Bringing Montessori to America

S. S. McClure, Maria Montessori, and the Campaign to Publicize Montessori Education

By: Gerald L. Gutek, Patricia A. Gutek

Narrated by: Kevin Murphy

2016 Choice Outstanding Academic Title!

Bringing Montessori to America traces in engrossing detail one of the most fascinating partnerships in the history of American education - that between Maria Montessori and S. S. McClure, from their first meeting in 1910 until their final acrimonious dispute in 1915.

Born on the Adriatic, Montessori first entered the world stage in 1906 as the innovator of a revolutionary teaching method that creates an environment where children learn at their own pace and initiate skills like reading and writing in a spontaneous way.

McClure was an Irish-born media baron of America’s Gilded Age, best known as the founder and publisher of McClure’s Magazine. After meeting in 1910, McClure and Montessori embarked on a five-year collaboration to introduce Montessori’s innovative teaching style in the United States.

The American entrepreneurial spirit, along with a desire to disseminate the Montessori method quickly, led to major conflicts between the Italian educator and American business people, particularly McClure.

Gutek and Gutek describe the fascinating story of this first wave of Montessori education in the United States, which did not sustain itself during Montessori’s lifetime. It would not be until the 1950s that Montessori education was revived with the successful establishment of Montessori academies throughout the United States.

The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

“A fascinating book...reads like a novel.” (Vitae Scholasticae)

“This engaging book will appeal to a wide range of readers.” (Martha May Tevis, University of Texas-Pan American)

“This study should be a staple and case study for communications departments across the United States.” (Karen L. Riley, author of Schools Behind Barbed Wire)

©2016 The University of Alabama Press (P)2018 Redwood Audiobooks

Painful listen, like a too long lecture

This book takes more than 11 hours to listen to. I tried to listen chronologically but as an audiobook, there’s too much unnecessary detail delivered in a wooden manner, I began to get sleepy in chapter 1. So I began to search for when the story explains what happened in the fallout ... it was on chapter 11! It’s horrifying to think how many hours I would have wasted on this book. Having said so, it might be better read rather than listened to. Hats off to the wall-researched detail, but overall it was simply too much detail to tell a story well.