Montessori began with children nobody expected anything from, in a tenement in San Lorenzo, and found that given the right materials and left alone they taught themselves. Here is the whole system: the prepared environment, the didactic apparatus, the training of the senses, discipline arrived at rather than imposed, and reading and writing appearing almost by accident.
The founding text of the Montessori schools, in Anne George’s 1912 translation. Download the free EPUB.