MONTEREY 



3914 



MONTESSORI 



MONTEREY, BATTLE OF. An important bat- 

 tle was fought September 24, 1846, in Monterey, 

 Northern Mexico's principal stronghold during 

 the Mexican War. General Taylor, with an 

 American force of about 6,000 men, stormed 

 the fortified city, which was defended by a 

 Mexican force of 10,000 under General Am- 

 pudia. After four days of hard fighting the 

 Mexicans surrendered. It was hoped that this 

 battle would end the war, but Mexico con- 

 tinued to fight, though weakened by a long 

 course of revolutions. The Americans, how- 

 ever, captured one after another of the Mexi- 

 can cities until the City of Mexico, the capital, 

 was occupied. Peace was concluded by the 

 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in February, 

 1848. See MEXICAN WAR. 



MONTE ROSA, mohn' tay ro' zah, a snow- 

 clad mountain mass in that portion of the Alps 

 which forms the boundary between Piedmont, 

 Italy, and the Swiss canton of Valais. Mont 

 Blanc alone, among the Alpine mountains, sur- 

 passes Monte Rosa in altitude. The latter has 

 eight main peaks, all more than 13,000 feet in 

 height, and the loftiest .of these, the Dufour 

 Spitze, is 15,217 feet above the sea; its summit 

 is less than 600 feet below that of Mont Blanc 

 (which see). Monte Rosa has deposits of iron, 

 copper, gold, mica, slate and gneiss, and there 

 are several mines on its slopes. The steep, 

 glacier-robed sides of the mountain make it 

 very difficult to ascend, and its lofty passes are 

 full of peril to the traveler. 



MONTESQUIEU, moN t' sky eh, CHARLES DE 

 SECONDAT, BARON* DE LA BREDE ET DE (1689-1775), 

 a French satirist and philosophical writer, whose 

 Persian Letters won him immediate fame on 

 their appearance in 1721. These letters purport 

 to be the correspondence of two distinguished 

 Persians traveling in France, and their criti- 

 cisms of French life in all its phases are no less 

 noteworthy for their humor than for their just- 

 ness. Other important works were a history of 

 Rome and The Spirit of the Laws, a standard 

 work on certain phases of political science. 



Montesquieu was born near Bordeaux, stud- 

 ied law and became eminent in his profession, 

 but cared little or nothing for the routine of 

 ordinary practice. For some years he was 

 president of the parliament of Bordeaux. 

 Though he had satirized the Academy in his 

 Persian Letters, he was elected a member of 

 that body in 1728. 



MONTESSORI, montes so'ree, MARIA (1870- 



), an Italian educator whose theories of 



child training h&ve been widely adopted in 



Europe and have gained entrance into America. 

 Maria Montessori is the only child of middle- 

 class Italian parents. As a beautiful and gifted 

 young woman, 

 she gave evidence 

 of unusual 

 strength of char- 

 acter when she 

 announced her de- 

 termination to 

 prepare herself 

 for the medical 

 profession. Such 

 a procedure at 

 that time was 



revolutionary, for . 



she was opposed \ " 



b ? t n 6 u Str ngeSt MADAME MONTESSORI 

 of all barriers 



social prejudice and tradition. She persisted, 

 however, and in 1894 was awarded the degree of 

 Doctor of Medicine by the University of Rome, 

 being the first Italian woman to receive that 

 honor. How she was led into the work for 

 which she has become so widely known, and the 

 principles and methods for which she stands, 

 are fully treated in the article following, de- 

 scribing the MONTESSORI METHOD. 



Madame Montessori is a woman of vision. 

 In one of her books she says, "Whoso strives 

 for the regeneration of education strives for 

 the regeneration of the human race." This 

 statement represents the scope of her interests. 

 Her devotion to the cause of child training is 

 one expression of her love for humanity and 

 her belief that the human race can develop 

 only when it is given spiritual and intellectual 

 freedom. She has identified herself with the 

 woman's movement, and represented Italy at 

 the International Woman's Congress in Ger- 

 many, in 1898. Her efforts in her own city of 

 Rome have met with opposition from religious 

 and educational sources, but she won the sup- 

 port of the Queen Mother Margherita, through 

 whose influence there was established a Mon- 

 tessori school in the Convent of the Via Giusti. 

 In 1907 a school was opened in a tenement 

 house in one of the poorest districts in Rome. 

 Other schools followed, and thus was begun a 

 movement that has gained world-wide signifi- 

 cance. Montessori schools have been estab- 

 lished in France, England, Smyrna and America. 



Consult: Dorothy F. Fisher's A Montessori 

 Mother; A. T. Smith's The Montessori Method; 

 F. E. Ward's Maria Montessori and the American 

 School; William Boyd's From Locke to Montes- 

 sori. 



