A Montessori Garden in Colombia

Abstract

This article analyzes the creation, in 1934, of the first public kindergarten in Colombia that was modeled on the Montessori Method. This Garden was the place of practice for teachers in training at the Preschool Institute that operated as a section of the National Pedagogical Institute for Young Ladies (NPI) inaugurated in 1927. The appearance of this Montessori Kindergarten will be described in the political context of the first three decades of the 20th century, highlighting what it meant in the framework of the educational and pedagogical debates that were taking place between political and intellectual leaders of the liberal and conservative parties, in dispute for power during those years. A description will be made of the circumstances in which the Kindergarten appeared and the institution that hosted it. The uniqueness of this Garden is precisely that it served as a place of practice for future preschool teachers who were trained in the NPI, and to that extent it was a benchmark to spread the Montessori Method, guiding the creation of similar ones in different parts of the country and from the city of Bogotá.