I just gave the children a chance to live, declared the woman who changed the children’s world

Her parents wanted her to become a teacher, but Maria Mmontessori had a mind of her own. She was determined to become a doctor, despite the fact that this was the world at the time dedicated to men only. Despite the mistrust of society, despite the opposition of her own father, but with the support of her mother, she was an exceptional student who achieved her goals. The first Italian female doctor and three-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize eventually found her own way to study teaching. The established Montessori method is gaining more and more interest in modern society. What is the story behind its creation? Let’s take a look at the extraordinary story of an extraordinary woman who surpassed herself.

As a doctor, in 1897 Maria volunteered to join a research program at the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Rome, where she worked alongside Giussepp Montesano. A purely work relationship developed into a love relationship, and a year later their son Mario was born. But even the famous Marie Montessori, who entrusted her son to the care of a family living in the countryside near Rome, was unable to combine motherhood and the desire for science. She visited her son regularly, but Mario only learned much later that the nice lady who visits the boy is also his mother. Even so, a strong bond was formed between mother and son. As an adult, Mario worked alongside his mother, and after her death he also cared for her legacy. But we’ll get to that later.

The name Montessori is still used today in connection with an innovative and free approach to education. Perhaps it will surprise someone how it is possible that the famous Maria Montessori gave up motherly love and care for her own son so easily. Was there such a strong desire for knowledge behind it? Or was it just a young, ambitious doctor who didn’t want to give up her professional dream and prove to society that even a woman can break through in a field that was reserved only for men? Such a decision was certainly not easy, because Maria was already very close to the children’s world and education.

While working at a psychiatric clinic, she visited a Roman institution for the mentally ill, where she looked for patients for subsequent treatment. At the time, the nurse in the children’s institution told her with disgust how children pick up crumbs from the floor after they finish their food. The nurse saw this as a sign of their mental weakness. However, Montessori realized that this was not caused by their psychological state, but by the environment in which the children were. It was empty and unfurnished. Just bare walls and simple furniture. No sharp objects with which children could hurt themselves, or even toys or other aids with which they could develop their creativity. Montessori realized that children were desperate for activities for their hands. After all, Montessori herself later became famous for her statement “The hand is the instrument of our spirit.That’s when she understood that children just wanted to naturally develop their creativity and an inappropriate environment only contributed to the deterioration of their psychological state.

The experience at the institution did not leave Maria alone. She began looking for books on the subject of mentally retarded children. She studied the seminal works of two Frenchmen of the early 19th century, Jean-Marc Itard, whose name came to be known mainly in connection with the “wild boy of Aveyron”, and Edourd Séguin, his student. Séguin was very critical of the education system at the time. He emphasized respect and understanding of each individual child. He created practical devices and equipment to help develop children’s sensory perception and motor skills, which Maria Montessori began to develop further in other new ways. In the end, her experience at the children’s institution led her to study pedagogy, for which her parents tried to convince her even before studying medicine. In the end, Maria found her way to pedagogy after all.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Rome experienced a construction fever. However, as a result of speculative development, some construction companies eventually went bankrupt, leaving many buildings under construction in the city, which quickly attracted squatters. And so the question arose, what to do with the under-construction and magnificent buildings? One of the projects under construction was taken over by a group of wealthy bankers who converted the luxurious apartments into smaller housing units for workers. But another unexpected problem appeared. Workers spent days at work and their unsupervised naughty children did considerable damage in the new buildings. This fact added wrinkles to the foreheads of the developers, who finally asked for help from Maria Montessori, for whom it was a great opportunity to put their knowledge from the study of pedagogy into practice. Who would have thought that the developers would in a similar way help popularize approaches to the education and development of children that were unusual at the time.

Until then, Maria Montessori came into contact mainly with children from diagnostic institutes. But now she had the opportunity to test her techniques on healthy children. She took full advantage of the opportunity. She founded her first kindergarten, Casa dei Bambini, which opened on January 6, 1907. People did not have high expectations for this project, but Maria felt differently. During the small ceremonial opening of her first kindergarten, she declared:

I had this peculiar feeling which made me announce with determination today that I see here the opening of an institution which will one day be the talk of the whole world.

Just a year after this declaration, four more kindergartens were already in operation in Rome and one more in Milan. Children in Montessori kindergartens made unusual progress. They could already read, write and count at the age of five. News about the new approach to child development began to spread quickly, and people began to perceive Maria Montessori as an expert in raising and educating young children. Visitors came to see for themselves how the new approach to child development works, and Case Dei Bambini type nurseries began to spread beyond the borders of Italy. And what was the unusual and unique approach of Marie Montessori?

She put various activities and tools into the children’s environment, but always left only those that aroused interest in the children. It was then that Maria realized that children who are placed in an environment adapted to support their natural development have the ability to educate themselves. She later called this self-education. She also published her findings about the non-traditional approach in book form. The book reached the United States in 1912, where it became the second best-selling title in development literature. Soon the book was translated into 20 different languages ​​and Maria Montessori became a recognized expert on child development around the world and a sought-after speaker not only at student conferences. In 1914 she wrote:

I didn’t invent a way of education, I just gave a few little kids a chance to live.

There has come a period of great development of the Montessori approach all over the world. Training programs and schools were created. Maria traveled all over the world, gave lectures at universities, opened new projects and took her teenage son with her on her travels. Mario Ronaldo finally made his mother a grandmother of four. The grandchildren, together with their father, continued their grandmother’s work. Not long ago, the youngest granddaughter still held the position of president of the Association Montessori Internationale.

After several years of traveling with her son, Maria Montessori settled in Spain, where it was founded in her honor Seminari-Laboratori de Pedagogiá. After the end of the First World War, Maria believed that she would be able to build a center for further research and development of her method of education in the early years of the child. But her plans were thwarted by the rise of fascism and the outbreak of another war. After Maria Montessori refused to cooperate with the fascist leader Mussolini and did not incorporate her teaching approaches into fascist schools, Montessori institutions began to be closed. In Berlin, a border from Maria Montessori’s books was even set on fire, on top of which Maria’s effigy was placed. After the outbreak of the civil war in Spain, Maria and her son and family left their home in Barcelona, ​​sailed to England and subsequently settled in Holland, where they found support with the daughter of a Dutch banker, who later became son Maria’s second wife.

In 1939, Maria Montessori and her son set off on a trip to India, where they were to conduct a three-month training course. Their stay eventually stretched to seven long years. As a citizen of Italian origin residing in British territory, the son Mario was taken to an internment camp and his mother was kept under house arrest. During her stay in India, Maria Montessori met important personalities, including the supreme spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi. During her stay in India, she worked on her theory of the relationships between all living things, which she further developed into a systematic approach to children between the ages of 6 and 12, known as Cosmic Education. When she celebrated her 70th birthday, the Indian government granted her request and released her son Mario from captivity, with whom they subsequently trained more than a thousand Indian teachers.

Maria Montessori returned to Europe only after the end of the war at the age of 76, and again worked tirelessly to restore the Nazi-closed Montessori education institutes throughout Europe. In the last five years of her life, between 1947 and 1952, she participated in several important congresses, traveled throughout Europe, but also visited, for example, Pakistan and other countries. She was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize, opened several important educational institutes and also directly participated in the founding of the UNESCO Institute for Education. In 1951, at the first preliminary meeting of the Governing Council of UNESCO in Wiesbaden, Germany, she gave a speech to promote her advocacy of the rights of the child, whom she often referred to as the “forgotten citizen” or the “neglected citizen”. In her statement she said:

Remember that people do not begin their education at twenty, ten or six years of age, but at the moment of birth. In your efforts to solve the problems, do not forget that children and young people are a huge population, a disenfranchised population that is crucified on school desks everywhere, that – despite everything we say about democracy, freedom and human rights – is enslaved by school rules and intellectual by the rules. We define what should be taught, how it should be taught, and at what age the child should learn it. The child population is the only population without rights. A child is a neglected citizen. Think of it and fear the vengeance of this populace. For it is his soul that we suffocate. They are living forces of the mind that we suppress, forces that cannot be destroyed without killing the individual.

Maria Montessori died at the age of 81 in May 1952 from a stroke. Until the last days, she actively worked to support a natural approach to children’s development. Montessori schools as well as effigies of Maria Montessori were featured on coins and banknotes of Italy, but also on stamps of the Netherlands, India, Italy, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Therefore, if there is a woman in modern history who has surpassed herself with her lifelong work and legacy, then it is certainly Maria Montessori. Her method of raising young children emphasizes the natural development of the child’s own initiative and natural abilities, especially through practical play. This method allowed children to develop at their own pace and provided educators with a new understanding of child development.

https://www.montessori.org/