SOURCE: A review of Maria Montessori, in History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 1, Spring, 1979, pp. 143-49.

In the following essay, Burstyn reviews Rita Kramer's biography Maria Montessori, finding that while Kramer provides a thorough account of her life, she fails to fully study or evaluate Montessori's career in its historical context, ultimately failing to address Montessori's revolutionary lifestyle and work in late-nineteenth-century Italy.

The Montessori movement is thriving in the United States today. The local public library has a shelf of books on Montessori education, and within a five mile radius of my house are more than five Montessori schools. What does a Montessori education offer to young children? It offers a prepared environment with child-size furniture (a Montessori innovation now copied by nursery schools the world over), sequenced educational materials designed for children to work on alone once they have been shown how to use them, the...