Content area
Full Text
Editors' Note: Throughout this piece, we've posed questions for you to reflect on as you encounter the ideas the author brings up.
When we trace the roots of the Montessori approach and locate it within its historical context, contradictory stories begin to emerge. On one hand, we can see how Montessori was primarily formed as a response to various social injustices and thus emerged as a justice-oriented project. On the other hand, the marks and traces of colonialism are clearly visible throughout Montessori's work. Addressing the latter is where the challenge lies for the Montessori community-and will be the primary focus of this article. A critical engagement with Montessori entails that we find ways to hold these contradictory narratives together and consider how we can make Montessori work for contemporary childhoods.
Montessori's Feminist Activism and Child Advocacy
As I have argued elsewhere, unearthing and identifying Montessori's feminist histories as a justice-driven project can act as a springboard for ongoing practices of justice and care in contemporary times (Mohandas, 2023). Montessori was actively involved in various women's congresses and spoke vehemently about matters related to women's emancipation. Besides addressing the dominant themes of the suffrage movement, such as women's right to vote and own property, she also addressed the issue of female teachers' low status and pay and their adverse working conditions-problems that persist today. Moreover, prompted by protests from working-class women, Montessori took on the challenges poor working-class women were experiencing and insisted that their cause, while an "entirely different women's question," was united with the plight of property-owning women (Montessori, 1896). We see traces of intersectional thinking quite evidently in these early speeches. Further, Montessori considered the lives of women and children to be intertwined in their interdependence as well as in their marginalization. In fact, like many of her forerunners and contemporaries, she believed that early childhood education was a key arena for feminist activism. Disrupting the division between public and private spaces was core to this. Women found ways into the public space (as early childhood educators, for example) through what is often referred to as civic motherhood. The teacher training for women that Montessori put in place was instituted, in her words, to bring "the critical gaze of women" into the...