The U.S. has all but forgotten Maria Montessori, the practical Italian idealist who founded her own brand of progressive education in 1907. Though once Americans acclaimed her, John Dewey's permissive disciples pooh-poohed her as too rigid, and only in Europe have Montessori schools made real headway. But last week, in a handsome new building in Greenwich, Conn., the nation's only "pure" Montessori school was dedicated. Whitby School is startling on at least two counts: it was founded by firmly anti-permissive Roman Catholics, and its old Montessori methods turn out to be a showcase of nearly every "new" idea that U.S. education has lately discovered.
Whitby is proudly "a work school, not a play school," and in their uniform grey skirts and shorts the children at first seem unduly solemn. Silence fills the classrooms; tears and giggles are rare; even teachers speak in near whispers. The visitor is sure that something is drastically wrong. Actually, the children are absorbed in a series of graded "jobs" that each feels compelled to complete—on his own. With almost no visible goading, Whitby's kids learn numbers at three, write at four, read at five, parse sentences at seven. Whitby is at least two years ahead of other private schools and three years ahead of public schools.
Come to the Stable. Whitby is the creation of intense, redheaded Nancy McCormick Rambusch, 34, the Milwaukee-born wife of a church designer, and mother of two, who picked up her passion for Montessori methods while studying languages at the University of Paris. Trained as a Montessori teacher, she began with a small nursery group in her Manhattan apartment. Moving to Connecticut a few years later, she found fellow Catholic neighbors eager to try Montessori teaching, and in 1958 opened Whitby School in a renovated stable, naming it after the ancient Yorkshire abbey where Caedmon, the poet-stableboy, sang his verses.
Headmistress Rambusch was so successful that last fall her neighbors began raising $260,000 to build a full-scale school on 37 acres. Opened in January, it now has 150 children aged three to twelve (many of them non-Catholic) and 13 teachers, including recruits from Montessori schools in France, England and Ireland. Whitby is headquarters of the newly formed American Montessori Association, and as such is training a dozen Americans to launch new Montessori schools across the U.S.
Order & Self-Discipline. Whitby's inspiration, Maria Montessori, who died in 1952 at 81, was a mathematical prodigy and the first woman to get an M.D. at the University of Rome. Physician Montessori became an educator by salvaging feeble-minded children. By giving them things to touch and twist with their hands, she got their brains to function responsively. Soon the Dottoressa had supposedly moronic pupils outstripping normal children on public school examinations.