Did you know this about Maria Montessori?

• Erik Erikson had Montessori training and taught in a small private school in Vienna with Peter Blos in the late l920.s. It was organized for the education of the children of Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham who was in analysis with Sigmund Freud. A student of that school describes his happy memories of it in our ERIKERIKSON: A LIFE.S WORK. The school had strong influences of Dewey as well, using the project method.
• Maria Montessori was a generation older than Piaget and Vygotsky. She was born in l870 and they in l896. Both men knew her work and commented upon it.Piaget was the President of the Swiss Montessori Association for several years.Vygotsky included mention of Montessori in an interesting paper on early literacy written in l930.
• It can be accessed at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/mind/ch08.htm. In it he commends Montessori for having children learn letters kinetically andhaving them write before reading but he criticizes the content of their messages. He felt the children were sending formal declarations of congratulations instead of the more personal messages he felt more vital. It is not clear from the article how much he actually observed of Montessori education but there were schools in Russia during his lifetime. Montessori's role as a constructivist is just now being recognized.