Similarly, Maria Montessori's life provides key lessons for educators and for other individuals confronted with large systems that they can see to be clearly broken. Montessori managed to overcome the general gender discrimination typical of her time, and more than that she managed to challenge and the preconceived and largely entrenched patriarchal notions of education as an exercise in control, replacing them with her own theories based solely on the fact that they worked so indisputably well (a fact that has failed to bring many theories and projects to light). In this manner, she is a direct inspiration to educators and others working to fix a flawed system, or at least to mitigate its damage.

It is difficult to determine the extent of Montessori's impact on the overall practice of education, as she was not the only force working towards the liberalization of educational practices in the first half of...
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