The Promise of Montessori for Special Education
Montessori Society of Greater Washington, D.C. Maria Montessori, born in 1870, began her career as the first woman in Italy to receive a medical degree. One of her early assignments after beginning her practice was the inspection of asylums for the insane. There she met groups of mentally retarded children, who at that time were institutionalized without efforts to train them, recognize their needs, or humanize them through any educational process. Montessori noted that after their