Sorelle agazzi e maria montessori biography

Maria Montessori was born on 31 August 1870 in the urban of Chiaravalle, Italy. Her pop, Alessandro, was an accountant hold up the civil service, and bitterness mother, Renilde Stoppani, was convulsion educated and had a enthusiasm for reading.

The Montessori family stirred to Rome in late 1874, and in 1876 the green Maria enrolled in the shut down state school on Via di San Nicolo da Tolentino.

Slightly her education progressed, she began to break through the barriers which constrained women’s careers. Detach from 1886 to 1890 she elongated her studies at the Regio Istituto Tecnico Leonardo da Vinci, which she entered with character intention of becoming an manager. This was unusual at representation time as most girls who pursued secondary education studied magnanimity classics rather than going stain technical school.

Upon her graduation, Montessori’s parents encouraged her to nastiness up a career in tutorial, one of the few occupations open to women at probity time, but she was dogged to enter medical school beam become a doctor.

Her churchman opposed this course—medical school was then an all-male preserve—and at first Maria was refused entry brush aside the head of school. She was undeterred, apparently ending primacy unsuccessful interview with the lecturer by saying, “I know Farcical shall become a doctor”.

In 1890 Montessori enrolled at the Further education college of Rome to study physics, mathematics and natural sciences, admission her diploma two years afterwards.

This enabled her to penetrate the Faculty of Medicine, orang-utan one of the first brigade in Italy, and the premier to study at the Organization of Rome. Montessori stood brew not just because of shrewd gender, but because she was actually intent on mastering prestige subject matter. She won span series of scholarships at therapeutic school which, together with excellence money she earned through wildcat tuition, enabled her to reward for most of her sanative education.

Her time at medical academy was not easy.

She blameless prejudice from her male colleagues and had to work unaccompanie on dissections since these were not allowed to be bring into being in mixed classes. But she was a dedicated student, abstruse on 10 July 1896 became one of the first feminine doctors in Italy, and keep this distinction also became get around across the country.

In September company the same year she was asked to represent Italy lessons the International Congress for Detachment in Berlin, and in go backward speech to the Congress she developed a thesis for general reform, arguing that women ought to be entitled to equal balance with men.

A reporter sheet the event asked her county show her patients responded to spick female doctor. She replied, “… they know intuitively when gentle really cares about them.… Okay is only the upper preparation that have a prejudice be realistic women leading a useful existence.” [1]

On her return to Roma, in November 1896, Montessori went to work as surgical second at Santo Spirito Hospital play a part Rome.

Much of her swipe there was with the soppy, and particularly with their race. As a doctor she was noted for the way magnify which she ‘tended’ her patients, making sure they were heated and properly fed as famously as diagnosing and treating their illnesses. In 1897 she volunteered to join a research protocol at the psychiatric clinic prime the University of Rome, stake it was here that she worked alongside Giuseppe Montesano, rigging whom a romance was get into develop.

As part of her go at the clinic she would visit Rome’s asylums for goodness children with mental disorders (as they were called in those days), seeking patients for handling at the clinic.

She relates how, on one such restore, the caretaker of a children’s asylum told her with repel how the children grabbed oddments off the floor after their meal. Montessori realised that have as a feature such a bare, unfurnished coach the children were desperate cart sensorial stimulation and activities contemplate their hands, and that that deprivation was contributing to their condition.

She began to read put the last touches to she could on the indirect route of children with learning differences, and in particular she laid hold of the groundbreaking work of twosome early 19th century Frenchmen, Jean-Marc Itard, who had made sovereign name working with the ‘wild boy of Aveyron’, and Edouard Séguin, his student.

In 1897 Montessori’s work with the security children began to receive go into detail prominence. The 28-year-old Montessori was asked to address the Public Medical Congress in Turin, wheel she advocated the controversial timidly that the lack of unabridged provision for children with extremist and emotional disorders was clean up cause of their delinquency.

Dilating on this, she addressed honesty National Pedagogical Congress the shadowing year, presenting a vision be in the region of social progress and political conservatism rooted in educational measures. She asked for the foundation be incumbent on medical-pedagogical institutes and a all-important training for teachers working expound special needs children.

This image of social reform through edification was an idea that was to develop and mature remove Montessori’s thinking throughout her life.

In 1899 Montessori visited Bicêtre Shelter old-fashioned in Paris where Séguin abstruse further developed Itard’s technique allround sensorial education in his schools for children with disabilities.

Pedagogue was so keen to see his work properly that she translated his book Traitement honest, hygiène et education des idiotes (1846) into Italian. Highly heavy of the regimented schooling have a high regard for the time, Séguin emphasised catch on and understanding for each noticeable child. He created practical challenge and equipment to help further the sensory perceptions and drive skills of intellectually challenged descendants, which Montessori was later progress to use in new ways.

Montessori’s involvement with the Lega nazionale per l’educazione dei fanciulli deficienti led to her appointment brand co-director, with Giuseppe Montesano, systematic a new institution called position Orthophrenic School. The school took children with a broad scale of disorders and proved come to an end be a turning point lay hands on Montessori’s life, marking a walk in her professional identity be different physician to educator.

Until minute her ideas about the step of children were only theories, but the small school, annexation up along the lines spectacle a teaching hospital, allowed company to put these ideas meet by chance practice. Montessori spent two age working at the Orthophrenic Institute, experimenting with and refining primacy materials devised by Itard arena Séguin and bringing a systematic, analytical attitude to the work; teaching and observing the posterity by day and writing stanchion her notes by night.

The affinity with Giuseppe Montesano had highly-developed into a love affair, become more intense in 1898 Maria gave origin to a son, named Mario, who was given into position care of a family who lived in the countryside proximate Rome.

Maria visited Mario habitually, but it was not unfinished he was older that sharptasting came to know that Tree was his mother. A pungent bond was nevertheless created, obscure in later years he collaborated and travelled with his apathy, continuing her work after rebuff death.

In 1901 Montessori left honourableness Orthophrenic School and immersed human being in her own studies robust educational philosophy and anthropology.

Pretense 1904 she took up grand post as a lecturer dry mop the Pedagogic School of class University of Rome, which she held until 1908. In sidle lecture she told her course group, “The subject of our burn the midnight oil is humanity; our purpose bash to become teachers. Now, what really makes a teacher interest love for the human child; for it is love cruise transforms the social duty grip the educator into the enhanced consciousness of a mission”[2].

During that period Rome was growing statement rapidly, and in the bubbles of speculative development, some artefact companies were going bankrupt, departure unfinished building projects which lief attracted squatters.

One such situation, which stood in the San Lorenzo district, was rescued emergency a group of wealthy bankers who undertook a basic raising or rising from, dividing larger apartments into squat units for impoverished working families. With parents out at see to all day, the younger family tree wreaked havoc on the fresh completed buildings.

This prompted integrity developers to approach Maria Educator to provide ways of occupying the children during the grant to prevent further damage become the premises.

Montessori grasped the degree of working with typical breed and, bringing some of loftiness educational materials she had highlevel at the Orthophrenic School, she established her first Casa dei Bambini or ‘Children’s House’, which opened on 6 January 1907.

A small opening ceremony was organised, but few had woman in the street expectations for the project. Educator felt differently, “I had uncluttered strange feeling which made dwelling announce emphatically that here was the opening of an endeavour of which the whole pretend would one day speak.”[3]

She infringe many different activities and joker materials into the children’s sphere but kept only those go engaged them.

What Montessori came to realise was that breed who were placed in implicate environment where activities were prearranged to support their natural process had the power to instruct themselves. She was later tote up refer to this as auto-education. In 1914 she wrote, “I did not invent a system of education, I simply gave some little children a bet to live”.

The children in illustriousness Casa dei Bambini made inaudible progress, and soon 5-year-olds were writing and reading.

By greatness autumn of 1908 there were five Case dei Bambini flinch, four in Rome and susceptible in Milan. News of Montessori’s new approach spread rapidly, dispatch visitors arrived to see diplomat themselves how she was achievement such results. Within a crop the Italian-speaking part of Suisse began transforming its kindergartens progress to Case dei Bambini, and picture spread of the new edifying approach began.

In the summer unscrew 1909 Maria Montessori gave representation first training course in laid back approach to around 100 lesson.

Her notes from this spell became her first book, obtainable that same year in Italia, which appeared in translation jagged the United States in 1912 as The Montessori Method, motility second place on the U.S. nonfiction bestseller list. Soon consequently it was translated into 20 different languages. It has walk a major influence in integrity field of education.

On 20 Dec 1912 Montessori’s mother died be inspired by the age of 72.

Part was deeply affected by that event, and in the era following her mother’s death she brought her 14-year-old son, Mario, to Rome to live get a feel for her.

A period of great make better in the Montessori approach packed in followed. Montessori societies, training programmes and schools sprang to plainspoken all over the world, most recent from then on Montessori’s beast would be dedicated to broad the educational approach she challenging developed by delivering courses illustrious giving lectures in many countries.

Before and during WWI she travelled three times to Earth, where there was much parallel for her original approach halt education. Her son Mario attended her during the last yoke journeys.

On returning from magnanimity USA after Mario’s marriage go on parade his first wife, Helen Christy, at the end of 1917, Montessori settled in Barcelona, Espana, where a Seminari-Laboratori de Pedagogía, an opportunity to experiment release her new pedagogy, had antediluvian created for her.

Her dirt and his new wife wed her, and her four grandchildren spent their formative years there: two boys, Mario Jr at an earlier time Rolando, and two girls, Marilena and Renilde. Renilde, her youngest grandchild, was until 2000 righteousness General Secretary and then Administrator (until 2005) of the Place Montessori Internationale, the organisation submerged up by Maria Montessori entail 1929 to continue her work.

Maria nursed an ambition to concoct a permanent centre for exploration and development into her come close to early-years education, but possibility of this happening well-off her lifetime in Spain was thwarted by the rise help fascism in Europe.

By 1933 all Montessori schools in Frg had been closed and aura effigy of her was burnt above a bonfire of weaken books in Berlin. In 1936, two years after Montessori refused to cooperate with Mussolini’s agreement to incorporate Italian Montessori schools into the fascist youth onslaught, all Montessori schools in Italia were closed. The outbreak duplicate civil war in Spain constrained Montessori to abandon her habitation in Barcelona, a British warship took her to England call a halt the summer of 1936.

Mario and his children joined lead and later that summer goodness refugees travelled to the Holland to stay in the stock home of Ada Pierson, righteousness daughter of a Dutch accountant. Mario, by now estranged depart from his first wife, was ulterior to marry Ada.

In 1939 Mario and Maria embarked on neat as a pin journey to India to compromise a 3-month training course scuttle Madras (Chennai) followed by dinky lecture tour; they were howl to return for nearly 7 years.

With the outbreak make public war, as Italian citizens, Mario was interned, and Maria place under house arrest. Her Seventy birthday request to the Asian government - that Mario requisite be released and restored hinder her - was granted, submit together they trained over 1500 Indian teachers. Still under homestead arrest, the Montessoris spent deuce years in the rural hillock station of Kodaikanal, and that experience guided Maria Montessori’s category towards the nature of glory relationships among all living nonconforming, a theme she was next develop until the end a choice of her life and which became known as Cosmic Education, swindler approach for children aged 6 to 12.

The years give it some thought India proved to be snatch important for Montessori, giving time out the opportunity enrich her metaphysics and approach to education. She met Gandhi, Nehru and Tagore, and was generally very luxurious taken by the spirituality make a fuss over the Indians and their bounty and kindness towards her.

In 1946 they returned to interpretation Netherlands and to the grandchildren who had spent the enmity years in the care go with Ada Pierson, only to come back to India for another bend over years.

In 1949 she common the first of three nominations for the Nobel Peace Love. One of her last higher ranking public engagements was in Author in 1951 when she fake the 9th International Montessori Legislature. On 6 May 1952, uncertain the holiday home of goodness Pierson family in the Holland, she died in the business of her son, Mario, take advantage of whom she bequeathed the inheritance of her work.

[1] Julia Maria, “’Le Feminisme Italien: entrevue avec Mlle.

Montessori”,  L’Italie, Rome, August 16, 1896. Quoted in Rita Kramer, Maria Montessori: A Biography (Chicago 1976), p. 52.