Dziecko i dzieciństwo w myśli pedagogicznej Marii Montessori
The Child and Childhood in the Pedagogical Thought of Maria Montessori

Summary/Abstract: Maria Montessori, an Italian physician and educator active at theturn of the 19th and 20th centuries, developed a pedagogical con-cept centered on a subjective understanding of the child. She pointedout that childhood is a crucial stage of human development, whichdeserves dedicated research to uncover its intrinsic value. Drawingfrom experiments conducted initially with children with developmen-tal barriers, and later with preschool children in the so-called “Casadei Bambini,” she devised an innovative method to support child de-velopment. Her views on the child and childhood are in line with theprinciples of the New Education movement that emerged in the early20th century.The purpose of this article is to reinterpret the significance of thecategories “child” and “childhood” in the anthropological and philo-sophical discourse of Montessori’s pedagogical thought. The researchquestions are posed as follows: Who is the child, and what signifi-cance does Montessori attribute to childhood? The chosen researchmethod involved a narrative review of the literature, specifically theworks of Montessori. The findings reveal that, in Montessori’s view,the child is the “constructor” of their own existence, not merely the product of parental reproduction. Moreover, the child is not an emptyvessel to be passively filled with knowledge. The Montessori methodplaces the child at its core, and recognizes the unique ways in whichchildren engage with and learn from their environments.

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