Language: English

ISSN: 8750-3468

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: 1354-1498

Language: English

ISSN: 1354-1498

Language: English

ISSN: 1354-1498

Language: English

ISSN: 1354-1498

Language: English

ISSN: 1354-1498

Language: English

ISSN: 1354-1498

Abstract/Notes: MSA National Conference 2017, Speakers listed, photos, info on fees and registration, conference schedule

Language: English

ISSN: 1470-8647