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LEARNING HOW TO LEARN by Nancy McCormick Rambusch

LEARNING HOW TO LEARN

By

Pub Date: April 16th, 1962
Publisher: Helicon

In Learning How To Learn Nancy McCormick Rambusch re-evaluates the ideas of Maria Montessori, the respected Italian doctor, who pioneered in the fields of psychiatry, child development and educational theories over sixty years ago. Mrs. Rambusch is presently conducting a school in Connecticut based on the Montessori theory. She is, therefore, eminently qualified to write this disquieting book -- disquieting at least to the many parents who are not completely satisfied with the education their children are getting in today's conventional schools. The author stresses that Dr. Montessori supplies an approach -- not a method -- to learning consisting of the application of a certain set of principles regarding the child, his will and his need to learn. It is important, she feels, that more be done for children today than is being done to help them meet the challenges of the world into which they will be going. Children must learn how to learn, and this is an acquired -- not a natural -- skill and must be acquired before the age of six. The Montessori approach reflects the child's immediate need to know from the age of three on and the development of dispositions in him which make learning possible and pleasurable. In a Montessori school children read and write by the age of six, and have a wide interest in mathematics, science, geography and history. Discipline and quiet come in a Montessori classroom because the children are so completely absorbed in their work, and not because they are regimented by adult coercion. In this time of wide discussion of methods in teaching, Mrs. Rambusch's call for a learning approach which emphasizes the cogency of learning how to learn and the attitude necessary for making this possible will prove to be most provocative.