Language: English

ISSN: 1071-6246

Abstract/Notes: Maria Montessori’s method is deservedly well-known in the child education field, where thebrilliant educationist successfully extended to normal children what she had experimented with subnormal ones. The applicative method in the “Children’s Homes”, destined to welcome children from three to six years of age, was later developed for very young children in the Montessori Birth Centres and for the slightly older children in primary school. Now, we wonder whether it also has interesting aspects for lower and upper secondary schools. Montessori indeed devised a complete course of development divided into four six-year periods, as Comenius had already done. She thus did not limit herself to childhood and wrote a book Dall’infanzia all’adolescenza which gives an affirmative answer to the question and provides some guidelines. But, especially her son, Mario Montessori, working in many courses on psychoarithmetic and psychogeometry, showed how the directive principles of the method are not only applicable, but are indeed very effective also for lower secondary schools. Mathematics offers particularly useful examples. But even the grammatical and logical analysis performed by affixing labels indicating the functions of various parts of the discourse, already started up in the Montessori method for primary schooling, both for Italian and foreign languages, may be extended to lower secondary schools. The abstract essence of the symbols take on a tangible feature without renouncing their conveyance of concepts. The education of preadolescents and adolescents is not, however, only intellectual. It is also an education for feelings, openness to social cooperation and character building. The broader range of Montessorian thought is felt in education for peace, meant as a world task. And, opening up to multiculturalism and combating every discrimination, it offers secondary education challenging perspectives. Thus, religious education, which in Spain and Italy Maria Montessori linked to Catholic education, may be extended in an ecumenical spirit also to other religions, such as the oriental ones that she got to know in India.

Language: English

ISSN: 2281-8375

Abstract/Notes: MORE Abstracts 2003: The critical literature has always acknowledged the important role that the positivist Montessori teachers had on Maria Montessori and yet it is also true that the criticism has mostly focused on the subsequent developments of Montessori’s positivist phase. Indeed, when reprinting her works (and Il Metodo della Pedagogia Scientifica is a case in point), Montessori herself often changed and/or added substantial elements while leaving the title of the publication unchanged. This means that the internal process that Montessori thinking underwent over the years has not always been well-understood, so much so that there has been an insistence – at least for many of her followers – on the fecundity of the method without any accurate historical analysis of the conceptual elaboration. In particular, the so-called positivist phase had a greater influence than what may appear on Maria Montessori’s whole intellectual dynamics and such that the fundamental theoretical mainstays are actually identifiable in that very early period, which has sometimes been hastily treated by a more spiritualist critique that has devoted more attention to highlighting the later contributions of this famous educationist (for example, education for peace). The present contribution instead aims to make a more accurate reconstruction of the historical period in which Montessori matured speculatively and to identify the main themes which, even with the inevitable developments determined by her process of reflection and action, constitute the basic themes of her thinking, in order to enable a more suitable historical collocation of this brilliant educationist who was, in many respects, atypical but not forgetful of a training that was, in many respects, decisive.

Language: English

ISSN: 2281-8375

Abstract/Notes: MORE Abstracts 2003 Only at the beginning of the 20th century was it recognised, at least at a theoretical level, that the state and public institutions should provide for the assistance and education of farmer’s children living in the countryside around Rome. However, the municipal authorities, who barely managed to keep a few primary schools running in the main rural centres, was unable to open others in more isolated areas and, above all, to set up kindergartens for pre-school age children. The creation of a basic school service in the Roman countryside, and then of kindergartens, was carried out by a committee set up within the anti-malaria campaign conducted in the Lazio region by Angelo Celli and his wife Anna, with the cooperation of the Red Cross, and which – besides the Cellis – also included the poet Giovanni Cena, the writer Sibilla Aleramo, the artist Duilio Cambellotti and the educator Alessandro Marcucci. As director of the “Schools for Farmers”, and on the basis of ministry guidelines, Marcucci drafted a teaching programme, a school calendar and timetable that would suit the particular needs of the rural population of the Roman countryside. Moreover, in his makeshift schools initially opened in village huts before any real school buildings were built, he provided for health care, school meals and, finally, the setting up of kindergartens all based on the Montessori method, of which he appreciated the innovative educational system and especially the social principles, the respect for the human person, the freedom of self-determination and the love for the harmony of things which sustained it. Marcucci devoted his whole life to spreading education among the rural proletariat, not only in the Lazio region around Rome, and managed to create a high profile school service, to train a qualified teacher class, and to build modern schools from an architectural, hygienic and furnishings point of view. Above all, he managed to increase the creation of Montessori Children’s Homes. He always managed to achieve extraordinary results even when the environmental conditions seemed to be working against them. Among the many testimonies there is a diary written by a young teacher, Irene Bernasconi, who, having just finished a Montessori course in Milan at the Umanitaria in school year 1915-16, started working with the children of farm labourers in the kindergarten of Palidoro, one of the most desolate and malaria-ridden places of the Roman countryside north of the capital.

Language: English

ISSN: 2281-8375

Language: English

ISSN: 1354-1498

Language: English

ISSN: 0023-7124

Language: French

ISSN: 0012-9577

Abstract/Notes: Montessori with Alzheimer's patients in Kansas City, MO

Language: English

ISSN: 1470-8647

Language: English

ISSN: 2637-7179

Language: Chinese

ISSN: 2097-0692