Maria Montessori ( Maria Montessori ) is the answer to those who wonder if a single person can lay the foundations that will change the world…
She was the one who realized that education is the only solution for all the problems of the modern world and dedicated her life to the search for the truth for the child, the establishment of peace and the creation of the balanced and just man. Maria Montessori, after a forty-year journey, shouted that children are the hope of the future. It is enough to trust them so that they learn to trust themselves. It is enough to realize that Man is one and Humanity is one. “Childhood”, he tells us, “builds with everything it finds. If the material is poor, the construction will also be flimsy.”
Born on the last day of August 1870 in Italy, she was the first woman to rise above the stereotypes of the time and study medicine. Because of her remarkable performance in medicine, she was appointed a university professor shortly after graduation. However, he quickly discovered the diamond hidden in the mud, the incredible potential of the little child, the secret of childhood, as he used to say.
The reason was her directorship at the orthophrenic school in Rome. The section of children with mental retardation, who were treated as mentally ill and lived in miserable conditions, awakened all her sensitivity and love for the child. Through her psychology and pedagogical talent, she was quickly led from pediatrics to psychology.Physical and mental development of food minors. Initially she worked with children with mental retardation and very soon she was given the opportunity to work with preschool children and apply her observations and her method.
He founded the first Montessori kindergarten, “the children’s house”, in a poor neighborhood of Rome. It became known as “Casa Di Bambini” and there, through the really difficult living conditions of the parents who belonged to the working class, Maria Montessori became a teacher and a student. She allowed little children to reveal to her their needs and potential, the dignity and greatness that lay within them.
One large room, one unskilled assistant, 50 neglected children from 2.5 to 5 years old and zero resources… her first concern was to teach the children how to take care of themselves and their environment. Then, he introduced the young students to the materials of perceptual discrimination, the materials of mathematics and language, materials that he used earlier in the orthophrenic school. Day by day the children learned to eat, wash, dress, become independent and enter the magical world of knowledge.
The results in “Casa di Bambini” gave her worldwide fame. Soon he founded the second “children’s home”. Travels around the world, speeches, interviews and acclaim followed. But the war caught up with her vision and work. After Benito Mussolini’s regime took power in Italy, Montessori was exiled to Spain, as she did not hide her aversion to fascism and anything undemocratic and oppressiveiko. Then, after the Franco regime prevailed in the Spanish Civil War, he settled in the Netherlands. In 1939 he immigrated again to India where he remained throughout the Second World War, as the Netherlands was under Nazi occupation. There, she came into contact with Gandhi and further developed not only her pedagogical method but also her already amazing personality which with courage, love and stubbornness managed to change the way we think about the child.
He dedicated himself to the child and managed to formulate the most complete pedagogical method centered on his smooth development. She applied the valuable lessons she learned from observing and working with these first children, to all the children of the world, regardless of IQ or learning ability, regardless of religion, country of origin and residence.
He went around the world preaching that the best weapon children need to develop into positive members of society is love for them. She established schools in many states to train personnel in the use of the teaching materials she created, but especially to train them to understand the philosophy of her method, because she taught that this is the first issue for her success.
And when I hear someone ask “can I change the world on my own?” my answer is one: Maria Montessori could…