam (1952), where she lectured time by time for many decades. In Amsterdam, there is also the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI) to continue scientific research and pedagogy. Life has to move on, so its pedagogy is changing also because time is changing, and also skills and knowledge. I had seen the film La Nouvelle Femme (2024), which tries to idealise French intellectual and cultural backgrounds, before a group of rich feminists established the first Montessori schools in Italy. Real life may be different from screens because your screen is flat, but the world is not. She lived in a world where television or the internet was unknown, and women were mainly domestic. I've been lying; there were well-paid women also in the workforce, for example, Hollywood actress Miliza Korjus, who studied in Kyiv and Moscow, and later studied singing privately in Tallinn, Paris, and Magdeburg before starting her short career at Berlin State Opera. Her first teacher was a French opera singer Barbara Malama, who worked in Russia and later had a private singing studio in Tallinn. Russia remained illiterate until the mid-20th century, but in Moscow, they had a few outstanding schools for girls, and Miliza knew many of them. Miliza had a 20-room villa in Hollywood, and she made only one film, The Great Waltz (1938), and she was independent financially and intellectually from any men in the USA. The film also starred Luise Rainer, who lived in London, and Fernand Gravet (Gravey), who lived in Paris. Miliza signed a singing contract with Victor Recordings while she was a student in Paris. She recorded many songs with the Victor Concert Orchestra but rarely appeared on stage. Her first husband did a PhD in Magdeburg, and she sang at the local opera there, but was discovered soon after and then moved to Berlin. She recorded the best songs in Berlin, and the radio played them all around Europe. She was also a guest singer in Munich, Paris, Brussels, and Stockholm. But you know, it was Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and awful things happened in Europe, and she could go away. She sailed to the USA in March 1936 with her husband, daughter, and maid. She studied two years of English in Hollywood, ate mostly apples and cabbage, became a blonde, and made body transformations before people got to know her in the USA. The Great Waltz was played in cinemas for about 4 years everywhere in the world. But nobody knew that she was an Estonian girl, even though she spoke that language among other languages. Still, people don't know where is Estonia. When the USA joined WWII, she went to live in Mexico, recorded songs with the Mexico City Radio Orchestra, after the war, fully booked concerts at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, she toured in the USA and Canada, and gave her last solo concert in Hollywood Bowl in 1946. It's an open-air area where the world's best musicians perform, and it's the home arena of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1946, she still had a villa in Hollywood. She had 3 kids. She was invited to sing Der Rosenkavalier with the Metropolitan Opera in 1952, but she no longer went on stage. She was remembered as a very big star and was afraid of failure. She manufactured the beauty cream in Hollywood. She loved to travel, and she gave concerts in Eastern and Central Europe when she was not famous. After her singing career, she visited Hawaii, New Zealand, and especially Australia, where The Great Waltz had been the most popular film for several years. She also sang in Argentina. She was just mysterious, a myth, having different biographical information. As Miliza expresses it: “I nevaire got seriously eento eet. To be a success you haf to fought for eet, and I didn’t fought.” She took citizenship in the USA, and her Estonian-born daughter became a diplomat in that country. Today, in Germany or France, all students graduating from academic schools can go to university and study what they want (medicine, the arts, and some specific technical or physical jobs are still based on merits and entrance exams). After WWII, many fluent speakers of German or French who did not graduate from schools left Europe to start a new life in America or Australia. It's normal to have the upper secondary diploma in the USA Since 1942, the GED (General Educational Development) exam has been equivalent to a high school diploma by law. Everyone in Australia can enrol in the TAFE courses before attending academic institutions. A-levels (3 elective exams to go to university) were introduced in England and Wales in 1951 to replace the Higher School Certificate. After WWII, many universities in the UK, USA, or Australia accepted students without formal qualifications because immigrants and women often did not have any papers with them, but they also graduated from universities. It does not matter if you can pass the tests or interviews with better results. The USA was built by hands and brains, and often without any money. You will see homeless people on the streets in America. You may imagine that people arrived there having absolutely nothing material or social, already some hundred years ago, its culture, you have to read the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969, but he returned. People a thousand years ago dreamed about the moon, and fantasy beings somewhere where life seemed to be much better. In fact, during the 1970s, people started to act and talk more about the fact that people should be equal and have the same rights. Women in the USA and Japan went to work because a lot of domestic duties were done by computers, machines, and technology. In the late 1990s, men started to take part in raising children, and so on. Nurses can be male-identifying healthcare professionals who provide care for patients who are sick, injured, or infirm. All men may also need doctors. Anglosphere countries are future-oriented, and a lot of high-technology companies are located there. But in many places, there is a time capsule of traditions and beliefs in something that made humans still live as Europeans lived about 300 years ago. Some nations are still taught in believing to believe they are superior to others, but schools will not teach these nations how they destroyed others' infrastructures, stealed or stole natural resources, and made a system of slavery and hierarchy to believe them to be cultural beings, or rich in mind. The great difference is making just comments from others rather than doing something by yourself. Metis Montessori Lyceum in Amsterdam is a good example of scientific learning. They accept the needs of youth, adolescents receiving global education, and educators cooperating with UNESCO, Vrije Universiteit, and the University of Amsterdam. Montessori was famous for introducing the scientific pedagogy based on scientific medicine because teaching and feedback must be correct and many important things like aesthetics, emotions, imagination, thought, study marks or grades, family and relatives, colour, religion, gender, location, work, and progress are relative and do not carry the real meaning of learning outcomes and teachers may have just the fantasy illusions and nothing about the scientific reality. "The instruction given must be scientifically correct and must be related to simple everyday facts so that it can always be tested and confirmed by observation or experiment." (Maria Montessori)

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Contact: alari.raieste@yahoo.co.uk (C.V. )