Determined in the face of opposition, but gently patient in character, Margaret Homfray was the woman responsible for re-establishing Montessori education in Britain after its dispersal during the Second World War. There are now about 2,000 Montessori schools in Europe alone, and their students have in turn started up thousands more all over the world.
The aim of Montessori education is to promote world peace by teaching children how to live in amicable co-operation from the age of two or three. A carefully structured environment is created wherein freedom of choice is possible because all the activities provided are designed to match developmental demands.
Margaret Homfray was born in the wild northern wastes of Canada. She used to describe how when she was born her father, a surveyor, had to canoe home, camping and shooting his dinner each day, as he travelled to see his newest child. In 1914 her mother, with six children and expecting her seventh, returned to England. But while she was on the ship home, the First World War was declared, and Margaret was never to see her father again. He died of pneumonia shortly afterwards.
Margaret Homfray was educated at Basingstoke High School. It was there that she first heard of Maria Montessori – presented to her then as a dreadful woman who did not believe in punishing children. Later, as a teenager, Homfray visited a cousin in London who invited her to hear Dr Montessori speak. She was captivated and in 1930, at the age of 22, went to Rome to attend one of Montessori’s training courses. Mussolini was for a short time in favour of the educator who was making Italy famous throughout the world, and Montessori students were invited to meet him. Margaret Homfray was later reprimanded by relatives for shaking his hand.
Later in the 1930s Homfray was sent by the Foreign Office to Berlin to help to establish a less rigid system of education. The children there, she said were punished so severely for disobedience they learnt to obey any orders rather than think for themselves. Their spirits were broken, and that, she surmised, was one of the reasons Hitler had his way in Germany. He commanded a whole country of obedient people.
The Second Word War saw the dispersal of several hundred British Montessori schools as buildings were put to new uses. But in 1946, Homfray invited Maria Montessori, recently returned to Europe from India where she had spent the war years, to give a teacher training course in London. Shortly afterwards, Homfray teamed up with Phoebe Child, a friend with whom she had studied, and together they decided to find permanent premises for Montessori training. Pooling their scant resources, they raised enough for a deposit and, though at that time single women were not allowed mortgages unless they had a male guarantor, Homfray managed to win round the loan officer and get what she wanted.
In 1946 a combined Montessori school and teacher training college, later to become St Nicholas Montessori (at one time the world’s largest Montessori training college) was opened. She and Phoebe Child acted as joint principals.
One of her most important contributions to Montessori education was the correspondence course. This was begun when a Canadian mother with a Down’s syndrome child wrote to Homfray for help. For four years they kept up the correspondence, Homfray always ready with new ideas, instruction and advice. Despite the disapproval of the more conventional colleagues, the correspondence course flourished, although it was not until the Open University made distance learning respectable that opposition subsided.
Margaret Homfray retired in 1978. Within the year Phoebe Child had a stroke and for the rest of her life required constant care. Homfray saw this new responsibility as a privilege and cared for her until her death ten years later.
Margaret Homfray never married.