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WOW2: August's Trailblazing Women and Events in Our History - August 25 through August 31, 2022 [1]

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Date: 2022-08-27

August 31, 1870 – Maria Montessori born, Italian physician and educator. Her philosophy of education is still in use today in many classrooms around the world. As a girl, s he broke gender barriers and expectations when she enrolled in classes at an all-boys technical school, with hopes of becoming an engineer. She decided instead to become a doctor, and began medical school at the Sapienza University of Rome. She was banned from classes with the male students where the naked body was being studied, and required instead to perform her dissections of cadavers alone, after hours. She graduated – with honors – in 1896, overcoming the difficulties, as well as hostility and harassment from some students and professors. From 1896 to 1901, Montessori worked with and researched so-called "phrenasthenic" children—in modern terms, children experiencing some form of cognitive delay, illness, or disability. She also began to travel, study, speak, and publish nationally and internationally, coming to prominence as an advocate for women's rights and education for mentally disabled children. Montessori published two articles on pedagogy in 1903, and two more the following year. In 1903 and 1904, she conducted anthropological research with Italian schoolchildren, and in 1904 she was qualified as a free lecturer in anthropology for the University of Rome. She was appointed to lecture in the Pedagogic School at the University and continued in the position until 1908. In 1907 Montessori oversaw the first Casa dei Bambini, for the care and education of children of working parents in a new apartment building for low-income families in the San Lorenzo district in Rome, where she observed the children’s behavior, and developed the foundation of her method. Given a free choice of activity, the children showed more interest in practical activities and Montessori's materials than in toys provided for them and were surprisingly unmotivated by sweets and other rewards. Over time, she saw a spontaneous self-discipline emerge. B y working independently, children could reach new levels of autonomy and become self-motivated to reach new levels of understanding. Montessori also came to believe that acknowledging all children as individuals and treating them as such would yield better learning and fulfilled potential in each particular child. She held her first teacher training course in her method in 1909, and published her book, Il Metodo della Pedagogia Scientifica Applicato All'Educazione Infantile Nelle Case Dei Bambini (The Method of Scientific Pedagogy Applied to the Education of Children in the Children's Homes). She began to attract international recognition as her book was translated into several other languages between 1911 and 1915, and made extended trips to the U.S. in between 1911 and 1915, then spent time in Spain, the Netherlands, and the UK. Initially, her work was supported by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist government, but from 1930 on, there were conflicts. By 1932, she and her family were under political surveillance. In 1933, she resigned from her position in the Montessori Society, and then left Italy in 1934. The government ended Montessori activities in the country in 1936. In 1938, she was invited to give a training courses in India, then was interned there during WWII as an enemy alien, but was allowed some travel to give lectures and courses. She returned to Europe in 1946, but traveled back and forth from there to India, continuing to give training courses. She represented Italy at the 1950 UNESCO conference in Florence. She died at age 81 of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1952.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/27/2119031/-WOW2-August-s-Trailblazing-Women-and-Events-in-Our-History-August-25-through-August-31-2022

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