BOOK REVIEW The Montessori Movement in Interwar Europe: New Perspectives

Abstract

In recent years, biographical studies of Maria Montessori have increasingly moved away presenting Montessori as a singular pedagogical genius, to considering Montessori as a movement builder immersed in a complicated, dense and changing international network of theorists, practitioners and policymakers. Scholars have highlighted the wide-ranging intellectual networks of feminists, doctors, anthropologists, philosophers, theosophists, Catholics, fascists and pacifists whose work Montessori was reading and actively engaging with, even after leaving academic research. In addition, new research presents how all of these thinkers were actively debating Montessori education, grappling with a wide range of pedagogical, theological and philosophical issues, and defying the representation of Montessori education as a single ideological monolith. Christine Quarfood, a professor of the History of Ideas at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, makes a vital contribution to this conversation. Thanks to a translation from Swedish into English, Christine Quarfood’s 2017 study Montessoris pedagogiska imperium: kulturkritik och politik i mellankrigstidens Montessorirörelse (Dansk Band: 2017) is now available to English-speaking readers as The Montessori Movement in Interwar Europe: New Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan: 2022).