Part 1 - Reflections on the activity of independent discovery in the first two years of life: a Brief History

By Grazia Honegger Fresco

Translation by Karin Slabaugh

Brief historical foreword

We would like to reflect on the activity of independent discovery in the early years... 

Who are we?

We are an organization called Percorsi per Crescere, which means "pathways for growth or growing." Karin Slabaugh has been in contact with us since 2012 when she came to Italy to take a course with Grazia Honegger Fresco. We are a non-profit cooperative with our headquarters in Legnano, Italy, via Enrico Dandolo 4. Our email contact is ferioli@realsystemsrl.it

Karin has done lengthy observations in two large Nidos, both public 0-3 Montessori inspired childcare programs, in the two cities of Cassano Magnago and Cardano al Campo near Milan. The educators in these two centers have had vast amounts of training under Percorsi per Crescere trainers. 

The training we offer in various regions of Northern Italy began in the 1970's and is ongoing. Our training was born directly out of the studies in Rome done by Adele Costa Gnocchi and Maria Montessori beginning in 1947.

This important educational heritage provides for the training of educators in refined observation of behavior in the first years of life such that educators become throughly experienced in this modality.

Adele Costa Gnocchi (1883-1967) was a student of Montessori's from the first course in 1909. She founded Centro Nascita Montessori (CNM) in 1960 in order to refine and spread the study of the child from birth to three years. Mario Montessori Sr. was Honorary President of CNM for several years.

Centro Nascita Montessori is still active today and the current president is pediatrician Franco De Luca. Their email contact is segreteria@centronascitamontessori.it and telephone number is 0039.06.720.160.93. The offices are in Rome at via A. Burri 39, 00173 Roma.

In 2013 Karin Slabaugh brought the history of this pedagogical heritage to the AMI International Montessori Congress in Portland where she presented a Research Poster entitled :

"The History of Montessori Assistants to Infancy and the Montessori Birth Center in Rome
0-3 Pedagogy Pedagogy founded by Adele Costa Gnocchi (1883-1967)

In 2017 Karin presented this work again at the 28th AMI International Montessori Congress in Prague, this time in much greater detail in a Breakout session and with the direct support of the two public childcare programs above mentioned. 

Educators from Nido Cardano al Campo and Nido Cassano Magnago and Davide Arieni  at the Congress

Characteristics of our work

We have kept this holistic approach alive under the guidance of Grazia Honegger Fresco, a direct student of Montessori and Costa Gnocchi and maintained Montessori's ideas of indirect education  and the key lessons: rather than stimulate a child, respond to him and every unnecessary thing you do for the child hinders his self-development. The result of this integrated approach, both biological and psychological, is a relationship with every child that is both respectful and nurturing as well as protective.

As the years went by we have always stayed open to the work others have done that above and beyond doubt was relevant to a holistic modality of care for the child. We have thus collaborated with at least three other educational realities and we will discuss them in Part 2 and Part 3 of this discussion. Each one is quite different but they are all based on the idea that OBSERVATION is the essential tool for the adult in understanding the role of educator. They also have in common a core value of RESPECT for each and every person and to value a person in his or her originality. This requires the complete absence of either overt or hidden prejudice and judgment, and absolutely no practices that are brusk or insensitive or in any way aggressive. No form of competition, nor any conditioning or "training" of others to obtain certain behaviors and/or results is acceptable.

We have found that this collaboration has not taken anything away from the care of the children in the Montessori sense. Each of these three other educational practices allows for the quality of the relationship to change and to bring an end to the eternal "struggle between the child and the adult" - whether it be with a parent, teacher, professor, or doctor.

The idea of a secure relationship, called for by Montessori, is rarely implemented. 

Think about how often - in the family, in 0-3 childcare, even in Montessori schools - adults require an extreme precision in the use of objects or materials. This only shows a deep distrust in the child's innate forces which are present from birth. And it does not respect the inventiveness and creativity of children. 

Observation, if it carries any pre-conception of how things should look or happen, does not allow the adult to see how significant the spontaneous activity is that comes naturally from the youngest children. This spontaneous activity can only occur when the child has the freedom to choose and can repeat his actions in order to refine them, through self-correction. And from the very first months of life infants will naturally develop their ability to focus and to become independent.

stay posted for Part 2: 

The first educational proposal that we confronted our work with was that of the English psychologist Elinor Goldschmied (1910-2009)