Maria Montessori and UNESCO

This article by Victoria Barres ties in appropriately with Montessori’s own San Remo lectures. Victoria argues that Montessori in 1950, ‘still energetic despite her eighty years, participated in founding meetings of UNESCO institutions. One task was to create the International Institute of Education to promote international peace through education. Discussions abounded about reconstructing Europe, linked to educating the ‘new man’. Finally Maria Montessori, politely but firmly, told members that for decades many others, including herself, had devoted enormous energy to raising such issues as the links between education, peace and world reconstruction—the very issues under discussion. Yet war continued to be viewed as a response to violence, with little analysis of the consequences of war. War not only weakened the population’s health and welfare but also planted the seeds of future discord.

Maria Montessori insisted that if humanity wished to succeed in establishing solid foundations for world peace, it had to focus on the prevention of war.’