my Marche
Art and Culture

Among the notable people from the Marche region, I have the honor of mentioning women. After Joyce Lussu I want to remember Maria Montessori.Maria-Montessori-with-a-child-660x375

Perhaps not everyone knows that she was born in Chiaravalle, a small town between Jesi, Ancona and Senigallia. Her mother, Renilde Stoppani, was from Monte San Vito.

She was the first Italian woman to graduate in medicine and I believe that at that time she must have been a beacon for many women who wanted to be something more than wives and mothers or who simply wanted to count more in Italian society. To enter university she asked Pope Leo XIII for help, perhaps thanks to the fact that she was the granddaughter of an abbot, because the good Guido Baccelli, the then enlightened left-wing minister and excellent doctor and scientist, prevented her from doing so. She finally enrolled at Sapienza and then we all know how it went: thanks to her successes at the University, a very attentive and prepared student, she came into contact with European universities such as Berlin, Paris and London, in the pedagogical and psychiatric fields, and this probably allowed her to expand his research and his theses. If that wasn't enough, she also graduated in philosophy. From her relationship with a fellow researcher Giuseppe Montesano, she was born a son who she had to hide for a time and then finally declare as a grandson. Here too she was extraordinarily revolutionary. At 34 he obtained the professorship of anthropology and began to take care of nursery schools and three years later he opened the first Casa dei Bambini in Rome where he applied a new method which he described in a book "The method of scientific pedagogy" which later became successful. immediate throughout the world, especially in America. In the United States, where she went in 1913, she was considered the most interesting woman in Europe.montessori-5

Can you think that all this happened to a woman born in the second half of the nineteenth century? Simply extraordinary.

The Montessori movement grew in the USA and also in other parts of the world, a new teaching method: “Discipline derives from free work, this arises only when authentic interest emerges in the child, which arises by following one's instincts, capable of providing a state of absolute concentration."images

Montessori schools were created all over the world and Maria and Mario, her son, would spend their entire lives developing and improving them. In 1929 he founded the AMI (Association Montessori Internationale) to ensure that his theories remained intact and that the work and discoveries made continued beyond his death. She will die in Holland, where she had moved.

In his tomb the following epitaph: “I ask the dear children, who can do anything, to join me in building peace among men and in the world."Brief History Upload 300

Even in this last sentence, there is all his ability to know humanity and protect its future

 

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