Maria Montessori: The 'Method' That Creates Internalized Authoritarians
Note: This article has been translated from Italian into English. The original article, posted on Scuola Libertaria, can be viewed here. Should there be better or inaccurate translations, please feel free to let us know.
"Our children have reached such a level of development that they immediately obey whatever the teacher commands."
(Montessori, The Method, Garzanti, 2023, p. 242).
In our opinion, it would be enough to summarize Maria Montessori's entire work and reveal the true ultimate goal of her intentions, without even having to reference her many other even more disturbing statements. And if you only knew... how we'd love to list all her twisted and dangerous ideas! But that would be too long a list for a blog post. Instead, we choose to take a critical approach, starting precisely from what Montessori said and wrote. We will cite just a few of those ideas, one after the other, to support our critique, which, mind you, is not an isolated one: many intellectuals and educators have distanced themselves from a highly insidious and authoritarian educational method. And we are being generous.
Anyone who has read The Montessori Method from cover to cover (not the summaries, not the slogans, not the Instagram posts, not the claims of private schools, not the self-serving declarations...) will have noticed a disconnect between what is written and what is commonly said about that method. Unfortunately, these days, The Montessori Method is believed in like an idol. It is not discussed, it is not verified, it is not subjected to any scrutiny: you adore it and that's it, regardless. And this doesn't happen by choice, but because the institutional, media, and academic has built a discursive monopoly around that name, a propaganda castle functions as a barrier: those who dare to say that the method contains unscientific, archaic, or spiritualistic elements are treated, at the very least, as an enemy of childhood. The same institutional consensus that is far from confessing to the crowd that The Montessori Method was—as we mentioned at the beginning—heavily criticized by various intellectuals and educators, such as John Dewey, Sergej Osipovič Hessen, Ernesto Codignola, Aldo Agazzi, Gino Corallo, Sabine Seichter, etc. (Agazzi and Corallo are Catholic-oriented educational theorists.)
It is not censorship in the sense of a legal term that the system does not confront the real goals of Montessori (but were they really hers?). It's something more subtle and more effective: the conventional silence about what that method really wants to achieve. Pedagogy manuals treat the method as a 'classic' to be cited, not as a hypothesis to be demonstrated; the media propose it as an extraordinary alternative to traditional schooling; private schools use it as a mark of quality. The result is that a method born in 1907, with its epistemological limitations and its positivist and spiritualist approach, is taught and practiced as if it were a revealed truth and indisputable objective science.
The method that Montessori describes is not scientific in the sense that science is understood to be nowadays: there is no falsifiable hypothesis, there is no control group, there is no replicability. There is selective observation, a spiritualistic interpretation of the development in childhood, and a claim to certainty that Gino Corallo (a Salesian educator) defined precisely:
“Montessori starts from scientism and not from science. The first is a degeneration from the second, because it claims to already know everything immediately while the second is always open-ended and has conclusions that can be revised; it is based precisely on the possibility of the error.”
The most serious issue, which is most overlooked, is this one: as the Montessori philosophy progresses, it slips into a mystical realm. The 'absorbent mind', the 'spiritual embryo', 'cosmic education', the 'meeting of souls' between adult and child are all concepts that do not have any empirical foundation and which belong to the pedagogical romanticism of the late nineteenth century, to that secular spirituality that permeated a certain reprehensible Italian intellectualism of the time. It is what critical historiography has called 'spiritualist involution': the transition from a claim of scientific rigor to a mystical and even esoteric dimension.
Why doesn't anyone highlight this? Because to admit it would mean dismantling an entire economic and institutional ecosystem: private schools with fees that are paid monthly or yearly, paid training for 'guides', certified teaching materials, the 'Montessori' brand which is still very profitable today. The public consensus is maintained by an industry that has a vested interest in ensuring that the method is untouchable. And in this economy of the indisputable, criticism is not prohibited: it is simply not published, not cited, not taken into consideration. As long as The Montessori Method is treated like an idol, Italian pedagogy will remain prisoner to an archaic relic disguised as innovation, even if children actually need pedagogies (we say no, with good reason, as always). Today, Montessori children pay the price for an education that is based on beliefs from 1907, not on evidence from 2026. The same can be said of all those schools that are made pass for 'alternative' and even 'libertarian', but which have remained stuck in outdated notion of school being “in need of reform” and which—ignoring all the subsequent pedagogical developments that led to the awareness of the need of total deschooling—always play into the hands of the system.
A few passages taken directly from The Montessori Method, without any interpretation, would be enough to show that we are dealing with a pseudoscientific and eugenic project, that is based on the myth of race, which is useful only to the military-industrial system, and which shows how—and above all for what purpose—Montessori thought of the child thought by Montessori, and how, according to her, it was necessary to intervene in their development to magnificently manipulate and mold them, making them ready to become a selected producer subject who is perfectly constructed and obedient, at the service of political and economic power.
In 1951 Montessori proposed the creation of a Ministry for the Improvement of the Human Race, a political body that controlled and planned reproduction—that is, the lineage of a nation. Professor and educator Sabine Seichter translates it as the 'Ministry of the Race' (see L'ombra lunga di Maria Montessori: Il sogno del bambino perfetto [The Long Shadow of Maria Montessori: The Child’s Perfect Dream], Beltz, Weinheim /Basel 2024). This is the point where the eugenic framework becomes explicit: the method is an instrument of biopolitics, a way for the state to intervene on reproduction and population selection through education.
In 'Antropologia pedagogica' (1910; English translation Pedagogical Anthropology, 1913)—her true masterpiece, the one that historiography has long ignored—Maria Montessori does not speak of the child in the pedagogical sense. She speaks specifically about race. The child is a developing organism that must be guided towards a form: a form that is, in the words of Montessori, racial, a form aimed at an Aryan idea of beauty physics. We quote:
“Popular education means the improvement of the race.”
“The teacher must assume the new task of correcting what is wrong with the child, with the help of the doctor, to protect the normal child from the dangers of weakening and deformation that constantly threaten them, thus laying the foundation for a magnificent human race, free to achieve the development which it is predestined.”
The ‘magnificent human race', which Montessori identified in that white, Western race, would also be destined to rule the world, according to her. The much-praised educator isn't talking about pedagogy. She's talking about selection. Once more:
"As the child grows, they must acquire not only the dimensions of the adult, but also the harmony of their form; that is, they must reach not only certain fixed limits of size, but also a certain type of beauty."
Beauty. Not cognitive development. Not autonomy. Not creativity. Beauty, understood as conformity to an aesthetic-racial canon. And that standard is explicit:
“Undoubtedly, the most civilized peoples are more beautiful than the barbarians.”
“All errors and paracentral malformations are a physical burden that hinders the perfection of man.”
The logical structure is that of the eugenicist: standard → measurement → classification → correction. The child is not a subject, but a product to be developed. And the teacher does not support and protect, nor do they liberate in any way, but rather they manipulate, train, repair, and correct. There’s nothing revolutionary, then; if anything, everything is traditional and very dangerous. All schools, Montessori and otherwise, covertly pursue the same goal, and unfortunately succeed, as we can see. And let's be clear: if school really changed things, it would be illegal.
But then, you may be wondering, what are all those flattering educational aspects, all the nice words that are spent when talking about The Montessori Method, all the celebrations and praises that this woman receives from the capitalist system that even dedicated a portrait to her on the 1000 Lire banknote as a seal of her strong allegiance to the system, to the bourgeois national state... what sense do they have? They have the sense of cliché, which unfortunately, also in this case, wins against reality. It's called structural dissonance—the disconnect between brand and the product.
Exhilarating clichés are the result of a narrative simplification: the paradox of the method is flattened to the most attractive aspect (the myth of the freedom). In other words, these clichés are not usually born because people 'don't understand' The Montessori Method but because the method that, from the beginning, has been sold as an idea more beautiful than it really is. And the first to point out its critical issues and inconsistencies are the educators who have experienced it firsthand. Montessori had created her own brand, a real commercial project that was founded on the myth of the ‘FREE CHILD’—a brand that has been marketed to the whole world, with the support of a genuine patent, while making a lot of money. Montessori strategically oriented the method towards wealthy financiers in order to ensure her own economical survival. She was looking for chickens to pluck (suckers to fleece). And she found them. Forget about pedagogy, she was a brilliant manager of her own affairs!
Parents were more dazzled by the brand rather than the actual results of the method, and they did everything they could to enroll their children in those overly controlled, overly organized classrooms, where the walls had to be light-colored—as Montessori said—so that children would learn not to stain them. All this so that their children would be an object of pride for their parents: in high society, they were displayed like puppies in a shop window, obedient and wagging their tails. In short, wealthy families paid dearly to say "my child goes to Montessori," and the idea of a "free child" was precisely the message that justified that price and prestige. But it was just marketing. Even today what is being sold is just a brand.
And you might correctly still ask: “Is the concept of freedom, with the Montessori Method, just a mirage?” How is it possible to consider a child to be free while knowing that they are the subject of someone else's eugenic educational project which seeks to mold them in a predetermined way? But let's explain it clearly, because this is a crucial point where it’s very easy to go astray. If we consider freedom as the ability to apply critical thinking that is capable of questioning the status quo, then The Montessori Method deliberately represses it. And that's exactly how it is. The Montessori Method, in fact, wants a child who knows how to act freely within a given structure, with established elements, but it absolutely doesn't want a child who is capable of questioning that same structure and those elements. The Montessori Method never asks the child why the school environment is like this and not another. It does not ask who decided what is—or what is not—on the shelf. It doesn't ask why the cycle lasts three hours and not four. The method only asks: choose, concentrate, self-regulate. It is relative freedom within a given structure, not opposition to it. And this is not freedom, much less critical thinking; it is a happy adaptation to an enclosure!
This limitation—this ability to act freely and autonomously within a given boundary, imposed from above, and to be even be proud of it—is the fufilled dream of the industry captain and the slave master. And let's not forget that The Montessori Method was developed precisely at the historical moment in which industrialization and capitalism had the need for an obedient and docile workforce, even one that was happy and proud to be exploited in the factory. All the world of capital—governments, banks, finance, industry, and various privileged classes—rejoiced: finally producer subjects were able to perceive their slavery as freedom and who, therefore, would not rebel and would be grateful!
It is also worth mentioning this:
The discipline that is not seen is the most perfect.
In 1907, in San Lorenzo, Rome, the Franchetti Counts observed children working silently, in an orderly fashion with concentration, in a Montessori school. The Roman bourgeoisie—to which Montessori had always looked at as a target audience—was shocked. Not for the freedom of those children, but for the result: children who self-regulated, who respected their surroundings, who didn’t disturb others, who were independent... it truly seemed like freedom, but it wasn’t, and the bourgeoisie knew this all too well. In fact, as we were saying, those children, who were so autonomous in doing what had been prepared for them, represented a true asset for the entire social order founded on the exploitation of man by man. Why?
We repeat: those children, trained that way, are the perfect workers! Perfectly suited to the assembly line! Docile, obedient, and autonomous in carrying out assigned duties, according to set schedules, they don't question the structure and the tools, they have no intention of challenging that given reality—they live it serenely. This system requires masses who discipline themselves in their work and respect schedules, the surroundings, and the sequence of tasks. No one should question the factory, the government, the state, or the school. The state system needs ‘free’ workers in the sense that they don't need a foreman: they've already internalized it! It's no coincidence that the method has been adopted by the elites, private schools, and the most industrialized countries.
Perhaps now it's clearer why the method received Nobel nominations, banknotes, films, and celebratory narratives for Maria Montessori, while the man who recognized children as individuals capable of critical thinking, to the point of questioning the social order—Francisco Ferrer y Guàrdia—was executed by firing squad and, following the international outcry sparked by his death, the closure of his schools and a cruel damnation of memory. The tragic story of Francisco Ferrer y Guàrdia also disproves another cliché: the notion that democracy, presented by the state as the best possible system in the world, is necessarily the best system. It’s all nonsense!
Ferrer’s child wonders why things are the way they are: they are truly free, and therefore dangerous. The Montessori child, on the other hand, happily obeys as part of the herd and responds to the demands of the system. The difference is stark.
Now you know.
Notes:
- Montessori joined the National Fascist Party in 1924. Mussolini was honorary president of the Opera Nazionale Montessori, and in her official texts (1924-1931) she used a biological and racial lexicon: 'the good Italian race,' 'psychological hygiene,' 'great spiritual energies'... The break came in 1934, when the fascist regime wanted to control the schools and she refused, not because of fascist ideology, but because she did not want to lose control—she wanted the control to be exclusively hers. Furio Pesci (Rivista di Storia dell'Educazione, 2021) and Rita Kramer (Maria Montessori, 1988) document the entire phase.
- The most serious critics—Dmitrij Hessen (1934), Codignola, Heinz-Elmar Tenorth (Humboldt of Berlin, 2024)—agree on one point: the method is structurally authoritarian. The child is free in an environment that they have not chosen, with materials that have only one correct use, in predetermined sequences, for cycles of fixed duration. They can't ask why things are this way.
- Montessori explicitly prohibited symbolic/imaginative play as an appropriate activity for young children, replacing it with 'work' on prepared materials (she defined children’s imagination as an aberration, a flaw to be corrected). The American Academy of Pediatrics (2012) and several industry specialists have reported that this underestimation of unstructured play can negatively affect cognitive development and empathy. We can easily believe it.
- Despite the definition of ‘scientific method’, Montessori never used experimental methodology (statistics, control groups, replicability). Her ‘science’ was anecdotal observation and deduction. Critics such as Giovanni Desio and the Moscow Academy of Sciences (in a textbook for Soviet schools from the 1960s) emphasized this: the results were treated as absolute and were without verification.
- There is no universal Montessori curriculum. In theory, any school can call itself 'Montessori' without accreditation. This makes the method impossible to apply in a uniform way and reveals it for what it really is: a brand, rather than a method.