Welcome, curious minds! Do you know the story of educator Maria Montessori, who was the first woman to complete the medical career in Italy and invented the educational method named after her? Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori was born in the Italian town of Chiaravalle in 1870.

Her father had been in the army and worked for the state; her mother, niece of the geologist and paleontologist Antonio Stoppani, had received a very complete education, something unusual in a woman of that time. When Maria was little, the family moved to Rome for work reasons and she started going to school there at the age of 6. Her first notes were not especially bright, but she was progressing and her academic record began to stand out, and soon awakened in her the restless spirit that would characterize her all her life.

On one occasion when she was 10 years old, being very ill in bed, with her very worried mother next to her, she said: “Don't worry, mom, I cannot die; I have too many things to do". At age 13, she started her high school studies in a technical school and, at 16, continued at the Leonardo Da Vinci Technical Institute. At that time there were very few women who opted for technical studies, and Maria's own father, old-fashioned, preferred that she engage in female tasks.

But, encouraged by her mother, Maria was determined to break the mold and, together, they managed to overcome paternal resistance so she could study whatever she wanted. That is something that, seen from our current perspective, it may seem trivial, but in those years, just as it happened in so many other countries, Italian women depended entirely of the male will. For example, they couldn't own money of their own nor go to court without her husband.

Maria was good at science, especially Mathematics, and planned to study Engineering, But when she graduated from high school, she changed opinion and chose to study Medicine at the University of Rome. Something very rare in Italy at that time, since none woman had never studied the career of Medicine. It was the year 1890 and, so that you get an idea of how revolutionary it was the presence of a woman in the Italian classrooms of Medicine, I will tell you that there by 1912, in the Faculties of Medicine of Berlin, the few female students still had their own dissection rooms, separated from the masculine rooms.

And that was two decades after the student days of Montessori. She, of course, had to endure the rejection of a large part of their classmates and teachers; and, as it was considered inappropriate for her to observe the naked body of a corpse in the company of men, she had to do all her dissections alone. Despite the difficulties, Maria specialized in Psychiatry and Pedagogy and received a doctorate in 1896, at the age of 26.

She started to work with children suffering from varying degrees of cognitive disability, who, in that time, were considered incapable of learn and were abandoned in the educational area. Maria, however, after working with them several years, discovered that this was not the case: that all of them had potentialities that could make them evolve; but they required special education, adapted to their needs. She began writing articles and lecturing to publicly demand the creation of classrooms and special educational institutions for children with intellectual developmental problems, as well as specific training for the teachers to attend them.

After studying the works of French doctors and educators Jean Marc Gaspard Itard and Édouard Séguin, Montessori decided to focus his career completely in the pedagogy of the little ones with learning difficulties and, based on the ideas of Itard –who had designed the plan to re-educate and integrate in society Victor, the famous savage boy from Aveyron, a boy of about eleven years that he had been found living alone in a forest near the Pyrenees, she created her own educational system, much more specific and organized that the ideas of Itard. In 1900, was opened in Italy the Orthophrenic Magistral School, a medical-pedagogical institute to train teachers in education of children with intellectual disabilities, and Montessori was named co-director. During her two years there, she educated more than a hundred of teachers and refined and developed new tools and new materials that, time later, she would adapt to use them with any child.

That school had a classroom where Montessori and the teachers in training put their new methods into practice, teaching classes to children without intellectual disabilities but that had been crossed out like "ineducables". After training, those children were able to pass the same tests that were done to all those of the same age. Of those results in the examinations he drew two conclusions: that no little one was ineducable, and that the education of children without disabilities was lower than it should.

Montessori, with the idea that her methods of special education could apply to general education, left the Orthophrenic School Magistral and began to develop what she called "scientific pedagogy": she conducted experimental research on various primary schools, following the scientific method, to develop her educational materials and her teaching philosophy starting from real results and not just hypotheses and guesswork. In 1906, Montessori was invited to supervise the care and education of a group of working class boys from the San Lorenzo neighborhood, in Rome. And, as she was eager to put her methods into practice, she was delighted to accept.

In January 1907, he opened the Casa dei Bambini, that is to say, the Children's House, in which more than 50 children 3 and 7 years enrolled. At first, the classroom was equipped with a table for the teacher, a blackboard, a stove, small chairs and group tables for the children, and a closed cupboard where kept the educational materials that Montessori had developed in the Orthophrenic School. Activities for the children included personal care - such as dressing and undressing - and caring for the environment - like sweeping or gardening.

They were not imposed the activities they had to perform at any time nor were they attempted inculcate them data memorization. To the children were also shown the use of materials created by Montessori, who, occupied by other professional commitments, supervised and observed work in the classroom, but did not teach the children directly. Teaching and day-to-day care were done, under the guidance of Montessori, by the building's doorman daughter.

In that first group of children, Montessori observed behaviors that helped her to correct and improve the basis of her educational method. She discovered, for example, that children were sensitive to the cleanliness and order of the environment; a pleasant atmosphere comforted them, made them feel safe, and that helped them to concentrate. Given the free choice of the activity, the children showed more interest in practical activities and materials of Montessori than in toys that also were provided and, surprisingly, they were not motivated by sweets and other rewards.

As time goes by, she saw that spontaneous self-discipline emerged in them. Based on her observations, Montessori implemented a series of practices that became distinctive features of her philosophy and educational method. She replaced heavy furniture with tables and children chairs light enough for the little ones moved them, and took out of the closed closet her pedagogical materials and placed them on low, accessible shelves.

She expanded the range of practical activities including flower arrangements, hand washing, gymnastics, pet care and cooking. She also opened large outdoor areas to encourage children to come and go as they please in the different areas and lessons of the room. Children, according to Montessori, are capable to absorb knowledge like sponges, and they just need a suitable environment and teaching materials to learn on their own.

The educator must limit himself to observing and exercise only a helping function if the child requests it, but must let the little one pick up and keep the materials and explore how it works, to encourage thus his autonomy. They have the freedom to be active and the responsibility to know how to use that freedom. The first Casa dei Bambini was a success, and opened a second just four months later.

The children showed concentration, attention and spontaneous self-discipline, and their classrooms began to attract the attention of prominent educators, journalists and public figures. The following year three Case dei Bambini more were open and in 1909 the Italian Switzerland began to replace the educational methods of their orphanages and kindergartens by the Montessori method. Maria's reputation and work began to spread internationally.

She left the medical practice to spend more time in their educational work, develop their methods and train teachers. In late 1911, Montessori education had already been adopted officially in the public schools of Italy and Switzerland, and it did not take long to implement also in London and Stockholm. They were opened Montessori schools in many cities of Western Europe, like Paris, and also in countries as diverse as Argentina, Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Switzerland, Syria and New Zealand.

In United States, the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, became one of the main defenders of the Montessori method, and opened numerous schools. The book in which Maria explained the foundations of his educational theory, entitled 'The Method of Scientific Pedagogy', became a bestseller in that country. In 1915, Maria moved to Barcelona, and lived there until 1936, although she did not stop traveling continuously throughout Europe to give talks and give training seminars to new teachers.

She also gave numerous talks about peace, a task that led her to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize up to 6 times. But those talks, ideologically opposed to the warmongering that in Italy the dictator Benito Mussolini promulgated, caused all her schools in Italy were closed. In Germany, Hitler made the same.

After the outbreak of Spanish civil war, Montessori left the country. First she went to England, and then to Holland, where she would live the rest of her life, although she never stopped traveling around the world to promote education and peace. She passed away in 1952, at 81 years of age.

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