Are you interested in learning about your Italian Heritage?

Here is a short story about a very special person. We hope you will enjoy reading it.

Maria Montessori was born in Chiaravalle (located in the province of Ancona region of Marche) to Alessandro Montessori and Renilde Stoppani when the unification of the Italian territory was about to become a reality. On Sept 20, 1870 the Italian army known as Bersaglieri entered the city of Rome through Porta Pia and on October 2nd Rome officially became part of the nation of Italy.

Chiaravalle was mainly a farming town where the tobacco industry was slowly gaining an important economic role; Alessandro Montessori was relocated to Chiaravalle at the age of 33 yrs old in 1865 by the Ministry of Finance to manage the “Manifattura Tabacchi” i.e. the tobacco manufacturing facility in Chiaravalle. In 1866 he married the 32-year old Renilde Stoppani, with whom he shared the same devotion to liberation and unity of Italy and strong Christian values. She was the niece of the late abbot Antonio Stoppani, geologist, patriot and author of the book called “Il Bel Paese”.

Their only child Maria was born on Aug. 31, 1870 in the house located in Piazza Mazzini number 10 in Chiaravalle. Her father, a tradition-bound army officer, was determined and very disciplined; he discouraged Maria’s interest in a professional career because to his eyes the primary role of a woman was to raise her family. It was with the encouragement and support of her mother Renilde Stoppani , she prepared herself for her later career.

When Maria was 12, the family moved to Rome to take advantage of the better educational facilities. Ahead of her time, against the wishes of her father but with the support of her mother, she began to attend a boys' technical school. After seven years an interest in biology led to her decision to study medicine. This choice required some courage and tenacity, as it was in defiance of the customs of a society which excluded women from such endeavors. She was the first woman to graduate on July 10, 1896 from the University of Rome La Sapienza Medical School becoming the first female doctor in Italy. In her work at the University of Rome psychiatric clinic Dr. Montessori developed an interest in the treatment of special needs children and, for several years, she worked, wrote, and spoke on their behalf.

In 1907, the Italian government put Dr. Montessori in charge of a state-supported slum school in the San Lorenzo quarter of Rome which had 60 children aged 3 to 6 from poor families. The news of the unprecedented success of her work in this Casa dei Bambini "House of Children" soon spread around the world, people coming from abroad to see the children for themselves.

Invited to the USA by Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and others, Dr. Montessori spoke at Carnegie Hall in 1915. She was invited to set up a classroom at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, where spectators watched twenty-one children, all new to this Montessori Method, behind a glass wall for four months. The only two gold medals awarded for education went to this class, and the education of young children was altered forever.

In Rome Dr. Montessori developed the Montessori program for the elementary years for the child from 6-12. She began, as elementary classes do today, with the required curriculum of Italy of her time. She adapted the traditional teacher-taught subjects in the arts and science so that the children could use materials to guide their open-ended research and to follow their individual interests, working to a much higher level than was previously thought possible for children of this age.

Dr. Montessori lived in many European countries before returning to Italy at the end of World War II. She died on May 6, 1952 in Noordwijk, Holland.

Over 7,000 schools around the world have been named after her and continue her legacy. In the 1990s before the launch of the euro, the Italian government replaced Marco Polo in the Mille Lire (1,000) paper currency note putting the picture of Dr. Maria Montessori.

Learning about our origins can be an important legacy to our children, after all memories are not used to remember the lost time, but to start again, knowing that losing our roots inevitably leads to a loss in our identity as people who live, think and love.

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