Alexander & Mabel Bell - Montessori Comes to Canada
Beinn Bhreagh : The Nova Scotia Home of Alexander Graham Bell
Photo credit : Bell Collection/National Geographic stock
Beinn Bhreagh (gaelic: beautiful mountain) in Baddeck was
a collection of buildings dominated by an elegant mansion
that was a family home and nerve centre for all of Bell’s
experiments. It was managed by Mabel Bell and frequently
accommodated world famous people and the collaborators
for many of Bell’s experiments.
Photo credit : Bell Collection/National Geographic stock
Quoting from "Reluctant Genius - The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell" by Charlotte Gray, Phyllis Bruce Books, 2006
"A new
educational philosophy was taking root in North America in the early
twentienth century. In retrospect, it is not surprising that, in a
world where scientific inquiry was proving as valuable as classical
studies, rote learning and strict discipline were losing ground.
Reformers who took a more child-centered approach to education
challenged the traditional view of a child's mind as an empty vessel to
be filled with knowledge by an authoritarian teacher. Among the most
impassioned critics of old-fashioned pedagogy were the followers of the
Italian physician Dr. Maria Montessori. "Children teach themsevles" was
the Montessori slogan. Montessori teachers would place carefully
prepared materials in front of their young sutdents, then let them
explore and discusss those materials at their own pace. A young Chicago
teacher called Anne George studied with Dr. Montessori in Rome and then
returned to America to establish a primary school. In Tarrytown, New
York, George and her friend Roberta Fletcher pioneered Montessori
methods. In 1911, McClure's Magazine carred an article about their
Tarrytown school."
"Alexander Graham Bell
never had any patience with traditional teaching methods. He had given
his opinion of them to a Chicago newspaper reporter in the 1890’s. ‘The
system of giving out a certain amount of work which must be carried
through in a given space of time, and putting the children into orderly
rows of desks and compelling them to absorb just as much intellectual
nourishment, whether they are ready for it or not, reminds me of the way
they prepare pate de foie gras in the living geese.’ ...."
"Alec (Alexander Graham
Bell) probably heard about the Montessori Method in 1912 at one of
Wednesday evenings, at which S. S. McClure, founder of the McClure
Magazine, was a regular guest. The new educational philosophy had
instant appeal for him. Within weeks, his wife (Mabel) and his daughter
Daisy had visited the Tarrytown school. They persuaded Roberta
Fletcher to open a Montessori school in Washington. That summer, Miss
Fletcher joined the Bells in Baddeck (Nova Scotia) to establish the
first Montessori school in Canada."
"The Montessori school in
Baddeck had a serious educational purpose, but for the Bell
grandchildren it was just another wonderful activity sponsored by
`Gammie and Grampie`. The loft of a Beinn Bhreagh warehouse was given a
new coat of whitewash and decorated with potted trees and prints of
Norway and Egypt acquired by Mabel on her travels. When the school
opened on July 18, 1912, there were twelve pupils: five Grosvenors, two
Fairchilds, and five small Nova Scotians. 'Little ones from threeyears
of age upwards,' Mabel noted with delight, 'can experiment with all
sorts of things to their hearts' content, and at their own sweet will.'
Alec (Alexander Graham Bell) was fascinated by the school and had
regular afternoon conferences with Miss Fletcher to review progress."
Montessori Comes to North America 1911 - 1913
The story behind the first Montessori schools in both Canada and the USA as well as the first public awareness of Montessori education is inextricably tied to four individuals who played pivotal roles in raising public awareness both of Maria Montessori herself and of the Montessori Method of Education. They were Alexander Graham Bell and his wife Mabel, S. S. McClure, owner and editor of McClures's magazine and a close colleague of the Bells, and Anne George, the first American directress, who had trained with Maria Montessori in Rome in 1910-1911 and who first translated into English Montessori's book "The Montessori Method".
McClure's Magazine and the Montessori Articles
Although
Montessori was widely known abroad in educational circles through
journal articles about her pedagogy, Montessori and the Montessori
Method were essentially unknown to the public in North America. All that
changed dramatically with the publication in May, 1911, of an article by Josephine Tozier in the widely read McClure's magazine written at the behest of S. S. McClure.
McClure had
first heard of Montessori's work while in England in 1910 and
immediately commissioned the writer Josephine Tozier to write a series
of articles about Montessori and her educational methodology. Tozier
had spent several months in Rome interviewing Maria Montessori and
visiting her schools in that city.
The article in
McClure's magazine proved to be enormously popular and generated
widespread interest in the "Montessori Method". In the words of
McClure:
"Miss
Tozier's article appeared in the May, 1911, number of McClure's, and
immediately letters of inquiry began to come into the office in such
numbers that it was impossible to answer them all. Mme. Montessori, in
Rome, found herself, engulfed in such a correspondence as threatened to
take all her time. It seemed as if people everywhere had been waiting
for her message."
taken from "My Autobiography" by S. S. McClure, McClure's Magazine, Vol. 43, May 1914.
Samples of these letters received by McClure's magazine were published in the Oct. 1911 magazine as the article "Information about the Montessori Method" which contained the following testament of McClure's admiration and support of Montessori:
"Maria
Montessori is an example of genius in education - a field where genius
is not often found. Her work is creative and can not be defined in any
number of formulae. She is always experimenting, revising, modifying.
She has stepped out of the shadow of all the traditions about children.
This magazine believes that her experiments are of the highest
importance, and that her system of teaching is based upon observations
and experiments that have never been made before, or, having been made,
were never so correlated."
Josephine Tozier would
write two more articles for the McClure's magazine, one appearing in
Dec. 1911 describing in great detail the schools in Rome which Maria Montessori had established and a second article, in Jan. 1912, which described much of the primary Montessori materials in use in the Rome schools. Both articles were richly illustrated with many photographs taken in the schools in Rome.
In this
pre-television, pre-radio, pre-cinema era, the descriptions used in
magazines and newspapers were often written with very strong, graphic
language and imagery. Witness the description of that part of Rome in
which the St. Angelo Montessori School was located:
"This school is situated in the picturesque and foul quarter of the mediaeval Ghetto. The dark, reeking streets and lanes, which wind about and lose themselves near the Ara Coeli, skirting the Old Palace of the turbulent Orsini, swarm with a population diseased, filthy, and degenerate. In this appalling setting, the Signora Galli-Saccenti, principal of girls' public school, actually persuaded the Roman board of education to organize a Casa dei Bambini. Her first endeavours met everywhere with stolid indifference and intense opposition. The poor parents of that squalid region have no political influence; nor, indeed, have they vigor enough in their miserable frames to do anything more that turn the children they bear (their "creatures", to use the pathetic Italian term) into the narrow, noisy, dirty streets."
McClure's magazine began a regular 'department' about Montessori education and schools which began with the 1912 Vol. 40 issue and which continued for a few years. They contained a great deal of information about new schools which were opening both in the US and abroad, new training courses, the availability of Montessori materials, and so on. Several other articles appeared in the magazine during these years which dealt with the the pedagogy of the Montessori Method and with the growth of Montessori in America, including one article written by Maria Montessori herself. They can be found here:
Vol. 40 - 1912 - The Montessori Department
Vol. 41 - 1913 - The Montessori Department
Vol. 39 - 1912 - The Montessori American Committee
Vol. 39 - 1912 - The First Montessori School in America - Anne George
Vol. 39 - 1912 - Disciplining Children - Maria Montessori
Vol. 40 - 1912 - The Montessori Method and the American Kindergarten
Vol. 42 - 1913 - Ad in McClure's Magazine for the 1913 Teacher Training Course in Rome with Maria Montessori
Beinn Bhreagh - The First Montessori School in Canada
Alexander Graham Bell
1847 - 1922
Alexander
Graham Bell and his wife Mabel(born Mabel Gardiner Hubbard) resided
most of the year in Washington D.C. but spent their summers at their
'summer home' in Baddeck, on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.
Typically, the "summer" for the Bells ran from approximately May to
early November. The Bell estate was a sprawling collection of out
buildings and homes with the crown piece being the large and elegant
mansion known as Beinn Bhreagh (beautiful mountain). Many of the Bell's
grandchildren also spent the summer months at Beinn Bhreagh with
'Gammie and Grampie'.
Dr. Bell conducted an amazingly varied array of experiments on the
property and held regular meetings at the home to discuss his work and
many other ideas which were brought to the meetings by his guests.
Fortunately, Dr. Bell was positively fastidious about keeping detailed
written records of his work, the experiments undertaken, and minutes of
these frequent meetings at Beinn Bhreagh. The most detailed of these
are contained in the "Beinn Bhreagh Recorder" which consists of
carefully prepared, typed accounts of experiment reports and even
verbatim records of the many meetings held at the home. Several
photographs are also found in this collection.
Mabel Gardiner Bell (Hubbard)
1857 - 1923
The description of the
Beinn Bhreagh Montessori
classroom by Mabel Bell
"Thursday, July 18, saw the opening of the first children's laboratory conducted after Dr. Maria Montessori's method, in Canada.
Baddeck - and more particularly Beinn Bhreagh - had the honor of seeing the first starting of new forms of human effort."
One of
the regular guests at the Wednesday night meetings at Beinn Bhreagh was
S. S. McClure and it is most likely that it was he who first introduced
Montessori's work to the Bells. Both Alexander and Mabel were keenly
interested in her methods and, at the suggestion of McClure, Mabel and
her daughter Daisy travelled to Tarrytown, N.Y. in Feb. of 1912 to visit
the Montessori school there, the first Montessori school in the U.S.
The Tarrytown school was under the direction of Anne George, the first
American to take the training under Maria Montessori in 1910 - 1911.
Mabel was so impressed with what she observed at this school that she
immediately set about to establish a very basic classroom at her
Washington D.C. home at 1331 Connecticut Ave. She also managed to bring
Roberta Fletcher, who had trained in Rome in 1911, to Beinn Bhreagh in
the summer of 1912 to direct a new classroom created in the loft of an
unused warehouse close to the Beinn Bhreagh home. The classroom
officially opened on Thursday, July 18, 1912, as recorded in vol. 10 of the Beinn Bhreagh Recorder.
There was a total of 12 students consisting of 7 of the Bell
grandchildren and 5 local children. Interestingly, the "school" was
referred to as "The Children's Laboratory" by the Bells.
The Tarrytown School 1911
Anne George (rightmost)
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Margaret Potts and the Calgary Montessori School - 1919
Margaret Potts
Circa 1920
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Margaret
Potts opened the second Montessori school in Canada in 1919. This
school, however, unlike the Beinn Bhreagh classroom, proved to be a
permanent presence and is, in fact, the longest continuously operating
Montessori School in North America.
In 1911, Margaret Potts was attending Durham University in Durham,
England in the Education faculty. One of her professors returned to
class after a trip to a symposium in Rome to tell the class about a
remarkable new method of education for children and the founder of this
method, Maria Montessori. Margaret Potts was so incredibly moved that
she knew this was to become her passion. While she was completing her
education in England, Alexander Graham Bell was returning to North
America after the same symposium to introduce the Montessori Method to
his family and neighbours.
Margaret Potts did her initial Montessori training in England under a Durham university professor who had gone to Rome in 1911.
In 1914 Margaret and her husband William also an educator,
immigrated to Stettler, Alberta where they both taught at a normal
school. In 1919, they moved to Calgary and founded The Montessori School
in their three story home. The classes operated on the main floor, many
of the students boarded on the second floor and the Potts family lived
on the third floor.
Margaret Potts had the opportunity to attend the San Francisco
Worlds Fair in 1915, where she met Alexander Graham Bell and Maria
Montessori. Maria gave Margaret her formal permission to operate a
Montessori school. She returned to Calgary even more devoted.
Margaret had the opportunity to return to England and attend
the trainer's course offered by Maria Montessori in London (circa 1921).
She returned to Canada with Maria Montessori's blessing to continue her
work and a certificate recognizing her as a Pioneer of the Montessori
Method in Canada. Margaret established the Canadian Montessori
Association and began to train teachers.
During her lifetime, Margaret Potts continued to teach at the
school, train Montessori teachers and travel throughout North America
helping many to establish Montessori schools in places as far reaching
as Minneapolis and California.
The Potts' had five children, four of whom became Montessori
teachers; one established a Montessori school in Menlo Park, California
that operated from 1964 to 2001. The youngest child Vivienne Douglas
took over the operation of the school in Calgary and was the
administrator until her retirement in 1994. Her daughter Alison O'Dwyer
continues to operate the Calgary Montessori School at three campuses in
the city.
Adapted from the Calgary Montessori School Ltd. website with additional material.
Montessori Dancing ClassCalgary Montessori School
Circa 1929
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Montessori Class OutdoorsCalgary Montessori School
1923
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Two Children in theCalgary Montessori School
1922
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Montessori Ballet ClassCalgary Montessori School
1943
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