Do you know the story of Maria Montessori? Who is that person behind the legacy provided to humanity? How was your life? Your childhood? Your birthplace? What were the challenges you had to overcome to get to this point? Was it happy? Was it easy?
We generally believe that “successful” people have been touched by a kind of magic wand and have had a life in which everything has been given to them: fame, success, the possibility of writing books or having their names resonate everywhere. However, on many occasions people who have provided a legacy to humanity do not get to see everything they have built because recognition comes after they have left this world.
We invite you to read the story of Maria Montessori so that you can feel what provokes you internally, so that you can register the sensations that it inspires in you and so that you can see the woman behind the method. We propose that you get to know the person beyond the theory and the discovery he made in relation to education, so you can humanize it and feel it.
We suggest you get to know her so that you realize that she was a person, like many other successful people, who came into the world with the same tools and characteristics as all of us and with the same development possibilities. It is true that the environment modifies us and conditions us in different ways, yes. It is also true that the times are different, yes. But It is good to remember that Maria Montessori and other people who have left a legacy on humanity were human beings like all of us – with desires and dreams – who have chosen to put their gift and talent at the service of humanity to build, to do good, to add in their time and in the following.
The responsibility of taking our gift and developing it with perseverance, will and work is a decision we make day by day. Know each other, choose to live differently, choose to change, accept, trust, love each other, value each other. Precisely these qualities that many of us have needed and we need to train day by day with support They are the same ones that we want children to take from an early age, so that they can take charge of themselves, know themselves, take their power, recognize what they are good for and walk towards what they want.
We suggest you discover the story of Maria Montessori marked by strength, adversity, passion, determination and a clear mission.
Maria Montessori: who is the woman behind the method?
Maria Montessori was born on August 31, 1870 in a town called Chiaravalle, in Ancona, Italy. She was the only daughter of a middle class family. Her father, Alessandro, worked as an accountant and moved to Rome when she was twelve years old. The goal was for Maria to receive a good education that prepared her for a teaching career, the only profession truly open to educated women in those times.
As her studies developed, Maria Montessori, who was very fond of mathematics, showed interest in science and She chose to attend a technical school to become an engineer. This school was for men and only Maria and another young woman attended it, although during recess they had to stay in a separate classroom because of the teasing.
Maria Montessori became very interested in biological sciences and decided to study medicine, something that a woman had never done in Italy. She applied for a place at the university of Rome and, after battling late 19th century prejudices towards women and her father’s opposition, He gained admission to medical school in 1890.
His beginnings in medicine
When Montessori got the title She became Italy’s first female medical doctor. The last few years he studied pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital and attended the psychiatric clinic to study the material on which he would write his thesis.
Her first job was as an assistant at the San Giovanni Hospital, working with women and children. She then continued as a volunteer assistant at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Rome. It was during this time that he encountered children with different abilities who were called “idiots” at that time. These children, who were unable to function in school and with their families, They were left in asylums and remained locked up doing nothing, without any type of sensory stimulation.
Montessori, who had a passionate interest in social reform in times when there was much talk of socialism, he was especially sensitive to the needs of children and the conditions of those children.
Maria Montessori noticed that, when they ate, these children would lie on the floor looking for breadcrumbs. It occurred to her that this behavior was a clear effort on their part to try to learn about the world around them, through their hands.
This idea that The path to intellectual development occurs through the hands and movement It is, precisely, a fundamental theme in his method. Montessori became convinced that these children were not useless, but simply their minds had never been stimulated. She began working with them at the clinic and, little by little, she discovered glimpses of hope, as the children responded to her encouragement.
While researching and practicing her profession, Maria Montessori also participated in different activities of interest to her. For example, she was a member of an Italian delegation to the International Congress on Women’s Rights, held in Berlin.
The birthplace of the Montessori method
Investigating and seeking information, Maria Montessori discovered the work of Jean-Marc-Gasard Itard and his disciple Edouard Seguinwho had followed Pereira, who worked with deaf-mute people and taught them to communicate.
Itard is probably best known for his attempts, over several years, to educate and socialize a boy he found abandoned in the forests of Avaeyron, France, an experience that led him to write a book entitled “Averyron’s Wild ChildHe concluded that sensory experience was the basis of all knowledge, that the learning process was more important than what was learned.
Edouard Seguin was a student of Itard and later founded his own school for differently-abled children in Paris. His specific method was to work on muscular exercises to provoke a concrete change in behavior and thus educate the child through a method that he described as psychological.
The study of the work of these two French doctors gave Maria Montessori a new direction in her life.. He adopted the main ideas of “sense education” and “movement education” and adapted and developed them into a system that he made his own.
The next step was to direct his interests towards the study of education. He methodically read all the works he could find on the theory of education written in the previous two hundred years. Little by little, some of the ideas and intuitions of educational thinkers and reformers – such as Rousseau, Pestalozzi and Froebel – were synthesized in his mind with the ideas he had obtained from Itard and Seguin. From there the so-called “Montessori method” began to take shape. What she actually achieved was to combine the knowledge and methods of the disciplines of education and medicine.
From doctor to educator
Maria Montessori fully entered the field of education. He attended courses and conferences on education and even participated in a conference in Turin for primary school teachers. In his speech he declared that the problem of “feeble-minded” children was an educational problem and not so much a medical one. These words spoken by M. Montessori impressed the authorities. So much so that The government created the Orthophrenic Institute with the objective of training and training special teachers, under the direction of Montessori.
On March 31, 1898, Maria Montessori’s only son, Mario, was born. She was a single mother, which was not well regarded in the time she lived in. In this very unfriendly context, he made the decision to keep it a secret and leave it in the care of other people. Despite this, she never lost contact with him and, after a while, they joined forces on the path of growing his legacy and worked together.
In 1899 she was dedicated, together with Dr. Montessano, to the creation of the Orthophrenic School of Rome. He spent two years there with his colleagues training teachers in the special method of observation and education of children with different abilities.
During this time he worked with the children observing and experimenting, using different materials and methods and using all the ideas that he had collected in his studies. Some of the children he taught, who had been labeled “inadequate,” learned to read and write. Some even took the official primary school exams and passed with higher grades than what they then called “normal children.” Their conclusion was that schools were not developing human potential.
These events, together with the many public lectures she gave in Italy and other European countries, made her known. And what’s more: she was now famous as an “educator” as well as a “doctor.”
In 1901, he left his job at the Orthophrenic School to expand his studies in anthropology, psychology and philosophy of education at the University of Rome.
Towards a progressive education movement
Montessori took an active part in the social reforms of the time. She decided to study more about the development of children who were then called “normal” and at a conference in London she spoke about women’s rights and her position against child labor.
While studying and preparing for his educational career, he visited many schools, observing both the methods used and the reactions of the children. He did not feel satisfied with what he saw and this helped her crystallize her belief in the ideas of the educational thinkers who were the precursors of the “progressive movement” in education, probably influenced by Froebel and also by the anthropologist Guiseppe Sergi, who had paid attention to the importance of the school environment and the role it could play in changing the child’s behavior.
The birth of Montessori schools
In 1904 Maria Montessori was appointed professor of pedagogical anthropology at the university and, at the same time, continued her many other activities. In 1906 he was offered the opportunity to work with children at the Quartiere di San Lorenzo, in Rome, called by the press “the shame of Italy.” What happened is that in an abandoned structure, beggars and criminals found refuge and a place to hide and a group of rich bankers – with the intention of renovating some buildings – asked Maria Montessori if she would take care of the children under six years old who were on the streets with the intention of protecting the buildings against vandalism.
The first school was located…