The Racism of Maria Montessori

• In Event: Race, Religion, and Nationalism: Symbols and Action in Education History

Abstract

In this study, the author explores the racial views of Maria Montessori as expressed in her largely forgotten 1913 book, Pedagogical Anthropology. As a physician and physical anthropologist, Montessori espoused three racial beliefs that were in wide circulation during the late nineteenth century: biological racism, racial determinism, and craniology. The author explores how Montessori expressed these racist beliefs in Pedagogical Anthropology, how she connected them to her famous pedagogy, and how they fit into the racial discourses of contemporaneous educators and anthropologists.

Author

• Thomas Fallace, William Paterson University