Maria Montessori e la rivoluzione dell'educazione

At the end of the nineteenth century, the schools Italian were places of discipline rigid, where the children sat in silence and repeated by memory what that the teacher dictated.

Maria Montessori, first woman to graduate in medicine in Italy, observed the children with eyes scientific and understood that each child possessed an innate capacity innate for learning, as long as provided that the environment were appropriate.

In 1907 she opened the first Casa dei Bambini in the neighbourhood San Lorenzo in Rome. The classroom was revolutionary: furniture to the size of children, materials sensory specially designed, and freedom to move.

The method Montessori is spread rapidly across Europe and in the world, even thanks to the interest of intellectuals like Alexander Graham Bell and Mahatma Gandhi. However, in Italy the regime fascist her forced into exile in 1934.

Today there are more than twenty thousand schools Montessori in all over the world. Her her idea fundamental — that education should respect the rhythms natural of the child — remains revolutionary still today.