AMI Journal

When paying tribute to the memory and legacy of Renilde Montessori, the youngest grandchild of Maria Montessori who died recently, the most fitting way to honour her is to celebrate her vision of Educateurs sans Frontières. This most inspired of Renilde’s initiatives gave new meaning to Montessori’s vision bringing us back to the ideals of San Lorenzo. Renilde stressed the importance of placing that inheritance in a contemporary context. She saw the Educateurs as educators without boundaries, ‘able and willing to go where their presence is required. Never to intrude, not to indoctrinate, but to help and encourage others to learn, to rediscover the wise and ancient plan for wholesome growth with which all humans are endowed.’

Paola Trabalzini gives an enlightening introduction to Maria Montessori’s Literary Experiment to introduce the poetry of Dante to children, initially to adolescents of 12-14, but later also 10-year olds embraced the study of Inferno [Hell]. Ms Trabalzini demonstrates that this lecture elucidates how the understanding of Dante's work follows a free and natural course, in which the children put forward proposals for new activities to answer their need to know; proposals which originate from the inner learning process experienced by the children with energy and enthusiasm. The essence is, as in all aspects of Montessori education, that this perfectly proves the case for auto-education.

Mario Federici was a well-known Italian critic and playwright, and married to Maria Agamben—a graduate in literature, teacher and journalist. During the fascist years, the couple went abroad where Maria Agamben continued to teach at Italian cultural institutes which included Montessori schools. It was that circumstance that allowed them to see from up close the exciting initiative in Barcelona: when they saw children embrace Dante in their own manner. As Trabalzini reports in her article, Agamben wrote several articles on this phenomenon. In this instance, Federici writes with absolute delight on what he and his wife had witnessed, seeing the children perform Dante, which also gave him reason to voice his utter disapproval of the old-fashioned ways of the theatre.

Ms Awes, AMI trainer at the elementary level, carefully explains how children inherit the potential for language and how its acquisition is virtually guaranteed. All typical children, regardless of culture, will at a given moment come to speak their native language. Montessori found that the absorbent mind, sensitive periods, and human tendencies assist in this acquisition. In contrast, written language does not come naturally to human beings. Children will not develop writing and reading without some degree of direct experience, preparation, and instruction—and this is where obstacles experienced may manifest themselves as dyslexia.

This letter appears to be the first document on adolescent education that has survived; it shows the origins of Montessori’s ideas on this area.

This lecture delivered at the Institute of Medical Psychology, London, 10 November 1936 calls for a plan of education which ‘strikes at the very roots of the nobler human feelings’, warning of the deviations or ‘complexes’ that function as masks of the human personality. The sciences of psychology and education must be applied so that education may be based on the human personality.

In the 34th lecture given at the 23rd International Course Amsterdam, 1938, Montessori uses the term ‘psychic confusion’ to describe the unrest of adolescence, and suggests the adolescent’s courage as the means for finding the right path. As in the previous article, Montessori mentions sub-planes or stages of adolescent development.

This address was delivered to the Educational Committee of the Association of Head Mistresses on May 12, 1939 by Miss Phoebe Child on behalf of Dr Maria Montessori. Clearly written to be easily read aloud, to a small and knowledgeable audience, the speech centres on the functional independence of a farmstead, emphasizing the occupations leading to economic independence.

As a member of the founding team of the Hershey Montessori Farm School in Huntsburg, OH, Mr Barker is heavily interested in the origins of Erdkinder and presents us with a well-researched article. The background into the history of reform pedagogy’s concepts for the secondary school around the 1900s inspired by the Landerziehungsheime is thorough, clear, and enlightening.

This article describes the synthesis of some of the work that has been the natural outcome of the collaboration of Montessorians working and communicating through conferences, journals, shared programme development, and particularly through the summer work of the Orientation to Adolescent Studies.

In his speech delivered in 1970 in Paris at the Montessori Congress held in occasion of UNESCO’s centenary celebration of Dr Montessori’s birth, Herman J. Jordan describes the early stages in the establishment of a new Montessori lyceum, its development and the principles guiding the work of the founders.

‘The first duty of the educator, whether he is working with the newborn infant or an older child, is to recognize the human personality of the young being and respect it’. This quotation by Maria Montessori is leading in Ms Hoglund’s expose on the significance of valorization, and what elements are the most important contributory factors.

Based on a talk delivered at the AMI International Study Conference "The Child, the Family, the Future", July 19-24, 1994, Washington, DC.

This article is based on a paper delivered at the AMI International Study Conference "The Child, The Family, The Future", July 19-24, 1994, Washington, DC.

A paper presented at the 18th International Montessori Congress, "The Montessori Method and the Handicapped Child", Munich, July, 1977.