Maslow And Montessori's Theory Of Education

In school we often hear about Maslow and his hierarchy of needs but do we ever hear about Montessori? Do you know who Montessori is? Without knowing it, you do understand some of Montessri’s theories because Montessori and Maslow are very similar in their thinking strategies. For example, Maslow and Montessori both defined education, Maslow said this “More positively oriented education concerns itself more with the growth and future self-actualization of the child”(1954, Maslow pg.365) while this definition may seem a bit unorganized he is trying to say that children in school should be taught through positive education so that the child can have self-actualization in the future. Montessori also defined education and said “ Education must not …show more content…
Montessori has very strong beliefs about what a child needs to succeed. She started her own school based on the idea that children learn from indirect teaching. She confronts every aspect of the child instead of just the basic skills like math and science. Everything she teaches is not only based on academic learning but on the physical health of the student as well. The term that is commonly used to describe Montessori’s method of teaching is to teach the “whole child” so that they can become successful adults. Although Montessori became well known for her new and different ways of thinking, another psychologist was thinking along the same lines as her and that was Abraham …show more content…
Freud was a very well know psychologist by the time Maslow had brought about the idea of “The Self-Actualized Individual.” Although Freud was very popular, Maslow brought out points from Freud’s theory that Maslow thought was wrong. Maslow once said this about Freud “ Freud supplied to us the sick half of psychology and we must now fill it out with healthy half”(1999 Maslow, pg.7). As you can see Maslow was not a fan of Freud because he used people who already had psychological problems to do his tests on while Maslow decided it would be more beneficial to look at the healthier people to see where they need help to succeed in the future. This new theory made all of the psychologist of the day switch their beliefs and became, what they call the “third force psychology.” Both Maslow and Montessori wanted to see this new way of thinking become more popular in schools. They both talked about how they wanted to start a “new society” or “Eupsychia”, where everything would