Maria Montessori, Paolo Freire and adult education

There are two people who are very inspirational to me: Maria Montessori and Paolo Freire.

My daughter attended a Montessori pre-school and at the age of four started to read. So I went to visit the school and saw a lot of kids playing with lots of different kinds of. …objects. The director explained to me that one aspect of the Montessori method was providing a variety of learning materials, which led to accelerated learning.

So, I read about the Montessori method, and was impressed by the fact that Montessori started her schools in Italy after the war in impoverished neighborhoods.

My own program follows Montessori in that it is for the most part student centered and student directed in a setting that provides lots of educational material, such as a website, textbooks, audio cds, dvds, flashcards, graded readers, rhymes, poems, essays and workbooks.

PUMAROSA especially is a good example: students become quite absorbed in the lessons while they skip around. It is not uncommon for someone who knows little or no English to start studying the past tense after a few sessions.

As for Paolo Freire, I have a picture of him on a burro climbing the mountains of Brazil to teach people how to read and write. On the burro, of course, are saddlebags filled with books.

Nowadays I include classes with students in their homes. And I bring my materials in a backpack on wheels. And sometimes getting to a student’s house is a bit of a hike, but I am undaunted – because I think of Paolo Freire!

The world has changed a lot since Montessori and Freire’s day. It is very possible now– through technology – to teach literacy to everyone in the world! Well, at least in the United States we can approach this as a goal, one way or the other.