The story of Maria

August is Maria Montessori month. Dottoressa Maria Montessori was born in Chiaravalle in the province of Ancona on Aug. 31,1870 – the year in which Italy became a united nation. Alessandro her father descended from a noble family from Bologna, a military man commended for taking part in 1861 war to free Italy from Austria. Her mother Renilde Stoppani is a niece of the great philosopher-scientist-priest Antonio Stoppani.

This year my daughter Sara, OB Montessori CEO, suggested a special story-telling treat for our students. From preschool to primary grade school we would narrate “Once upon a time there was a girl called Maria who lived in the seaport town of Ancona. Both her parents believed in discipline so that everyday she had to do some knitting for the poor. She showed a special interest for the less fortunate even befriending a hunchback child.”

Becoming an engineer in the Italian professional high school

When Maria was five, the family moved to Rome. The Italian government had promoted her father, now an official in the state-run tobacco industry. Her parents preferred that Maria attend a more modern school in Rome than in the small town of Chiaravalle, since elementary schools were crowded and poorly managed in Italy then.

Strong-minded Maria wanted to become an engineer even though her father refused to consider the idea.  Shortly after her 13th birthday in 1883, Maria enrolled in the technical high school of Regia Scuola Tecnica Michelangelo Buonarroti for three years, earning a final score of 137 of 150 points. For the next four years, she attended the Technical Institute Leonardo da Vinci. European elementary schools conclude by the fifth grade, continuing to dual courses of academic and vocational high schools before attending the university.

An engineering career had been more than Alessandro could accept. Now Maria’s plans to study medicine shocked him beyond belief. He refused to talk to her. None of this daunted Maria, who made an appointment to see Dr. Guido Bacelli, dean of the medical faculty at the University of Rome who listened politely to her request but refused admittance. If she had been a man, she could have enrolled in medical school automatically. Maria shook his hands and thanked him, and said with confidence, “I know I shall become a doctor of medicine.”

Determined to become a doctor

She enrolled in the University of Rome to take premedical classes in math, botany, physics, chemistry and zoology. For the next two years, all that mattered were her studies. She had no time to attend parties, read romances or sit with friends in cafes. In 1892, with a grade of 8 out of possible 10, she received the university’s Diploma di Licenza. Eventually the University accepted Maria as a medical student, but the male students did not. They showed her resentment and made sure she heard their unflattering remarks. She responded to the men’s jokes good-naturedly saying, “Blow away my friends. The harder you blow, the higher up I shall go.”  She made better grades than most of them.

Alessandro could not adjust to Maria’s independence. Not only had his daughter chose a career unfit for a woman, but she had financed it herself by winning scholarships and tutoring other students. She longed for her father’s approval. Maria wrote a paper as the final requirement for graduation. A neighbor persuaded her father to attend her defense of a handwritten 96-page paper on paranoia. When the 11 examiners tallied her scores, Maria received a final grade of 105. The committee awarded Maria Montessori at the age of 25, the degree of Doctor of Medicine – the first female doctor in Italy, on July 10, 1896.

In defense of women and handicapped children

In 1896, a group of learned and powerful women from around the world gathered in Berlin to discuss the poor living conditions of women workers. The Italian women asked Maria to represent them as a delegate. Not only did Maria get the full attention of all but even that of Queen Margherita of Savoia as she spoke eloquently on behalf of six million Italian women who worked 18 hours a day in factories and on farms. Their pay was half of what men earned for the same work, and some women earned even less than that. The delegates unanimously adopted Maria’s proposal that women get equal pay for equal work.

As an assistant doctor at the University of Rome’s Psychiatric Clinic, Montessori gained interest in idiot children, who were classed together with the insane. The more she worked with these children, the more she realized that mental deficiency was a pedagogical problem rather than a medical one. Dr. Guido Bacelli, the university dean who refused her enrollment before, was then Minister of Education. He appointed Dr. Montessori to head a state orthophrenic school (“ortho” means correction of deformities and “phrenic” refers to the mind) from 1899-1901, to train teachers in the education of mentally disabled children.

How SPED led to the reform of traditional education

Maria and her co-director at the school, Dr. Giussepe Montessano, worked closely together to develop a program that would help these children. Soon Maria and Giuseppe fell in love. Sometime between 1898 and 1900, Maria gave birth to a child she named Mario. She and Giuseppe never married possibly because their families did not approve.

Under her skillful direction, the defective children learned to read and write so well that they passed the public examination together with normal children. The applause that greeted the “miracle” made Dr. Montessori remark “while everyone was admiring my retardates, I was searching for the reason which could keep back the healthy children of traditional school on so low plane that they could be equaled in intelligence to my unfortunate pupils.” She turned her duties at the Orthophrenic School over to capable teachers.

Maria left the school but she fulfilled her dream to work with normal children at the poorest district of San Lorenzo in Rome, where the Instituto Romano dei Beni Stabili, the principal banks of Italy built blocks of flats. These were ruined by the small children of laborers, who left for work. Sixty ignorant little vandals did not have to be persuaded to work with the materials like the backward children. They worked spontaneously and independently with Dr. Montessori.

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(Part II: Maria Introduces Early Childhood Education and Adult Literacy Course to UNESCO)