Montessori's 150th Birthday Celebrations

 

Destination via Montessori (via means street) on the navigator, these were the instructions given by our AirBnB host. We find parking and walk a block to our apartment which, I'm happy to report, is directly across the street from the Teatro Valle, where all of the events are being held. The Casa Natale (the house where Maria Montessori was born) is just a few minutes walk down the street and in the heat of the Italian night we stop for a gelato on the way to pay our respects. Our host tells us that the town is projecting a slide show on the front facade of the Town Library, and the five photos they have chosen are from when she visited her home town of Chiaravalle the very last visit to Italy in 1951. Her house is behind bars due to the 2020 epidemic, because the work came to a halt and was not able to make up for the lost time. The grand opening for the new museum was supposed to be tomorrow. Somehow it feels like a metaphor. Maria Montessori, the person, is being celebrated in Italy but they haven't applied her vision to their schools. Italy has a culture that is comfortable with a vertical rather than horizontal power structure.

Montessori on the Lire and now the 2 Euro Coin

​Maria Montessori on the front of the 200 lire coin produced in 1980, the first time her image graced Italian money. On the back side of the coin are the words: ​"VALORIZZAZIONE DELLA DONNA" "DEDICATED TO WOMEN" ​ ​On June 6, as the most difficult scholastic year in the history of the Italian Republic was ending, the 2 Euro coin dedicated to Maria Montessori was put on the market in honor of the 150 years since her birth. The proof version, sold in a small collectors box, was but 5000 coins, and the supply was immediately exhausted.  There good news is there are still rolls of 25 available, "fior di conio" which means they are of a quality between the "proof" quality (the highest) and the coins made for circulation. She is the first and only Italian woman who was given the honor of being on a bank note. It was the final version of the 1000 lire bill.   August 31, 2020 - Come to Chiaravalle, where she was born, so you can (virtually) join the celebrations. I will be launching this new blog over her birthday weekend with updates and reports from her hometown. Many people had planned on attending but will not be able to travel to Italy. You can join Montessori For Life for a virtual voyage to the town where she was born on her 150th birthday! It was the year 1870, the same year Italy became a unified State.  Maria Montessori's mother went into labor and was attended at home by a midwife and a few other women, according to her father's memoir, and "despite being a long and difficult labor, the newborn seemed robust and healthy." This memoir is part of the AMI archival collection. I found this quote about her birth in the biography written by Grazia Honegger Fresco. The house where she lived for her first few years is now a museum with collections of her early editions of her books and a historic photo collection. And as it is under renovation, we are excited to see the transformation.

1936 edition of 
the Child in the Family

Chapter 2 - The Newborn "... who experiences a more sudden and radical change in environment than the child who is born? And what kind of care has civilization created to help the newborn … this person who must undergo the most difficult adaptation, who passes suddenly from one existence to another, in being born? ...  experience has revealed a terrible truth: we carry the wrongs of early infancy with us for the rest of our lives. The life of the embryo and the vicissitudes of childhood are decisive - for the health of the adult ... for the future of the human species."