The Montessori Movement in Interwar Europe: New Perspectives 3031140710, 9783031140716

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The Montessori Movement in Interwar Europe New Perspectives Christine Quarfood

The Montessori Movement in Interwar Europe “Christine Quarfood describes the history of the Montessori movement during the interwar years and manages to create a detailed and balanced picture…The combination of biography, history of international reception and social-­historical contextualization is a much-needed supplement to the Montessori research so far.” —Christina Rothen, University of Zurich, Switzerland “This study expands the historiography on Montessori as a single actor to the diverse movement that surrounded her, and shows how pedagogical considerations, cultural critic ideas and the political will to change society intersected in an international educational movement.” —Emma Wikström, Örebro University, Sweden

Christine Quarfood

The Montessori Movement in Interwar Europe New Perspectives

Christine Quarfood Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion University of Gothenburg Gothenburg, Sweden

ISBN 978-3-031-14071-6    ISBN 978-3-031-14072-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14072-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

This work is the result of a research project funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. Several productive research visits to Italy were realised through grants awarded by the Fondazione Famiglia Rausing. The staff of the Archivio Centrale dello Stato in Rome, the Opera Nazionale Montessori in Rome, the Istituto Svedese di studi classici in Rome and the Istituto Pasquali-Agazzi in Brescia offered invaluable assistance. Financial support for the translation of this work was generously provided by the Magnus Bergvall Foundation; the Åke Wiberg Foundation; the Sven & Dagmar Salén Foundation; the Lars Hierta Memorial Foundation; the King Gustaf VI Adolf Fund for Swedish Culture as well as the Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion at the University of Gothenburg.

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Contents

1 S  ituating Montessori  1 2 T  he Invisible Montessori Teacher 31 3 I nfluencing Public Opinion 53 4 I ndividual Work: British Montessorism 65 5 The Call of Education 93 6 Politicisation of Italian Montessorism129 7 O  pera Nazionale Montessori169 8 I mperial and Pacifist Visions219 9 M  ontessorism Without Montessori257 T  imeline291 I ndex305 vii

About the Author

Christine Quarfood  is Professor of History of Ideas at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Publications include Condillac la statue et l’enfant. Philosophie et pédagogie au siècle des Lumières (2002) and Positivism med mänskligt ansikte. Montessoripedagogikens idéhistoriska grunder (2005). Her research focuses on the intersection between science, politics and educational ideas.

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Abbreviations

Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Roma (ACS) SPD.CO 1922–1943, b.288, f. 15279/1

Segreteria particolare del duce. Carteggio ordinario 1922–1943. SPD.CO 1922–1943, b.635, f. 204359 Segreteria particolare del duce. Carteggio ordinario 1922–1943, Sorge Giuliana, Insegnante Roma. SPD.CO 1922–1943, b.1411, f. 513603 Segreteria particolare del duce. Carteggio ordinario 1922–1943, Belsito Orazia e marito Prini G. M. Giovanni. PCM 1932, f.14.3.5911 Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri 1932, Congressi Internazionali Montessori, Copenhagen (Danimarca), Nizza (Francia). PCM 1934–1936, f.14.3.415, sf.1 Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri 1934–1936, Congressi Internazionali Montessori 1931 e 1932. PCM 1934–1936, f.14.3.415, sf.2 Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri 1934–1936, Roma Congresso Internazionale Montessori, 1934. xi

xii Abbreviations

PCM 1934–1936, f.5.1.2069, sf.2

PCM 1946, f.2.1.88170

PCM 1947, f.10.3.11–105562

MI, PP 1932–1938, b.859

Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri 1934–1936, Roma “Opera Montessori”, Presidenza dell’Opera Montessori. Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri 1946, Montessori Dott.ssa Maria, Trattamento speciale di quiescenza. Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri 1947, Ministero Pubblica Istruzione, schema di DECRETO riguardante la concessione alla Dottoressa Maria Montessori, in riconoscimento delle sue alte benemerenze nel campo educativo. Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione generale della Pubblica Sicurezza, Polizia politica 1932–1938, Montessori.

Montessori Journals, Interwar Period The Call of Education The Call of Education, Psycho-pedagogical Journal, International Organ of the Montessori Movement (1924–1925) L’Idea Montessori L’Idea Montessori, organo dell’Opera Nazionale Montessori (1927–1929) Montessori Montessori, Pubblicazione mensile dell’ente morale Opera Montessori (1931) Montessori, Rivista Montessori, Rivista bimestrale dell’Opera Montessori (1932) Opera Montessori Opera Montessori, bolletino bimestrale (1934)

Organisations AEA AEI AMI BIE

Auto Education Allies Associazione Educatrice Italiana Association Montessori Internationale Bureau International d’Éducation

 Abbreviations 

CNM INC NEF NIE NMV ONB ONM ONMI PNF SAMM SMG SMI UISE UN

Comitato Nazionale Montessori Indian National Congress New Education Fellowship New Ideals in Education Nederlandse Montessori Vereniging Opera Nazionale Balilla Opera Nazionale Montessori Opera Nazionale per la Maternità ed Infanzia Partito Nazionale Fascista Società degli Amici del Metodo Montessori Schweizerischen Montessori Gesellschaft Società Montessori Internazionale Union International de Secours aux Enfants United Nations

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1 Situating Montessori

1.1 Introduction The Italian physician and educationalist Maria Montessori (1870–1952) rose to international fame at the beginning of the twentieth century. Her Casa dei bambini experiment, initiated in 1907, soon became front-page news across the world. Montessori paved the way for a more individualised, child-centred approach to education by means of an innovative method based on interactive teaching aids. The story of the Montessori method’s success has been told many times: the way it started as a small-scale social experiment in the slums of Rome, and how within only a few years it developed into a large-scale project involving schools and Montessori societies all over the world. Two years after the opening of the first Casa dei bambini preschool, a book on the method was published, and the first of many Montessori teacher training courses was held. The 1912 English edition—The Montessori Method: Scientific Pedagogy as applied to Child Education in the Children’s Houses—was preceded by an intense media campaign and followed by Montessori’s lecture tour of the United States in 1913. But it was in the context of interwar Europe that the Montessori movement came to have its greatest impact.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Quarfood, The Montessori Movement in Interwar Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14072-3_1

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In the attempts to explain the remarkable dynamics of this movement, its rapid expansion and its many followers there has of course been an emphasis on its leader—Montessori—and her charismatic personality and entrepreneurial and marketing skills. These factors, in combination with her ability to attract media attention, certainly contributed to the Montessori movement’s success. Not only educational journals but also daily newspapers and popular magazines paid tribute to the Italian “educational wonder-worker”.1 On the other hand, it could also be claimed that there would never have been such a hype around Montessori had she not proposed new solutions to age-old educational and teacher–pupil interaction problems. Many researchers’ attempts to explain the Montessori phenomenon point to the innovative nature of her field-tested didactic method and the way the scientific design of her carefully prepared school environment and interactive materials shifted the focus from teacher to learner, thus enabling children to take charge of their own learning process.2 No doubt both these approaches—the biographical as well as the more method-centred—are relevant to the evaluation of the complex Montessori phenomenon. There is, however, an important third dimension that previous researchers have tended to underestimate. Montessori did not, after all, develop her educational ideas in splendid isolation; she had the support of an entire movement. Although Montessori had a solid background in the experimental sciences—medicine and anthropology—the quest she embarked on when she decided to devote herself to the emancipation of the child led her far away from the ivory tower of university life. She was an intellectual in the public eye who wanted to completely change the way we conceptualise childhood. If her ideas had an impact on society during her lifetime, it was not only because of her entrepreneurial skills or methodological innovations. The cultural critique expressed in her movement’s publications, highlighting far-reaching issues concerning children’s place in society, was equally important. As a freelance movement leader in direct contact with her support groups, Montessori aimed higher than simply accomplishing a teaching reform. If entrepreneurship and a sober business sense were necessary to the movement’s survival, it was Montessori’s more adventurous side—her charismatic personality and ability to rouse public opinion—that ensured

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the movement’s influence in the wider public debate. Apart from the method itself, the Montessori movement presented what is best described as a world view of sorts. In the media debate of the interwar period, Montessori’s educational ideas were sometimes referred to as an -ism, rather like feminism or Freudianism. Frequently used descriptively, “Montessorism” designated the broader world view, social agenda and spirit of Montessori education. A culture-critical concern for age-related power conflicts was a vital component of this worldview; the child was oppressed and had to be liberated. The tension between the generations—between adults and children—was spoken of in terms of a war. The ambition to overcome various dichotomies—not only that between adults and children or between war and peace but also the more fundamental nature–culture duality—was typical of Montessorism in general. Interaction between biological and social factors was a central assumption. On the one hand, one had to respect the child’s biological liberty— its freedom to develop its inner potential at its own pace. On the other hand, the child’s spiritual energies could only be liberated in a prepared environment in which obstacles to the optimal development of the creative life force had been removed. The Montessori movement gained momentum at a time of deep social and political unrest—the period between two world wars. Its impact on public opinion was partly due to its utopian message about new children in a new world—a message that responded to the hopes of many groups in society. However, this creed of Montessorism—that the liberation of the child would pave the way for a new and better world—contrasted in its suggestive ambiguity with the rigorous method offered by the movement. While in terms of methodology the movement gave clear instructions for the proper use of the didactic materials, the organisation of the school environment and the teacher’s task, its vision of the liberated child—the very heart of the method programme—was less clear. What exactly did the child have to be liberated from and what was the ultimate purpose of this liberation? Views on this differed, especially in terms of the ideological implications of the concept of freedom the movement promoted. Most Montessori research has been conducted by educationalists who have been assessing the method’s strengths and weaknesses, its relevance

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today and its relationship to other educational programmes. More recently there has been a growing interest in the historical aspects of the organisational network associated with Montessori. Several studies have explored the reception of the Montessori movement in different national contexts, for example in the United States, Switzerland and Australia. Research has focused on pioneering achievements in connection with the establishment of schools and national Montessori societies. Italian researchers have also looked at important aspects of the cultural milieu in which the Montessori method first appeared, with an emphasis on the intellectual climate of positivist medical science and anthropology, as well as the feminist and peace movements.3 A more comprehensive overview of the Montessori movement and its development over time is offered by the many Montessori biographies that have been published. Most of them focus primarily on the Montessori movement’s pedagogical achievements without paying much attention to the wider issues relevant to the debates in which the movement participated. Rita Kramer’s seminal biography of Montessori, published in the 1970s, is an exception to this rule, as it discusses culture-critical and political aspects of the movement’s message. Her sources were, however, limited to what she could find in the AMI archive—mostly newspaper cuttings. She never visited any of the archives in Italy, and her presentation of Montessori’s published works focused primarily on The Montessori Method.4 This book places the Montessori movement’s message about the liberation of the child within the wider European debate during the interwar period. It investigates the impact of the movement’s cultural critique and the way Montessorism—the movement’s special world view and social agenda—lent itself to a wide variety of interpretations. By means of a close reading of Montessori’s publications as well as articles published by her supporters in the movement’s journals, I have attempted to reconstruct the movement’s message. Central to this investigation are the following questions: What were the issues the Montessori movement brought to the table? What grand narratives did the movement present about the development of modern society and the child’s psychosocial situation? What types of solutions were suggested? How did the movement position itself within the broader debate in relation to other

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movements and currents at the time? How was the Montessori movement’s message received in different contexts? On one level this book could be read as an intellectual biography, as it traces the development and gradual radicalisation of Montessori’s ideas, as well as the inspiration from a wide range of intellectual traditions including evolutionary biology, clinical hygienism, feminism, pacifism, psychodynamics and Catholicism, to name a few. However, unlike the approach adopted for conventional biographies, I have not tried to cover Montessori’s whole life. I have instead limited my investigation to the period during which the European Montessori movement was advancing—from around the start of World War I until the mid-1930s. As of 1936 the situation deteriorated dramatically. The movement was banned in both Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. This was also the situation in Austria after the Anschluss in 1938. The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) marked the end of Montessorism in Spain, as Montessori was forced to leave her home in Barcelona and go into exile. She was based in India between 1939 and 1946, which also meant that she was removed from the European cultural debate. Montessori’s literary output after 1934 is thus outside the scope of this study. The same goes for her early articles and scientific publications written during the formative phase preceding the 1907 Casa dei bambini experiment, which I covered in a previous study published in 2005. It has not been my aim to chronicle every Montessori society in Europe, but rather to focus on a few cultural milieus in which Montessorism had a great impact during the period studied. The Italian case study is the most detailed. It is based on a vast body of archival material and includes a reconstruction of the reception of Montessorism in the Italian educational press as well as close readings and contextualisations of most of the Italian Montessori Society’s publications between 1913 and 1934.5 Chapter 1 of The Montessori Movement in Interwar Europe outlines Montessori’s early scientific career, the birth of her movement and her rapid rise to fame in the years preceding World War I. The ways in which Montessori’s Casa dei bambini differed from other contemporary preschool programmes are also discussed. In Chap. 2 I reflect on the disciplinary effect of Montessori education, so admired by her contemporaries, and to what extent the new teacher role devised by Montessori

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contributed to this effect. Chapter 3 develops the argument about the special dynamics of the Montessori movement and its social agenda. Chapter 4 deals with the British version of Montessorism, in which “individual work” became the catchword. Chapter 5 concerns developments on the Continent, focusing on the psychopedagogical concepts of Montessorism and its critique of parental power as presented in the movement’s Dutch and Austrian publications. Chapters 6–9 shed new light on the fascistisation of Italian Montessorism and the problematic Montessori/Mussolini alliance in 1924–1934. Central to this investigation is the question of how it was at all possible to market an educational method that promoted the liberation of the child after 1926, when dictatorship had been established.

1.2 Montessori’s Early Medical Career Maria Montessori was born in Chiaravalle on the east coast of Italy on 31 August 1870 as the only child of a middle-class family. Her father, Alessandro Montessori (1832–1915), was an accountant working for the state-run tobacco factories. In 1866 he married Renilde, née Stoppani (1840–1912). After some years of moving from region to region inspecting factories, Alessandro reached the peak of his civil-service career when he was accepted for a post at the Ministry of Finance in 1875, and the family moved to the Italian capital, Rome, which had been incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy the year Montessori was born.6 Montessori grew up in the new Italy that emerged after unification in 1861. The Italian statesmen wanted to create a strong, competitive nation that could assert itself internationally, but they were not sure where to begin. Notwithstanding political unification, Italy remained a fragmented country. There were great tensions between state and church, and between the ruling elite and the people. A wide social and economic gap separated the industrialised north from the poor agrarian south. Language barriers and widespread illiteracy were impediments to integration; mortality and crime rates were high. This problem of failed integration was described as follows in the statesman Massimo d’Azeglio’s posthumously published memoirs (1867): “Italy has been created, but unfortunately not the

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Italians.” In 1896 this statement was rephrased by the former minister of education, Ferdinando Martini, to harmonise with a wider initiative aimed at educating Italians: “We have made Italy. Now we must make Italians.”7 This idea of creating a new and superior kind of human being was not only part of the Italian nation-building project but was typical of the general cultural climate of fin-de-siècle Europe. Despite its roots in Christian doctrine the “new man” trope had by this time become secularised under the influence of Nietzschean ideas and sociopolitical reformism. Montessori’s formative phase occurred at a time of great hope for the future in terms of what could be achieved through social engineering and positivist human science. Thanks to a law that in 1883 gave Italian women access to technical secondary education it was possible for Montessori to choose the science route. Defying restrictive gender conventions, she studied engineering at the Regia Scuola Tecnica Michelangelo Buonarotti and the Regio Istituto Tecnico Leonardo da Vinci, with mathematics as her favourite subject. In 1890, yet again defying social conventions, Montessori enrolled at the University of Rome, La Sapienza, opting for a medical career. At that time only five Italian women had obtained a medical degree.8 Montessori’s career choice reveals an interest in social issues. Advances in bacteriology had solved the mystery of infectious diseases in the 1880s and revealed the connection between extreme poverty and epidemics. The issue of clearing up the slums was added to the political agenda in the wake of Robert Koch’s discovery of the bacterium that causes cholera in 1883. Several of the professors Montessori studied under at La Sapienza were also politicians promoting social-liberal reforms. The positivist ethos within the fields of medicine and human sciences—the physical and moral regeneration of the population—shaped Montessori’s outlook on life.9 Experimental hygiene based on bacteriological research was mobilised in order to cure the ills of a nation plagued by cholera, malaria and pellagra. Late-nineteenth-century preventive medicine also sought to combat social ills. Crime rates were particularly high in Italy, and scientists debated whether delinquency and antisocial behaviour had their roots in environmental or hereditary factors. Inspired by concepts of mental

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hygiene, Montessori specialised in the field of neuropsychiatry. Her first contribution to science—the doctoral dissertation that qualified her as a Doctor of Medicine in July 1896—added new clinical observations to the controversy regarding hallucinations. Montessori’s twenty case studies described patients with persecution mania who experienced contrasting hallucinations in the form of simultaneous visions of angels, devils and other phenomena; or they heard critical and encouraging voices at the same time. In line with a hypothesis proposed by her supervisor, Assistant Professor Sante de Sanctis, Montessori argued for a strictly psychological explanation, thereby rejecting the physiological hypothesis. Overactivity of the associative capacity, rather than actual brain damage, was the most likely cause of such hallucinations, she claimed. Sante de Sanctis presented Montessori’s results at the ninth Italian psychiatry congress in Florence in 1896.10 Immediately after graduating Montessori worked at a number of Rome hospitals, and as of 1897 at the university’s psychiatric clinic. Montessori also opened a private clinic. By this time the first wave of feminism had reached Italy, and together with like-minded women such as Rosy Amadori, editor of Vita femminile, Montessori became involved in the Associazione femminile Romana, a women’s group affiliated to the International Peace Bureau in support of universal disarmament. Montessori’s breakthrough in the public debate came in connection with the International Women’s Congress in Berlin in September 1896. The journalists covering the congress were charmed by the young Italian delegate, but they were more interested in her pleasant demeanour than in what she had to say. In her speech Montessori gave an account of the difficult living conditions experienced by Italian working-class women. Even though they made up almost half the country’s factory workers, they earned barely half the wages paid to men. As a social liberal feminist Montessori was positive about protective legislation. However, simply introducing shorter working days would just aggravate the problem if the demand for equal pay for equal work was not met.11 Montessori enthusiastically participated in the public debate around the turn of the century. In 1899 her lecture “La donna nuova”—The New Woman—fiercely condemned the male researchers who by means of pseudo-scientific arguments tried to belittle women. There was no end to

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what they could come up with, stating, for example, that women were like big children, or that studying weakens the reproductive system, turning women into “human neuters, sexless beings”. But science should not be rejected just because male scientists were prejudiced against women, claiming they were inferior to men. A scientific feminism that counteracted gender bias by presenting evidence based on facts and took up the fight against social inequalities was the way forward. That same year Montessori was asked to represent Italy at a major congress organised by the International Council of Women in London. She was also actively involved in the Italian campaign for women’s suffrage that came to the fore in 1904.12 In close collaboration with her colleague Giuseppe Ferruccio Montesano at the Roman Psychiatric Clinic, Montessori committed herself to the cause of children with mental disabilities. Locked up in psychiatric institutions, these “feeble-minded” children had received no adequate care whatsoever. Psychiatry professor Clodomiro Bonfigli raised the issue in parliament in 1897, proposing the establishment of special medical-pedagogical institutes for this disadvantaged group. Although his proposal was voted down, the subsequent campaign for the rehabilitation of “mentally defectives”—in which Montessori played a prominent role—proved successful. During lecture tours, in articles and at various conferences she stressed the urgency of this issue. Failing at school, antisocial behaviour and juvenile delinquency were in fact different manifestations of degenerate hereditary deficiencies. The constitutionally weak could, however, profit from corrective treatment achieved by combining methods of sensory training and mental hygiene. As Montessori explained during a campaign lecture in 1899, medical-pedagogical institutes offering special education had already been established in other countries, and it was now time for Italians—“the proud protectors of posterity”—to also listen to the “voice of the degenerate child”, and to “lead him to redemption and regeneration”.13 In 1900 Montessori and Montesano were appointed codirectors of the Scuola Magistrale Ortofrenica, which opened that year in Rome. Montessori was well prepared. After the London congress in 1899 she had spent some time at the Bicêtre hospital in Paris, where she learnt how the method of special education once devised by Jean Itard (1774–1838)

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and Edouard Séguin (1812–1880) was further developed in hygienistic terms by Désiré Magloire Bourneville (1840–1909)—as of 1879 head of the Bicêtre department for children with mental disabilities. Central to this method was a set of hands-on materials: didactic tools that systematically stimulated the senses, thus strengthening the cognitive capacities. The Orthophrenic Institute in Rome offered not only institutional care but also teacher training. The curriculum included courses in the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system and the sensory organs, as well as in psychiatry. Montessori led the more practical course in the methodology of clinical pedagogy, which was presented in a manual entitled Riassunto delle lezioni di didattica della Prf.ssa Montessori (1900).14 It might seem as if Montessori had now reached her goal, but by the end of 1901 she had already left the institute. Her relationship with Montesano had not been merely professional. In fact they had a child together—a son born in 1898 who was hidden away in the countryside. When Montesano broke off their relationship to marry another woman— Maria Aprile—the situation proved untenable, and Montessori had to go.15 As one chapter closed, another one opened. Montessori now decided to venture into the field of anthropology as applied to the school environment. With Giuseppe Sergi (1841–1936) as her mentor she carried out research on schoolchildren, trying to establish correlations between school performance, social status and physiological factors, including craniological measurements. She also attended university courses in pedagogy and experimental psychology. Like his close friend Cesare Lombroso, Sergi was an adherent of sociobiological Darwinism, and he developed the Lombroso programme of criminal anthropology in pedagogical terms. Although he shared Lombroso’s belief in an innate criminal type as a kind of throwback to an earlier primitive stage of evolution, he had greater faith in the positive effects of a rational education. In his book Educazione ed istruzione. Pensieri (1892) he claimed that those fighting for the renewal of the school system were also fighting for the regeneration of humanity.16 In 1904 Montessori qualified to teach at university, and between 1906 and 1910 she lectured in pedagogical anthropology at the recently established pedagogical department of the University of Rome—the Scuola

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pedagogica. She also gave lectures on hygiene and anthropology at a women’s teacher training college—the Regio Istituto Superiore di Magistero Femminile in Rome. As is clear from Montessori’s published lectures Antropologia Pedagogica (1910), her perspective as an anthropologist was firmly anchored in the paradigm of positivist science. Her focus was on the detection of anomalies—deviations from normal development. Like Sergi she believed it was possible to counteract degenerative influences—social as well as biological—through rational primary-­ education methods, and she shared his belief in the scientific value of precise anthropometrical investigations of physical shapes and measures, such as facial-angle measurements and assessments of morphological skull-shape irregularities. Later discredited for its crude psychophysical materialism and its link to the pseudo-scientific race-classification project, this research programme still exerted a major influence on the fin-de-­ siècle life sciences. This was the heyday of materialistic positivism. Although Montessori would soon distance herself from the exaggerations of positivist anthropology, Rita Kramer rightly points out that: It trained an observer like Montessori to look at things. It further reinforced the habit, begun with the study of medicine, and clinical training, of observing, comparing, recording, which she would eventually transfer from the study of physical forms and structures to the study of behavior.17

1.3 The Casa dei bambini Experiment In 1906 Montessori was invited to cooperate in a social-housing project in the Roman slum district of San Lorenzo. Edoardo Talamo, manager of the real-estate company Istituto Romano dei Beni Stabili, had come up with the idea of offering the tenants preschools in the apartment buildings in which they lived. The first Casa dei bambini opened at 58 Via dei Marsi on 6 January 1907. Having been given free rein to draw up the educational programme, Montessori initiated an experiment designed to answer questions of psychological and pedagogical relevance. On the one hand, she wanted the Children’s House to be “an experimental field for the study of man”, where children’s normal tendencies, actions and

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reactions could be observed. This meant freedom of movement in an environment with child-sized furniture and a minimum of adult interference. On the other hand, freedom had to be combined with opportunities for self-development. To meet the educational needs of the preschool children, it was necessary to offer them optional tasks. But instead of simply reproducing the standard curriculum inspired by Froebel, with its focus on fantasy play and imaginative group games, Montessori radically transformed preschool education.18 The introduction into the preschool context of instruments and exercises that had previously only been used in the clinical context of special education was especially innovative. Montessori’s intention in transferring sensory education from the clinic to the nursery was to investigate how ordinary children responded to a method that stimulated the cognitive development of children with major learning difficulties. She wanted to test whether “similar methods applied to normal children would develop or set free their personality in a marvellous and surprising way.” A vast array of special-education tools was presented to the children during the first year of the Casa dei bambini experiment, but only the ones that sparked the children’s spontaneous interest became part of the Montessori set of didactic materials. As Montessori also pointed out in the book that presented her method—Il metodo della pedagogia scientifica applicato all’educazione infantile nelle Case dei bambini (1909)—the didactic materials once devised by Séguin frequently had to be modified during the experimental process.19 Montessori’s entire world view changed as a result of her experiment. Deeply impressed by the sustained attention and remarkable self-­ discipline of the Casa dei bambini children, she questioned prevalent theories of child psychology as well as outmoded pedagogical methods and stereotyped notions of children as being boisterous and messy. The sociobiological degeneration theory that she had previously embraced was now replaced by the educationally more fruitful concept of “biological liberty”. As Montessori explained in Il Metodo (1909), this key concept was inspired by the evolutionary theory of Hugo de Vries, yet the ideal of normality remained paramount. However, it was now a question of promoting the normalisation of the child rather than applying

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corrective treatments. By working diligently with the Montessori apparatus children could develop their potential in the best possible way.20 The first proselytes were recruited at the time of the San Lorenzo experiment. One of them was the musically gifted teacher Anna Maria Maccheroni (1876–1965), who was later to write the first biography of Montessori. She made a significant contribution as Montessori’s right-­ hand woman and was head of the Umanitaria Society’s first Casa dei bambini in Milan, which was inaugurated on 18 October 1908. Umanitaria was a philanthropic organisation that ran public-housing and cultural institutions for workers in an effort to promote self-help among the residents. As of 1911 Umanitaria also published the journal La Coltura Popolare. Socialists within Umanitaria’s management appreciated the scientific side of the Montessori method as well as the promotion of practical tasks instead of play and aesthetical fantasies. The self-help objective was another common denominator.21 During this pioneering phase in the history of the Montessori movement, support was also offered by women from Rome’s social elite. Among them were Marquise Maria Maraini Guerrieri Gonzaga and Baroness Alice Hallgarten Franchetti. Alice and Leopold Franchetti financed the printing of Il Metodo in 1909 and made their country estate Villa Montesca in Città di Castello available for the first Montessori teacher training course, which took place between 1 August and 12 September 1909. That same year collaboration with the Suore Francescane Missionarie di Maria was initiated. A Casa dei bambini for orphans who had survived the 1908 Messina earthquake was opened at their convent at Via Giusti 14 in Rome. It served as a demonstration class for the training courses held in 1910 and 1911. Support was also offered by the mayor of Rome, Ernesto Nathan, and the minister of education, Luigi Credaro. The former’s Blocco Popolare—a coalition of liberals, republicans and socialists that in 1907 won a majority of the seats on the City Council of Rome—invested in experimental classes and municipal Montessori teacher training courses. The minister of education granted Montessori leave of absence from her teaching post at the Magistero Femminile in Rome, to allow her to develop her method for elementary schools. The boundary-crossing nature of the Montessori method came to the fore during these initial years, there being no lack of noble patrons, socialist

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workers’ associations, representatives of the Church or government ministers.22 By the eve of World War I Montessori had become famous for her innovative educational method. Several factors contributed to the rapid internationalisation of her movement. As the Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig asserts in The World of Yesterday (1942), the faith in progress before World War I was so strong that it had almost become a religion, whose gospels seemed to be proved by the miracles of science and technology, transforming everyday life through inventions such as electric street lighting, telephones and aircraft. Montessori’s didactic apparatus was celebrated as yet another great invention—a feat of educational engineering.23 The clinical approach also helped make the Montessori method a viable alternative. As a clinical physician and anthropologist, Montessori was able to contribute scientific know-how and add new impulses to the field of pedagogy. She stressed the importance of systematically documenting pupil observations, including their progress and setbacks, in line with hospital patients’ case records. Moreover, Montessori ascribed an almost therapeutic function to the didactic materials. The peace of mind necessary for a more harmonious development of the self could be achieved through use of these tools. The press was of course helpful in popularising Montessori’s message and establishing her image as an “educational wonder-worker”. In the United States the hype surrounding Montessori knew no bounds. McClure’s Magazine’s promotional campaign, launched in 1911, prepared the ground for her American lecture tour in 1913, during which she was greeted by the New York Tribune as “the most interesting woman in Europe”. She returned to the United States several times during World War I to lead teacher training courses. In 1913, shortly after the death of her mother Renilde, Montessori was also reunited with her son Mario, who had been raised by foster parents.24 However, this first wave of American Montessori enthusiasm ebbed after the war. Serious tension between Montessori and the leaders of the Montessori Educational Association led to the final collapse of the American Montessori movement. There was also great rivalry on the part of the educational progressivists John Dewey and William Heard

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Kilpatrick, who dominated the public-school scene in the United States. In 1914 Kilpatrick delivered a devastating critique, claiming that Montessori’s sensory-training programme was based on an obsolete transfer-of-training theory, which had been challenged by Edward Lee Thorndike’s behaviourist stimuli-response theory.25 With Europe all but torn apart in the protracted two-front war of 1914–1918, neutral Spain offered the budding Montessori movement a safe haven. For several years Montessori cooperated with the Catalan government and representatives of the Catholic Church linked to the Barcelona orphanage La Maternidad. The Montessori pioneer Anna Maria Maccheroni had arrived in 1915 to start up the Escola Modelo Montessori—one of the first schools where Montessori’s advanced method for the elementary school level was put into practice. In L’Autoeducazione nelle scuole elementari (1916)—published in English translation as The Advanced Montessori Method the following year—Montessori explained how self-education could be implemented in elementary schools without lowering teaching standards. The children studied grammar, reading, arithmetic and geometry with the help of the advanced set of didactic materials. Aesthetic subjects were also included in the curriculum in the form of drawing, music and metrics.26 In Spain Montessori conducted a religious-instruction experiment, which she documented in I bambini viventi nella chiesa (1922). The starting point was a 1910 papal decree on lowering the age of first Holy Communion. Because of the lower age of seven, a new pedagogic approach was needed for teaching catechism. In order to facilitate children’s understanding of the devotional practices of the Church, Montessori set up a miniature chapel at Escola Model Montessori, where the children could acquaint themselves with this sacred environment. Just as at the Casa dei bambini, the chapel was fitted out with child-size furnishings. Montessori also claimed there was continuity between the preschool pedagogy the children were accustomed to and religious instruction in the chapel. In both cases it was a matter of learning how to move with dignity and restraint, how to handle didactic objects in preschool and liturgical objects in the chapel as well as how to achieve inner peace and conduct silent contemplation. Like the Montessori method, Catholic liturgy

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focused on sensory information such as colours, light, scents and sounds, which assisted Catholics in their experience of the religious mysteries.27 Montessori was undoubtedly a devout Catholic. However, whether she could be called a Catholic educationalist is arguable. Pope Benedict XV did bless Il Metodo, and several of Montessori’s disciples—including Edwin Mortimer Standing in England and Sofia Cavaletti in Italy— developed the Catholic didactic method outlined in I bambini. Others claim that the Barcelona experiment was a special case within the otherwise religiously neutral—and thus universally applicable—method. Augusto Scocchera has gone so far as to name the decade during which Montessori published her writings on Catholic education “the confessional parenthesis”. One of the reasons he mentions is the fact that in the 1950 edition of Il Metodo, Montessori ended the chapter on religious education by announcing that it was no longer part of the Casa dei bambini programme, as it was too closely linked to the Catholic liturgy and thus could not be applied in other religious contexts.28

1.4 The Preschool Debate Preceding Casa dei bambini Montessori’s Casa dei bambini was launched as an alternative to the nineteenth-­century preschool institutions that still dominated the educational landscape around 1900: the kindergarten preschool, started by Friedrich Froebel in the 1840s, and infant schools introduced in the 1820s by philanthropists such as Robert Owen and Ferrante Aporti. The infant school model offered oral preparatory teaching. Although books were not used, the method was in the form of traditional teacher-led schooling with drills, reciting in unison and memorising of facts. Elementary alphabetisation, civic education and religious instruction were central to the Aporti infant school programme. Play during breaks was allowed as a form of recreation but was not ascribed any educational value.29 Friedrich Froebel’s 1839 opening of his first kindergarten in Thüringen marked the beginning of a dynamic period in the history of preschools.

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Until then everything had revolved around teaching methods and curriculum content. The focus now shifted to approaches involving developmental psychology. According to Froebel each stage of development was associated with distinct needs. Knowledge assimilation was the most important factor for children of school age, while the direct opposite was true for younger children. It was essential for small children to be allowed to give vent to their creative impulses and express themselves through crafts and aesthetic pursuits that revealed their spiritual potential. The child’s inner self was manifested through play, and its feelings and thoughts were given shape. This expressive play phase was essential to the formation of the child’s identity.30 Froebel claimed that his kindergarten model bridged the gap between the private and public spheres. All children, regardless of class, needed a preschool education as a complement to family life. Learning skills such as reading and writing were not part of the kindergarten curriculum. All kinds of games and play as well as fairy tales were instead mobilised to stimulate the creative imagination. To this end Froebel also designed a set of educational tools, or “gifts”. Although designed in the form of geometric shapes, somewhat similar to the didactic materials devised by Itard and Séguin, Froebel’s gifts were not intended to stimulate rational problem-­solving and analytical skills but rather to enhance aesthetic sensibilities and awareness of symbolic meaning.31 According to Froebel these seemingly simple gifts—a set of building blocks, balls and pieces of paper that could be folded or plaited—offered children insight into the divine Creation. The building blocks could be combined in an infinite number of ways, and with a little imagination could represent everyday objects such as tables and chairs or horses in a stable. The kindergarten teachers participated in these make-believe games, commented on the children’s achievements and offered suggestions on how to build with blocks. The children were to be made aware of the hidden structures in the surrounding world so they could begin to form an idea of a greater whole and feel part of the Creation. It was indeed a beautiful thought—the idea that even the smallest child could reinvent the world by reconstructing it in building blocks. Moreover, the children were asked to make patterns by plaiting coloured strips of paper

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and engage in other exercises aimed at revealing the beauty and harmonious symmetry of the external world.32 Supporters of liberal reform initially welcomed the new play-based method as a liberal alternative to traditional disciplinary methods. However, the number of critical voices increased when towards the end of the nineteenth century the kindergarten movement became more rigid in its application of the Froebelian programme. Ellen Key gave voice to a broadly felt discontent when in The Century of the Child (1900) she condemned the kindergarten system. Many agreed with her critique of the tendency to standardise preschool education—the fact that children were being cast in the same mould. Key compared the kindergartens to factories where children’s souls were made uniform through the cultivation of a team spirit.33 In a series of critical-debate articles published in 1890–1891, Montessori’s mentor, Guiseppe Sergi, pointed out that the Froebel method was not evidence based. There was no doubt that play was important to children’s development—Froebel was right on that account. Unfortunately, what went on in the kindergartens was the reverse. A sophisticated form of dressage was conducted in the guise of play. The child was stripped of its agency and its spontaneous play activities, and became a puppet in the hands of the kindergarten teachers.34 In Educazione ed istruzione. Pensieri (1892)—a book on the school system, which included the previously mentioned articles—Sergi stressed that this method was doomed to fail, not only on account of the far-­ fetched symbolism and the teacher-led games but also because the basic tenets of the method were utterly false—conceptualisation and learning as not suitable for small children. On the contrary, it was during this period in life that the foundation for the child’s entire future character and knowledge acquisition was laid. The brain, whose enormous receptivity during the first years of life enabled language acquisition and adaptation to the surrounding world, had to be stimulated in order to reach its true potential: If the child goes to school during this period of physical and mental development, when the brain’s, the organs’ and the senses’ activities are at their

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peak, it is of course not in order to close their eyes to everything around them or to stop this development.35

According to Sergi the only reason for the success of Froebelism was lack of competition—there was no real alternative. He briefly outlined some guidelines for a scientific preschool pedagogy promoting learning as well as self-guided activity. An excessive amount of knowledge must not be presented, otherwise there was a risk of overtaxing the brain—it would be conditioned to passively receive information. Children must be allowed to work independently at their own pace and process the information on their own. There was no question of introducing formal teaching methods or abstract school subjects. A child at this stage in its development was only capable of learning hands-on everyday skills and acquiring a basic vocabulary. A truly rational method should be simple, precise and analytical: The simple and natural method is to introduce the objects and name them … and that the objects are analysed while the child’s early vocabulary is enriched with designations that relate to the objects or parts of the objects.36

Pending such a science-based preschool pedagogy, Sergi recommended maternal care in the home as being preferable to kindergarten and infant schools. It would at least not obstruct children’s spontaneous manifestations of life. It never occurred to him, however, that mothers might possess valuable knowledge that could contribute to the vitalisation of preschool pedagogy. Sergi’s preschool vision was in many ways the complete opposite to the one Key was to present a few years later. Both based their work on Herbert Spencer’s naturalistic ideas as a corrective against pedantic Froebelism, but they had different opinions on how these ideas should be implemented in terms of childcare. While Sergi argued that preschool teachers were the obvious target group, and recommended greater expert influence on preschool teacher training, Key believed that mothers should be prepared for their role as educators by means of a civilian national-service training course including childcare as well as healthcare. Such motherhood training in combination with a childcare

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allowance would, according to Key, foster a “natural education in the spirit of Rousseau and Spencer … an education through homelife for life”. It would result in a “new generation of educated mothers” capable of “liberating children from the Kindergarten system”.37 Like Froebel, Key embraced play, but not as a path to knowledge about higher metaphysical truths. A harmonious person retained a childlike mind throughout life, and a competent pedagogue knew how to “play with children, live with children, learn from children”.38 Sergi, too, drew attention to the importance of free play, but only for pragmatic reasons. Children spontaneously imitate everything that adults do, and play could be seen as part of their adaptation to reality—a preparation for adult life. Pedagogical play could therefore be recommended at the preschool level. However, play as such had no intrinsic value, merely being a primitive behavioural pattern without any higher purpose—a mechanism for adaptation. If the play went too far, learning could be impaired: And conversely, who does not know that for children the love of play can be deeply damaging to their activities, which are diverted from the serious pursuits they should be engaging in, such as studying? And everyone knows this, everyone, mothers and teachers.39

The sisters Rosa and Carolina Agazzi’s rural kindergarten marked a turning point in the history of Italian childcare. Men had so far monopolised the childcare discourse, even though the sector was in every other respect entirely dominated by women. Preferential right of interpretation was given to clergymen, like Aporti, or scientists such as Sergi. However, at a certain point during the expansion of childcare, when the sector had been consolidated, female preschool teachers were allowed to join the debate. The first Italian trade union for female preschool teachers was formed in 1904, at a time when the Agazzi sisters’ ideas were spreading rapidly throughout Northern Italy.40 The Agazzi sisters’ new method had been presented in conjunction with the first national teachers’ congress in Turin in 1898. Montessori had also attended this congress during her campaign for a medical-­ pedagogical institute. The congress theme was the forming of the “man of the future” through more effective moral education, so the kindergarten

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system was an important item on the agenda. When Rosa Agazzi, who was not used to speaking in public, succumbed to stage fright her lecture had to be read out by someone else. According to Agazzi the crisis of trust in Froebelism was caused by a fixation on the method itself, completely deflecting attention from the Froebelian message about children’s spontaneous activity needs. It was important to find a way back to this original message and only retain the fundamental principle of the uniqueness of the child and the importance of play: Let us condemn the mysticism that surrounds his ideas, do by all means condemn his static exercises, but let us also condemn ourselves unless we cannot recognise in him an educationalist who tries, tests, revaluates, exaggerates, modifies.41

The Agazzi sisters thus proceeded by trial and error. Released from the strict demands for a rigid methodology, they improvised freely, relying only on common sense. The aim of Agazzi’s scuola materna (sometimes referred to as giardine infantile rurale) was largely the same as for Froebel’s kindergarten: all-round development of the child’s capabilities through communal games and creative activities. Great emphasis was placed on social skills, including a mentoring system whereby older children helped younger children to adapt. Efforts were made to make the atmosphere as warm and friendly as possible. The female preschool teacher—the maestra-­madre—was to behave in a motherly way. Household chores— the so-called practical life lessons—were given prominence in the programme, but it was life on the farm, rather than in the middle-class home, that was emulated. The games and practical activities were to be steeped in  local culture and traditions. The Agazzi sisters also wrote songs for children—hymns to the simple pleasures of life in the countryside.42 Instead of the Froebelian play gifts or any other prefabricated material, the Agazzi sisters used simple objects that the children found and brought back to the preschool: little things like buttons, sticks, stones and jars. These objects could be used during didactic lessons on differences in colour, form, weight and other sensory qualities. There was an educational point in that every object was equally useful, nothing being too

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ugly or unimportant. That was how the children learnt to see the great in the small, respect diversity and notice tiny, but important, details.43 By this time the preschool sector represented a female free zone guided by spontaneous action beyond the domain of male rationality. The focus was entirely on child-rearing. Reading, writing and arithmetic were no longer included in the preschool curriculum. With its loosely drawn-up outline the Agazzi method was attractive to an up-and-coming generation of Italian preschool teachers keen to free themselves of the drills typical of the Aporti method and Froebelian formalism. The cost-effective Agazzi method was also much appreciated by school boards, as there was no need for expensive didactic materials or a particularly high teacher-to-­ pupil ratio—the mentor system permitted large groups of children. Teacher training was brief and salaries could be kept low, thanks to the emphasis on household chores and spontaneous maternal improvisation.44 At a time when the preschool sector had been established as a vocational field, furthering children’s play, practical skills and creative pursuits, Montessori chose to go against the grain and emphasise the importance of cognitive training during the child’s formative years. This could of course be interpreted as engaging in activities that were within the remit of the school system, and some contemporary commentators tended to see the Montessori method as an unfortunate return to Aporti’s method—an attempt at reviving infant school curricula. However, these accusations could easily be refuted by referring to the freedom principle, which was central to the Montessori method. Montessori advocated learning in the broadest sense, starting from the child’s own explorations in line with the individual-centred method that Ellen Key had been looking for. Was the Montessori method with its liberal auto-education principle in fact the answer to Key’s prayers? Did Montessori find inspiration in Key’s The Century of the Child, which was translated into Italian in 1906? In her lecture at the first Montessori teacher training course in 1909 Montessori had mentioned Key’s work, and as early as 1906, before the launch of the Casa dei bambini, Montessori briefly referred to Key’s book in a newspaper article.45 For both Montessori and Key there was a utopian dimension to preschool pedagogy. Nietzsche’s superman ideal was reinterpreted in

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pedagogical terms as the creation of a new and superior kind of human being. But while Key believed this could be achieved by means of a far-­ reaching dismantling of public childcare institutions and a return to more home-like arrangements, Montessori was more interested in institutionalising the home. However, this home was not to reproduce existing family structures. It was about creating an entirely new environment adapted to children’s needs—a home in which their development was never impeded. Unlike Key, Montessori fully supported women’s admission to the labour market; in her opinion this step required a childcare system of the highest quality. According to Key, education should not be about regulation and control. One should instead nurture each child’s individual character and encourage harmonious development of its personality. Nietzsche had identified the need for a re-evaluation of fundamental values. But this vision could only be realised if children were allowed to freely develop their potential. Nothing new could come about if children were forced to conform to the prevailing norms. However, in order to unlock this potential it would be necessary to operate in a small-scale setting—a place where every child would be noticed. If dismantling the public childcare institutions proved impossible, they should be organised along the lines of family life, with plenty of time for free play. Moreover, Key believed that psychological observation was the precondition for successful child-­ rearing. By observing “the moods and aptitudes” that were laid bare during free play, mothers and preschool teachers were able to get to know the children in depth and discover the unique potential of each child.46 Montessori largely shared this view of the teacher’s role. It was up to the pedagogues to provide an environment in which children could act independently. The preschool teachers ought to remain in the background and carefully observe the behaviour of each child, but only so as to get to know them better, not to correct failed exercises or assist them in any other way. This non-intervention principle was in stark contrast to Séguin’s method of clinical pedagogy. As Montessori had previously pointed out in a 1901 lecture, when it came to special education results could only be achieved by “first normalising the child and then taming it, conquer it through the suggestive power of the teacher”. The Casa dei bambini experiment was thus a complete turnabout in this respect,

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possibly owing to Montessori shifting her focus to a new target group, as she was now working with preschool children, but she may also have been somewhat influenced by Key’s ideas.47 Looking at the preschool debate, from Aporti to Montessori via Froebel, Key and Sergi, it becomes clear how it fluctuated between learning and play, regulation and freedom in a complex dialectical process. At the Aporti infant schools the emphasis was on learning—a strictly regulated form of learning in accordance with current school practice. Beginning with Froebel, the idea that small children should learn through play became an axiom. Moreover, play was assigned value as an expressive medium in terms of developmental psychology. But kindergarten play was as strictly regulated as the Aporti infant school learning programme. Key pointed out this paradox, and advocated deregulation of play pedagogy—only free play could favour personality development. However, her deregulatory zeal went so far as to advocate a dismantling of public preschool institutions in favour of more informal arrangements. Every dull curriculum and programme should be abolished. Key was not concerned with the fact that such deregulation counteracted the preschool teachers’ professional ambitions, as it was sufficient to let “sensible women” look after the children while they played. Sergi, on the other hand, was to advocate professionalisation of the preschool sector by adopting rational teaching methods based on the positivist human sciences—experimental psychology and anthropology. Montessori, who followed most of Sergi’s recommendations, presented her Casa dei bambini as such a scientific and rational programme of cognitive teaching. However, just as Key had advocated deregulation of play pedagogy, Montessori was to deconstruct traditional teaching methods. The self-­ correcting materials that all but substituted the teacher allowed children to learn on their own. They worked in a focused, purposeful manner with these tools, which were not toys in any sense of the word. The purpose of their work was acquisition of skills rather than knowledge. As a newcomer in the field Montessori challenged the entire tradition of preschool pedagogy when she questioned the hegemony of play. She was not satisfied with deconstructing infant school learning programmes or the play programmes of kindergartens—unlike her mentor, Sergi, she rejected all forms of pedagogical play. According to Montessori the current

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psychological ideas on the nature of the child should be fundamentally re-evaluated. Before she conducted her experiment, educationalists and psychologists had taken it for granted that it was natural for children to want to play. However, Montessori claimed to have proved the opposite with her Casa dei bambini experiment. Montessori children preferred the didactic materials to ordinary toys.48 Children in general were, in fact, trapped in an oppressive play culture, and the Montessori method was there to set them free.

Notes 1. See for instance Gerald L. Gutek, Patricia Gutek, Bringing Montessori to America: S. S. Mc Clure, Maria Montessori and the Campaign to Publicize Montessori Education (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2016). 2. See for instance Angeline Stoll Lillard, Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 3. Gerald L.  Gutek, Patricia Gutek, America’s Early Montessorians: Anne George, Margaret Naumburg, Helen Parkhurst and Adelia Pyle (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), Harold Baumann, Hundert Jahre Montessori-­ Pädagogik 1907–2007. Eine Chronik der Montessori-Pädagogik in der Schweiz (Bern: Haupt Verlag, 2007), Susan Feez, Montessori: The Autralian Story (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2013), Valeria P. Babini, Luisa Lama, Una “donna nuova”. Il femminismo scientifico di Maria Montessori (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000), Erica Moretti, The Best Weapon for Peace: Maria Montessori, Education, and Children’s Rights (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2021). 4. Rita Kramer, Maria Montessori: A Biography (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978). 5. Christine Quarfood, Positivism med mänskligt ansikte. Montessoripedagogikens idéhistoriska grunder, (Stockholm: Symposion, 2005). Some background chapters from the first Swedish edition of my study on the Montessori movement—Christine Quarfood, Montessoris pedagogiska imperium. Kulturkritik och politik i mellankrigstidens Montessorirörelse (Gothenburg: Daidalos, 2017)—have not been included in this revised translation. 6. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 21–23.

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7. Stephania Malia Hom, “On the Origins of Making Italy: Massimo d’Azeglio and Fatta l’Italia bisogna fare gli Italiani”, Italian Culture (31:1, 2013) 1–16. 8. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 31–33, Carmela Covato, “Donne, istruzione e università nell’Italia post-unitaria (1860–1900)”, Scuola e Città (37:8, 1986) 335, Valeria Babini, “Science, Feminism and Education: The Early Work of Maria Montessori”, History Workshop Journal (49:1, 2000) 47. 9. Annalucia Forti Messina, “L’Italia dell’Ottocento di fronte al colera”, Storia d’Italia. Annali, 7, Malattia e medicina (Turin: Einaudi, 1984) 464–467, Christopher Seton-Watson, Italy from Liberalism to Fascism 1870–1925 (London: Methuen, 1967) 90. 10. Babini and Lama, Una “donna nuova”, 44–48, Quarfood, Positivism, 30–32. 11. Maria Montessori, “Über den Lohn der Arbeiterinnen”, Der internationale Kongress für Frauenwerke und Frauenbestrebungen in Berlin 19 bis 26 September 1896. Eine Sammlung der auf dem Kongress Gehaltenen Vorträge und Ansprachen (Berlin: Verlag von Hermann Walther, 1897) 202–212, Babini and Lama, Una “donna nuova”, 44, 49–52. 12. Babini and Lama, Una “donna nuova”, 85–87, 164–197, 231–253, Quarfood, Positivism 37–43, 196–209. 13. Maria Montessori, “Pei fanciulli infelici”, Roma. Rivista politica parlamentare (2:5, 1899) 107, Babini and Lama, Una“donna nuova”, 53–84, Quarfood, Positivism, 83–99. 14. Babini and Lama, Una“donna nuova”, 104–118, Quarfood, Positivism, 130–136. 15. Babini and Lama, Una“donna nuova”, 107–108, 112, Quarfood, Positivism, 35–36, 165. 16. Giuseppe Sergi, Educazione ed Istruzione. Pensieri (Milan: Trevisini, 1892), v, Quarfood, Positivism, 149–179. 17. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 68, Quarfood, Positivism, 180–195, Maria Montessori, Antropologia Pedagogica (Milan: Vallardi, 1910). See also Christine Hofer, Die pädagogische Anthropologie Maria Montessoris  – oder: Die Erziehung zum neuen Menschen (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2001). 18. Renato Foschi, “Science and Culture around the Montessori’s first ‘Children Houses’ in Rome (1907–1915)”, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (44:3, 2008) 238–247, Quarfood, Positivism, 210–228, Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method: Scientific Pedagogy

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as Applied to Child Education in the Children’s Houses: With Additions and Revisions by the Author (New York: Stokes, 1912) vii. In the following chapters I will primarily be referring to this, slightly enlarged edition. 19. Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method, 33, 167–175. 20. Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method, 104–106. The term used by Montessori in Italian was “concetto biologico di libertà in pedagogia”. Libertà, meaning both “liberty” and “freedom”, was in the English edition translated to liberty. Quarfood, Positivism, 233–240. 21. Sante Bucci, Educazione dell’infanzia e pedagogia scientifica, da Froebel a Montessori (Rome: Bulzoni, 1990) 160–165, Babini and Lama, Una“donna nuova”, 197–203, 272–288. 22. Bucci, Educazione, 113–116, 139–145, Babini and Lama, Una“donna nuova”, 204–209, 253–255, Foschi, “Science and Culture”, 247–250. See also Giovanna Alatri, Il mondo al femminile di Maria Montessori: Regine, dame e altre donne (Rome: Fefè Editore, 2015). 23. Stefan Zweig, Världen av igår. En europés minnen, transl. Hugo Hultenberg/Anna Bengtsson (Stockholm: Ersatz, 2011) 19. 24. Gutek and Gutek, Bringing Montessori to America, 28–29, 57–185, Kramer, Maria Montessori: A Biography, 150–165, 184–185. 25. William Heard Kilpatrick, The Montessori System Examined (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914) 31–35, 42–52, 63, Benjamin B.  Wolman, Contemporary Theories and Systems in Psychology (New York: Harper & Bros., 1960) 32–41. 26. Anna Maria Maccheroni, Come conobbi Maria Montessori (Rome: Edizione Vita dell’Infanzia, 1956) 97–113, Maria Montessori, L’Autoeducazione nelle scuole elementari: continuazione del volume Il metodo della pedagogia scientifica applicato all’educazione infantile nelle Case dei Bambini (1916) (Milan: Garzanti,1992). In the following chapters I will be referring to this edition as it, contrary to English translations, in every respect corresponds to the original work published in 1916. 27. Maria Montessori, I bambini viventi nella chiesa: note di educazione religiosa (Naples: Morano, 1922), Eladio Homs, “Maria Montessori Barcelonina”, Maria Montessori, cittadina del mondo, Marziola Pignatari (ed.) (Rome: OMEP, 1967) 257–261, Erica Moretti and Alejandro Mario Dieguez, “I progetti di Maria Montessori impigliati nella rete di mons. Umberto Benigni”, Annali di storia dell’educazione (25:2018) 89–114.

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28. Augusto Scocchera, Maria Montessori. Quasi un ritratto inedito (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1990) 150, 155–160. 29. Gaetano Bonetta, Storia della scuola e delle istituzioni educative: Scuola e processi formativi in Italia dal XVIII al XX secolo (Florence: Giunti, 1997) 155–166, 170–175. 30. Friedrich Fröbel, Die Menschen-Erziehung. Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 2, Erika Hoffmann (ed.) (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1982) 24–27, 31–32, 34–37, 56–59, Otto Friedrich Bollnow, Die Pädagogik der deutschen Romantik. Von Arndt bis Fröbel (Stuttgart: Kolhammer, 1967) 119–126. 31. Friedrich Fröbel, “Entwurf eines Planes zur Begründung und Ausführung eines Kindergartens”, Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 1, Erika Hoffmann (ed.) (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1982) 114–125, Bollnow, Die Pädagogik, 117–118. 32. Friedrich Fröbel, Die Spielgaben. Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 4, Erika Hoffmann (ed.) (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1982), Bollnow, Die Pädagogik, 173–205. 33. Ellen Key, Barnets århundrade, II (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1900) 70–74. 34. Giuseppe Sergi, “Il marionettismo froebeliano”, L’Educazione Nazionale (2:18, 31/1, 1891) 267–269. 35. Sergi, Educazione ed Istruzione, 35. 36. Sergi, Educazione ed Istruzione, 40–41. 37. Sergi, Educazione ed Istruzione, 27, Giuseppe Sergi, “Il marionettismo”, 269, Key, Barnets århundrade, I: 44–45, 106–108, II: 48–49, 65–67. 38. Key, Barnets århundrade II, 105. 39. Giuseppe Sergi, “Le basi dell’educazione Froebeliana”, L’Educazione Nazionale (2:2, 12/10, 1890) 19–21. 40. Enzo Catarsi, L’Educazione del popolo: Momenti e figure dell’Istruzione popolare nell’Italia liberale (Bergamo: Juvenilia, 1985) 192. 41. Rosa Agazzi, “Ordinamento Pedagogico dei Giardini d’infanzia secondo il Sistema di Froebel”, in Rosa Agazzi and Pietro Pasquali, Scritti inediti e rari, Massimo Grazzini (ed.) (Brescia: La Scuola, 1973) 69. 42. Massimo Grazzini, Sulle fonti del Metodo Pasquali-Agazzi e altre questioni. Interpretazioni, testi e nuovi materiali: contribuiti per una storia dell’educazione e della scuola infantile in Italia (Brescia: Istituto di Mompiano, 2006) 435–456, Giuseppe Franzè, Fanciulli oggi, uomini domani: Agazzi, Pizzigoni, Montessori  – itinerari didattici (Rome: Edizioni Scientifiche Magi, 2000) 107–108, 117–118, 126–128, 145–149.

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43. Franzè, Fanciulli oggi, 111, 134–135. 44. Catarsi, L’Educazione, 184–186. 45. Maria Montessori, Corso di pedagogia scientifica (Città di Castello: Società Tip. Editrice, 1909) 8, Maria Montessori, “Lottiamo contro la criminalità”, La Vita (2:249, 8/9, 1906) 3. 46. Key, Barnets århundrade, II, 11–12, 14–15, 63–64, 68–74, Montessori, The Montessori Method, 48–71. 47. Maria Montessori, Norme per una classificazione dei deficienti in rapporto ai metodi speciali di educazione, Relazione al II Congresso Pedagogico Nazionale, excerpt (Naples: Tip. Angelo Trani, 1902) 4. 48. Montessori, The Montessori Method, 167, 300, 370–371, Montessori, Antropologia Pedagogica, 120.

2 The Invisible Montessori Teacher

2.1 The Glass House: Montessori’s Panopticon Montessori presented her Casa dei bambini at the 1915 San Francisco Panama-Pacific International Exposition. A live model class was set up in the Palace of Education consisting of about 30 American preschool children from different social and ethnic backgrounds selected from some 2000 applicants. Only children with no preschool experience were eligible. The demonstration class was exhibited behind a glass wall that offered a full view of the activities inside. In front of the wall were rows of benches that brought a theatre auditorium to mind. Many came to watch Montessori’s model class, which won two gold medals as one of the most popular attractions.1 In addition to her translator and secretary during the California courses, Adelia Pyle, Montessori was accompanied by her son, Mario, and the teacher Anna Fedeli. A new star, the American Helen Parkhurst, also joined the team. She was young and ambitious, and had rapidly advanced to teacher trainer at the Stevens Point State Normal School, after which she was sent to Rome by the Wisconsin school authorities in order to study the Montessori method and Sergi’s anthropology. Montessori delegated the job of leading the model class to Parkhurst © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Quarfood, The Montessori Movement in Interwar Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14072-3_2

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while she focused on leading teacher training courses. During the 4 months that the model class was on display, Parkhurst bravely held the fort inside the glass house for 3 h every day. Fifty years later she remembered the stress of being watched: It was very difficult to look out and see those hundreds of eyes day after day—all those heads, like bunches of grapes. It was like a nightmare. I was giving my all to help get Montessori’s message across, and I was so tired.2

According to the report on the exposition, published in 1921, the visitors gathered in front of the glass house like tourists in front of a fish tank. How, then, were the children affected by being watched day in and day out like fish in an aquarium? “The children appeared to be oblivious to the watching crowds,” wrote the San Francisco Chronicle on 5 August 1915. Remarkably, Montessori’s biographers have taken this indifference for granted. Kramer and Schwegman, as well as the Guteks, have written reams in their attempt to understand the complicated relationship between Montessori and Parkhurst, and on how the latter soon tired of her apprentice role and went her own way. Not even in passing do they question the exposure of the model-class children. Only Maccheroni states in her memoirs that: “It appeared to many as a rather strange undertaking, to expose the children and their teacher to a constantly circulating audience.” Nevertheless, she justifies the transparent building as being an eloquent proof of the strength of Montessori’s conviction. Trabalzini defends the glass-house arrangement by arguing that a glass wall was preferable to a continuous flow of visitors inside the classroom. Behind the glass wall the children could be observed without being disturbed. Scocchera conjectured that the glass house, which was of a typically American design, must have been Parkhurst’s idea, and this notion has been confirmed by Gerald and Patricia Gutek.3 The glass-house incident could be dismissed as a curiosity, simply a concession to the exhibition context. At the same time nothing in this arrangement was contrary to the Montessori method guidelines. I would like to go so far as to argue that this type of staging was typical of all Montessori institutions. The glass-house experience was just as relevant for every Montessori preschool and school in terms of making the

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children visible. The Montessori teacher’s principal task was, after all, to conduct detailed observations of the pupils and to carefully monitor the development of each individual child. The idea was to observe the children without disturbing them. Remarkably, the question of whether this discreet, continuous observation contributed to the Montessori method’s famous disciplinary effect has never been asked. The debate has been more concerned with the presumed positive or negative effects of the didactic materials on the children. The didactic materials, showpieces of the Montessori method, seem to have monopolised attention to such a degree that the teacher’s influence has been overlooked; it has almost become a non-issue within Montessori research. Günter Schulz-Benesch once claimed that the most controversial elements of the Montessori debate in the early 1900s were matters of principle related to the biological, intellectualistic and individualistic aspects of Montessori’s educational programme. Other researchers focus on the central role of the didactic tools in the debate. Montessori did, after all, assign almost miraculous effects to them. The authoritative aura that traditionally characterised the profession was transferred to the teaching aids in Montessori’s system. Criticism of an exaggerated fixation with the materials was a recurring theme within Montessori discourse. For example, in 1958 Rosetta Finazzi Sartor argued in an article that Montessori teacher training assigned far too much importance to correct use of the materials, as if it were a “sacred ritual”.4 The fact that the debate has focused more on the materials than on the teacher’s influence is probably also linked to the non-intervention principle of Montessori pedagogy. In the spirit of Rousseau, Montessori promotes an indirect, negative method whereby the teacher, according to Winfried Böhm, “surrenders the traditional authority of the adult” in order to promote the child’s independent activities. According to the prevailing opinion among both followers and opponents, Montessori toned down the teacher’s importance, instead focusing her attention on the child. Montessori teachers are expected to remain in the background and not place themselves centre-stage. In 1994 Böhm argued that “at a Montessori institution there are no teachers who teach, only adults that help the child to work, to use the materials and the adequate environment, to concentrate and to learn.” According to Carmela Metelli di

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Lallo (1966), Montessori takes the anti-authoritarian stance even further than Rousseau. While Émile’s tutor still exercises a form of indirect influence, the Montessori teacher is merely “present in the room, but deprived of her didactic authority”. However, Metelli di Lallo notes in passing that in their practice Montessori teachers deviate from this non-intervention ideal and appear “less humble and anything but passive”. According to Metelli di Lallo this is simply an inconsistency within Montessori’s educational programme, a discrepancy between formulated ideals and day-­ to-­day performance.5 Nonetheless, some scholars have questioned received ideas about Montessori teachers. According to Enzo Catarsi (1992) previous research has simply not paid enough attention to Montessori’s statements on the role of the teacher. Alongside the non-intervention idea there is an emphasis on the teacher’s proactive role. With a series of Montessori citations that point in many different directions, Catarsi endeavours to stress the complexity of the teacher’s task. Catarsi admits that the emerging image certainly seems contradictory, but at least it refutes the “banal idea according to which Maria Montessori in no uncertain terms was a proponent of indirect education and therefore underestimated the role of the teacher”. Nor does the educational historian Giacomo Cives perceive the Montessori teacher as an unassuming, insignificant person. Only the “teaching function” has been transferred to the didactic materials, not the authority of the teacher, according to Cives. Montessori was no follower of some “extremist anarcoid” laissez-faire pedagogy. To read Montessori’s texts by following a strictly black and white “Manichaean” logic whereby either the teacher or the child has the upper hand completely misses the point. Montessori’s views on the teacher–pupil relationship were dialectic rather than contradictory, says Cives.6 Cives and Catarsi rightly question the Montessori teacher stereotype. In order to offer a more accurate picture, they list the many different tasks the teacher has to undertake. They include not only observations of individual pupils but also moral education, presentation of didactic materials and some control of the pupils’ choice of materials. However, like previous researchers, they fail to reflect upon the effect that the Montessori teacher’s principal task—constant supervision—has on the children. In my opinion this is precisely what the glass-house incident brings into

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sharp focus—the element of power associated with making children visible in this way. Indeed, it is a more subtle exercise of power than that of the traditional authoritarian method since the focus is now on paying attention to the child’s every activity instead of constantly intervening. Montessori’s glass-house setting is not a far cry from the British moral philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s vision of the ideal prison—his Panopticon of 1791. The idea was to create an institution that by means of the organisation of space allows the staff to be “seeing without being seen”. This institution was to be designed so that “the persons to be inspected should always feel themselves as if under inspection, at least as standing a great chance of being so.” Through this innovation—which alludes to the maxim of God’s all-seeing eye—Bentham thought he had achieved a highly sophisticated disciplinary machinery, suitable for prisons, asylums, poorhouses and schools. The objective was for the constantly monitored inmates to internalise discipline.7 According to the French philosopher Michel Foucault, the modern key concept “transparency” can be traced back to the panopticon model. In his lectures at the Collège de France in 1973–1974 and his book Surveiller et punir (1975), Foucault discusses the various features relating to the power aspect of the panopticon model. One important difference compared with pre-modern methods, Foucault argues, is that simply punishing committed wrongs and offences is no longer enough. Modern institutions instead rely on “a continuous pressure of this disciplinary power” in order to “spot an action even before it has been performed, making possible interventions at the level of what is potential, disposition, will, at the level of the soul”. This systematic monitoring is not primarily repressive, but productive, as it focuses on revealing each individual’s potential—“the temporal curve of his development”—by channelling latent capabilities in directions that benefit society. Progress and setbacks during learning and skills acquisition are now carefully documented.8 With reference to sociologists such as Emile Durkheim and Pierre Bourdieu the social-constructivist educational scholar Basil Bernstein describes the contrast between traditional and modern early childhood education as a question of visible and invisible control mechanisms. In the traditional model the rules and framework the child had to comply

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with were completely clear and unambiguous. In the modern educational model, with its almost invisible set of rules and regulations, the child comes to the fore. It is now that the creative activity and psychological development of the individual child become objects of observation. Paradoxically, the emphasis on the child in modern infant schools, with their open play spaces and encouragement of spontaneity, offers greater freedom at the cost of the integrity of the child, according to Bernstein. The price of freedom is loss of anonymity. While the rules the child needs to comply with are blurred, the focus is on each individual child’s behaviour and developmental tendencies: We can point out in passing the irony of, on the one hand, an invisible pedagogy, but on the other the fact of the continuous visibility of persons and their behaviour: the possibility of continuous surveillance.9

Montessori’s instructions to the teachers in her writings between 1909 and 1916 will here be studied with Bernstein’s and Foucault’s power theories in mind. References will also be made to a later publication, Das Kind in der Familie, und andere Vorträge (1923), which contains many important elucidations in terms of the teacher’s role in response to common misconceptions.

2.2 The Prepared Environment A central tenet of Montessorism concerns the interaction between biological and social factors. It is not necessary to choose sides in the old nature–nurture controversy; a social-environment perspective is fully compatible with a biological standpoint. In her inaugural speech at the opening of the second Casa dei bambini on 7 April 1907, Montessori emphasised improvement of the educational environment as the most urgent task for scientific pedagogy to address: “For a man is not only a biological product but a social product.”10 Progress has been made in terms of hygiene in the sense that schools have become more spacious and lighter, but there have been setbacks. In The Montessori Method, Montessori vigorously criticises “the so-called

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scientific pedagogy”, which with the help of new inventions even reinforced antiquated educational patterns. The most conspicuous example of misdirected pedagogical engineering, according to Montessori, was the orthopaedic school desk, designed to impose an anatomically correct posture so that pupils could sit still for many hours without causing too much damage to their backs. Montessori considers this to be symptomatic of an educational system for which the immobility of the pupil is an essential prerequisite for learning. It beggars belief that in a society where the winds of change are blowing, allowing workers and women to cast off the shackles of oppression, schoolchildren remain enslaved. Montessori goes on to criticise this “instrument of slavery in the school” in L’Autoeducazione, in which she describes how, on the basis of an erroneous idea about hygiene, the most complicated desks were designed, “sometimes veritable machines of wood and iron, with foot-rests, seats and desks revolving automatically, in order to preclude alike the movements of the child and the distortions arising from immobility.”11 Consequently, all obstructions to the free movement of the child have been removed at the Casa dei bambini. The main entrance is not the only door—there is also a door leading to the yard so the children can choose to work either indoors or outdoors. The interior is tailor-made for children, with scaled-down furniture and washbasins, and door handles placed at a suitable height. Chairs and tables are made of lightweight materials so the children can move them around without help. Open spaces are at least twice the size of the spaces occupied by furniture. The various didactic materials—replaced after each activity—are stored within reach in low cupboards placed along the walls, so the children can pick up what they need without asking for help from the staff. The freedom of movement thereby promotes independence. Moreover, this freedom of movement includes the right to vary the sitting position. For anatomical reasons—for example the fact that children’s legs are short in relation to the rest of their body—small children are more comfortable sitting or lying on the floor, explains Montessori. In the third edition of Il Metodo (1926) she adds that small rugs are available for when children choose to work on the floor.12 Children are less awkward in a setting that encourages individual activity. Montessori emphasises the aesthetic dimension, graceful movement

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being an important social skill. At a Casa dei bambini the children move more gracefully, and any clumsiness or exaggeration is eliminated. Montessori also pays a great deal of attention to decorative elements in the schoolroom. The functional interior of a Casa dei bambini is attractive in all its simplicity, especially compared with dreary institutions and cluttered homes. The miniature furniture is tastefully designed, and on the walls there are beautiful pictures, preferably with a family motif such as Rafael’s Madonnas. Pot plants, or why not goldfish bowls, can be placed on top of the cupboards.13 The Casa dei bambini stands out in comparison with other preschool settings in terms of hygiene. In the absence of large, heavy furniture, the rooms are so easy to clean that the children can keep them tidy. According to Montessori, tasks such as dusting, sweeping and cleaning floors are clearly educational. Personal hygiene must be attended to and the premises cleaned before morning assembly. Included in these practical life exercises are laying the table, serving food and washing up, but not cooking. Productive tasks that involve making items from raw materials are not included in the preschool educational programme. Montessori explains the reasons for this in L’Autoeducazione by distinguishing between different kinds of activity. Unplanned activity, such as playing in the park, is to be found at the bottom of the list. Unfortunately, children’s mobility needs are met by walking them like puppies or kittens. Jumping around is not enough for human children—they want their activities to be meaningful, they want to achieve something. At the same time they have not yet acquired the psychological maturity and necessary skills for more complex tasks. Engaging in such tasks would have a negative effect on their efforts to develop various mental skills. While productive activity is beyond the scope of what small children can do, they are fully capable of performing simple household tasks. When a child polishes shoes or dries dishes, for example, its “psycho-muscular organism” is coordinated around a practical task with tangible results. The activity requires no mental effort, nor is any physical effort necessary—the activity is instead found to be relaxing. In line with the ideas of Hannah Arendt, Montessori draws a sharp line between reproductive household tasks and productive work. To use Arendt’s terminology, one might say that a Casa dei bambini child is a homo laborans, not a homo faber. While

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Arendt emphasises the boredom of repetitive household chores, Montessori instead focuses on children’s sense of achievement when they feel they are “collaborators in a kind of household” with full command over their environment.14 The work carried out by Casa dei bambini children is of the simplest kind, only marginally more difficult “than the activity required for walking or jumping”. According to Montessori these tasks are comparable to those “performed by a servant”. This is a somewhat ambiguous statement. Are the children “masters of the house”, as she claims in The Montessori Method, or are they the “servants”? Has the environment in fact been adjusted to suit the children’s needs when each everyday task revolves around upholding household routines? Considering the imperative aspect of household chores—the fact that they must be carried out daily at the same time and in the same manner—you might ask yourself what happened to freedom. Valerie Polakow—whose study The Erosion of Childhood is based on observations at different types of preschools—has gone as far as to claim that “the Montessori landscape where routinised tasks and a fetishism of procedure rituals are emphasised” leads to a “bureaucratization of childhood”.15 The practical life exercises appear in a more positive light if one instead focuses on Montessori’s description of the Casa dei bambini as a “field for scientific experimental pedagogy”. In this case they are no longer the centre around which everything revolves, but only introductory exercises preceding cognitive training. The practical life exercises can be compared to the preparations that are needed before an experiment can begin—the organising of the pedagogical laboratory.16 Montessori described the various didactic materials for cognitive training in detail in Il Metodo, including instructions for their proper use and photographic documentation. The principles behind the production of the materials were explained in greater detail in conjunction with the teacher-training seminars in 1914–1915. In her opening speech at the Umanitaria course in 1914, Montessori pointed out that the materials were not designed in a random manner but that “patient and lengthy experimentation” was necessary to achieve the right design and “the right colours, shapes and sizes”. In L’Autoeducazione she adds that the teachers—who have neither the time nor adequate training for conducting

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rigorous experiments—cannot be expected to produce the “means really necessary for psychical development”.17 The question is then what criteria the Montessori materials are based on. Most important of all, according to Montessori, are the children’s reactions, indicating a polarisation of their attention. The only materials that pass muster are the ones that children engage with repeatedly. Most of the materials are self-correcting, and the number of materials as well as the age of the child also needs to be considered. The better they match the child’s developmental stage the more likely it is that an activity will be repeated. The material that encourages a 3-year-old to repeat an activity forty times in a row will not interest a 6-year-old. But if the 6-year-old were instead to engage with more appropriate material, the number of exercises could increase to a couple of hundred, as stamina and capacity increase with age. However, the point is not to make the exercises ends in themselves. Once enough sensorimotor capacity has been developed, the materials for sensory training are no longer relevant and more advanced exercises can be introduced. The set of materials should therefore be large and diversified enough to offer an all-round stimulus, but not so diverse that the child becomes a slave to the materials and incapable of taking the leap from concrete to abstract thinking.18 Now, is this description of the way the materials were conceived in line with Montessori’s account of the Casa dei bambini experiment? Does the polarising effect not become the prerequisite for the experiment as well as its result? On the one hand, she quite unexpectedly discovered the polarising effect when she tried her method on preschool children, but on the other hand, the materials were supposedly designed with the polarising effect in mind. With a more generous interpretation, one might conclude that it was a trial-and-error process, that Montessori did not become fully aware of the properties of the materials until part of the experiment had been conducted, and that she then gradually improved them with the polarising effect as a guiding principle. If so, her role would primarily have been that of an explorer—she discovered the potential of both the children and the materials. However, in L’Autoeducazione she also appears as the inventor of a “scientific apparatus that has been constructed upon a basis of exactitude”. You get the impression that the two explanations have not been fully integrated, that the accuracy criterion chafes against

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the randomness of the discovery situation. Moreover, in her reports on the construction of the materials Montessori does not mention whether she included control groups or which materials did not meet expectations during the course of the experiment. Only general guidelines are stated.19

2.3 The Principle of Non-intervention Towards the end of her life Montessori wanted to counteract the exaggerated cult surrounding her person, which threatened to obscure the message she wanted to convey. She once joked about the way her followers looked at her pointing finger instead of paying attention to what she was pointing at—the child.20 What Montessori demanded from her teachers was extraordinary powers of observation. The scientification of the educational method was not achieved through measurements and instruments, but through a specific scientific approach the teachers had to adopt. Just as researchers focus all their attention on their object of study, Montessori teachers should give children their undivided attention. Not only the group of children as a whole, but each individual child.21 Observation is a cornerstone of modern science, says Montessori; this is clear from the term “sciences of observation”. The scholar’s driving force is a “passionate interest in what he sees”. There are, in this respect, similarities between scientific research and religious contemplation: “The scientist is a seer within the limits of his field of observation; the saint is a spiritual seer, but he also sees material things and their laws more clearly than other men, and invests them with spirit.”22 Making scientific observations requires practice. The scientist notices a great deal more than the layman—often little things, details that can only be observed by a trained eye. This art of seeing, with all its aspects of repeated, patient observation, respectful dedication to the task in hand and an open mind free of prejudice can, according to Montessori, be transferred from the natural sciences to pedagogy. Not least the fundamental conviction that the truth will appear, like a vision, to the attentive observer. To “seek the truth in the soul of the child” should be the teacher’s highest aim. This quest for truth needs to be combined with a love of mankind, as the child is more than just an object of research. Here lies the

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greatest difference between this approach and the natural sciences. This divide between the researcher and the research topic does not exist in the same way in the human sciences. The pupils are just as human as the teacher. Although classroom observations require detachment on the part of the teacher they must not be conducted in the same insensitive way as studies of material objects. There is always an added dimension to the encounter between teacher and pupil—a human dimension that is both spiritual and ethically binding. It means, explains Montessori, that the scientist cannot be the Montessori teacher’s only role model. Achieving clear-sightedness, “precise like that of the scientist and spiritual like that of the saint”, should be every Montessori teacher’s ambition.23 From a strictly ethical point of view, the teacher’s task is superior to that of the scientist. In this respect Montessori seems to adhere to the traditional view of the teacher’s profession as a calling—a mission in life that demands almost complete dedication. In all other respects, though, the new teacher should be the opposite of the old one: less active and enterprising, more observant and reflective. “Even after the first desultory experiments hitherto made, a new type of mistress has evolved,” announces Montessori in L’Autoeducazione. “Instead of facility in speech, she has to acquire the power of silence; instead of teaching, she has to observe; instead of the proud dignity of one who claims to be infallible, she assumes the vesture of humility.”24 Most important of all, as Montessori states in The Montessori Method, is the non-intervention principle. Rather than dominating the stage, the teacher stands back and allows the children to be the stars of the show. When you are making observations you cannot at the same time be involved in the observed events. You need to keep your distance and work from the wings. Contrary to custom the Montessori teacher is the one who keeps silent and still. She should almost blend in with the wallpaper, making herself as invisible as possible, and not intrude. Montessori was fully aware of the fact that this is hard to comprehend and even more difficult to accomplish.25 At an early stage of the Casa dei bambini experiments teachers sometimes lapsed into using old methods. One teacher, for example, reintroduced rewards in the form of small silver crosses. Another abruptly interrupted a young girl’s chatter and gesticulations, as she found it too

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intrusive when the girl in fact showed leadership qualities, teaching her friends to cross themselves and say their prayers. On one occasion an unstable boy was prevented from noisily moving tables around, despite this being his very first goal-oriented activity. The non-intervention principle was also overinterpreted, as when some teachers even tolerated destructive behaviour and allowed the children to beat each other up without intervening.26 Montessori returns to these issues in Das Kind in der Familie (1923)—a teacher who allows children to get away with anything is of little help to them. The teacher must be able to distinguish constructive manifestations that are conducive to children’s development from actions that lead nowhere and only take a toll on their life energies. Randomly playing with the material instead of working with it, for example, has no formative value. Non-intervention is only justified when the children are focusing on their task. Montessori recounts a study visit she once made to a Casa dei bambini where all the children handled the materials in the wrong way. The teacher tiptoed around “silent as the Sphinx”. When Montessori suggested that she tell the children to go and play outside, the teacher did not dare to raise her voice for fear of disturbing them, so she passed from child to child and whispered in their ear. This teacher was profoundly mistaken: “She was afraid of disturbing the disorder, instead of attempting to establish order, which is the only thing that promotes the individual work of the child.”27 Like the “astronomer who sits immovable before the telescope” and yet is fully occupied, a Montessori teacher has many important tasks to perform, regardless of how passive she appears to be. Being a teacher is no sinecure. As Montessori points out in Das Kind in der Familie, a teacher who relinquishes the traditional commando methods must be prepared for “constant attention and persistent work”. Above all, she must carefully monitor the environment the children work in.28 The teacher’s job involves not only adaptation of the environment and student observations but also instruction in how to use the materials. The teacher is in no respect a primus motor—it is rather the materials that get the children going and allow them to develop in the right direction. But to set this self-learning process in motion the pupil needs instructions on how to use the materials correctly. Despite the materials’ simple,

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self-­correcting design the children cannot just guess how to use them, says Montessori in Das Kind in der Familie. A small child does not know how to use “most of the objects in its surroundings”. This is where the teacher comes in. The first time the child is to try a new material the teacher gives a lesson. These lessons are always conducted with each child individually, never collectively.29 Lessons are always to be short, simple and to the point. During lessons the teacher serves as an extension of the material. Her instructions are brief, and she does not let her personality shine through. The child is allowed to solve the problem on its own without the teacher helping or correcting the result. Should the child not show any interest in the material or fail completely, it is not yet ready. The teacher then introduces another, hopefully more suitable, material. Montessori compares these teaching events to experiments; the teacher cannot know in advance how the child will react to a specific material, but must be open to what takes place at any given moment. Even though the lessons cannot be planned in detail the teacher knows the different materials and their degree of difficulty, as reported in The Montessori Method. The chapter “Sequence of Exercises” describes five different exercise levels, from the easiest to the more complex.30 The teacher may also use the materials to teach simple facts such as the difference between a square and a triangle. The child follows the outlines of a wooden square with its finger while the teacher explains: “This is a square.” The same procedure is repeated with the triangle. Fact-learning lessons are often organised in three steps in accordance with the following sequence: naming, recognising, remembering. First of all the objects are given a name. If the subject is colours the teacher can hold up two colour cards and name them: “This is red, this is blue.” Recognising is tested in the next step. The teacher says: “Give me the red.” If the child points at the correct card the last step is to discover how well the work has been absorbed. The teacher holds up either card and asks: “What is this?” Should the child answer correctly, for example “red”, the teacher repeats the word “red” slowly and clearly to further inculcate the word.31 The individual lessons are alternated with collective exercises such as the lesson of zero and the lesson of silence at preschool level, and singing and rhythmics lessons in school. While the schoolteacher reads aloud the

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children are allowed to draw—a combination of collective and individual work. During the reading session the schoolteacher should adopt a more expressive form of address than during the fact-based lessons. There are also some playful grammar exercises involving the whole group, whereby the pupils get to act on commands that include demonstrative pronouns such as “this” and “that”, and possessives such as “mine”, “yours” and “ours”.32 The teacher is also responsible for ensuring that the learning process progresses. A good teacher “must, to the greatest possible extent, limit his interventions yet he must not allow the child to weary himself in an undue effort of auto-education”. Montessori teachers observe the progress made and know when to introduce new materials. They are available to guide their pupils towards more challenging exercises after the basic stages have been mastered—the teachers steer children’s development in the right direction without being too intrusive. Our method, says Montessori in Das Kind in der Familie, does not rely on commands but “cautiously, and almost without the child knowing it, seeks to guide the child’s natural activity”. In the lecture “The Organisation of Intellectual Work in School”, she compares the teacher’s demonstration of new materials to the way “the successive chapter headings of an interesting novel vividly attract the attention.”33 In the same lecture Montessori also outlines certain patterns in the Casa dei bambini child’s work process. The working day usually commences with a warm-up phase: the child fetches a familiar material and engages with it for a while. Then the child may proceed to something more advanced, but still familiar. After an hour or so the material is put away, but the child seems fidgety. Should the teacher suggest some relaxing outdoor play? That would disrupt the working process. The child is restless because it has begun to prepare for the main task of the day: engaging with a more challenging, recently introduced material. A period of deep concentration follows. It lasts for about an hour and a half. When the main task of the day has been concluded the child is in a good and sociable mood. The intense interest in the task is not strenuous. On the contrary, it is a period of recovery. The entire process is described in the form of a graph that outlines the various activity phases.34

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Some ten graphs in L’Autoeducazione show that the work process may differ from this basic pattern. These graphs, explains Montessori, are based on Maccheroni’s methodical observations at the municipal Casa dei bambini in Rome and were used in Montessori teacher training. The first one is identical to the graph presented at the lecture in San Francisco. The second one shows the same course of events for the whole class with time annotations. The children engage with basic materials until about 10 a.m., when the group starts to get restless. Then follows a period of focus on the main task of the day, which is concluded at around 11:30 a.m. Graphs 3–6 show low-performing children’s work curves, for example a disorderly boy with adjustment difficulties whose curve gradually improves. Another curve shows how a weak and feeble child instead of moving from basic to more complex tasks goes from basic to very basic.35 In Graphs 7–10 there is no break between the preparatory tasks and the main task. The curve does not exhibit a zigzag pattern but a pyramid or plateau. In the former case the child goes from a simple to a more advanced task without a break, followed by a contemplative phase when the child reflects over the result. In the latter case the child has reached the highest level of development. It works only on challenging tasks, and “preserves a permanent attitude of thought, of internal equilibrium of sustained interest in his environment”. In the concluding discussion Montessori sums up four of the above curves. Starting from the lowest, non-normalised, chaotic stage via the normal stage with two distinct work phases, you finally reach the two highest stages, when the ability to concentrate has clearly been internalised and the whole person is disciplined. Montessori emphasises that systematic observations of this kind can be useful, not only for daily operations but as basic information for developmental research. One advantage over conventional intelligence tests is that you get a more continuous, coherent view instead of just snapshots. Nor do you have to assume a predetermined IQ score, as the child’s performance can be improved with the right pedagogical input.36 The Montessori teacher is expected not only to document the work process but also to conduct a more exhaustive survey of each child’s life situation. She does it partly in the form of regular health checks including height and weight measurements, and partly through daily journal entries about the child’s psychological behaviour patterns. A checklist is available

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for this. Under the headings Work, Conduct and Obedience the checklist outlines what the teacher needs to pay special attention to. These considerations include perseverance, individual peculiarities when completing a task and how prone the child is to becoming distracted. When it comes to conduct, the teacher is to observe “the state of order or disorder” and make a note of emotions manifested once order has been established. These include cries of joy, serenity, manifestations of affection and the degree to which the child shares in the development of its friends. Finally, the teacher is to pay attention to “when obedience to a summons becomes regular” and “when the child obeys eagerly and joyously”. How progress in terms of obedience relates to the development of work capacity should also be determined.37 A Montessori teacher must not limit herself to what goes on in the classroom; it is important to also assess the child’s situation at home. A form that covers everything from the parents’ ages, health status, professions and income through to pregnancy, delivery and breastfeeding is available for the purpose. Information on siblings, servants and lodgers is also to be recorded, as well as leisure activities and cleanliness. The parents are also questioned, with the purpose of establishing the moral atmosphere in the home. The questions the teacher needs to ask are specified in an appendix to L’Autoeducazione entitled “Ethical Examination: Questionnaire for Moral History”. It was included in the first Italian edition published in 1916 but not in the 1917 English edition. An abridged version was included in an English edition published in Adyar, Chennai (formerly Madras) in 1965.38 This investigation does not only relate to the education and care offered at home and the “mother’s opinion of her children”. The teacher must also assess the family’s moral conduct, especially norms and lack of norms. “Devoutness, patriotism” as well as qualities such as “honesty, modesty, neatness” are added to the plus side of the moral account. It should also be noted if a family member has been decorated for bravery or awarded some other distinction. Minus points are given for: What complaints are made in the home against members of the family, e.g. drinking, lack of affection, gambling, irreligiousness, disorderliness, lawlessness, extravagance, laziness, etc.39

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Home visits as well as rigorous scrutiny guided by the motto “help to self-help” were typical of charity work during that period. Investigations of home conditions were also a matter of course within clinical pedagogy. In Montessori’s published lectures on educational anthropology—Antro­ pologia Pedagogica (1910)—an entire chapter is dedicated to the pupils’ “biographical history and anamnesis”. In this work she presents various forms that were used in special-education facilities, children’s homes and youth detention centres for the establishment of the pupils’ psychophysical status. Montessori predicts that by introducing these procedures in ordinary schools and preschools, cooperation between home and school will improve, and she refers to her Casa dei bambini as a first step in that direction.40 The otherwise modest Montessori teacher who does not engage in scolding, moral sermons, rewards, punishments and other demonstrations of power is thus expected to adopt a more authoritative attitude in her contact with the parents. The observer becomes an inspector! However, a closer look at how the Montessori teacher’s interaction with the pupils is described reveals that she does not in fact lack authority in the classroom, despite her mild demeanour. To this effect, Montessori writes in The Montessori Method that “when the teacher shall have touched, in this way, soul for soul, each one of her pupils, awakening and inspiring the life within them as if she were an invisible spirit, she will then possess each soul.” She is like a conductor that has trained each member of her orchestra individually to contribute to the overall harmony.41 This theme is further developed in L’Autoeducazione, in the chapter on moral education. Montessori emphasises the emotional bond between the educator and the child. But it is up to the child to take the first step; the best mothers and teachers are the ones who never intrude and are always ready to comfort and help. Out of respect for the child you should not shower it in hugs and kisses, nor should you reject its signs of affection. When the teacher is as available as the didactic materials, the children will soon discover the spiritual riches of the teacher’s personality. Sooner or later they will be overcome by gratitude towards their modest benefactors, who whilst assisting the child have gone to such lengths in toning themselves down that they have made themselves all but invisible:

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We have revealed to him the sounds of the alphabet, the secret of numbers, we have put him in contact with things but restricting ourselves to what is useful to him, almost concealing our body, our breathing, our person.42

Notes 1. Rita Kramer, Maria Montessori: A Biography (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), 215–216, 221.Robert G. Buckenmeyer, The California Lectures of Maria Montessori 1915: Collected Speeches and Writings (Oxford: Clio Press, 1997), xiii, Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition. Being the Official History of the International Celebration Held at San Francisco in 1915 to Commemorate the Discovery of the Pacific Ocean and the Construction of the Panama Canal, Vol. IV (San Francisco: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1921), 66. 2. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 218–219. 3. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 216–221, Anna Maria Maccheroni, Come conobbi Maria Montessori (Rome: Edizione Vita dell’Infanzia, 1956) 116, Schwegman, Marjan, Maria Montessori 1870–1952. Kind ihrer Zeit, Frau von Welt (Darmstadt: Primus, 2000), 151–155, Augusto Scocchera, Maria Montessori. Quasi un ritratto inedito (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1990) 188, Paola Trabalzini, Maria Montessori, da Il Metodo a la scoperta del bambino (Rome: Aracne, 2003) 87, Gerald L. Gutek and Patricia Gutek, Americas Early Montessorians. Anne George, Margaret Naumburg, Helen Parkhurst and Adelia Pyle (Palgrave Macmillan, Cham 2020) 120–121. 4. Günter Schulz-Benesch, Der Streit um Montessori: Kritische Nachfor­ schung zum Werk eine katholischen Pädagogin von Weltruf, mit einer internationalen Montessori-Bibliographie (Freiburg: Herder, 1961) 24–87, Rosa Finezzi Sartor, “La formazione dell’educatrice dell’infanzia nel pensiero di M. Montessori”, Rassegna di pedagogia (7:9, 1958) 241. 5. Winfried Böhm, “Maria Montessori”, Quinze pédagogues: leur influence aujourd’hui, Jean  Houssaye (ed.) (Paris: Colin, 1994) 164, Carmela Metelli di Lallo, Analisi del discorso pedagogico (Padua: Marsilio, 1966) 436–438.

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6. Enzo Catarsi, “La maestra di Maria Montessori”, Scuola e Città (43:11, 1992) 473–480, Giacomo Cives, “L’insegnante montessoriana. Una figura trascurata quanto complessa”, Scuola e Città (47:8, 1996) 323–333. 7. Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings (London: Verso Books, 1995) 43. 8. Michel Foucault, Psychiatric Power. Lectures at the College de France 1973–1974 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) 51–52, 78. 9. Basil Bernstein, “Class and Pedagogies: Visible and Invisible”, Power and Ideology in Education, Jerome  Karabel, Albert H.  Halsey  (ed.) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979) 520. 10. Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method: Scientific Pedagogy as Applied to Child Education in the Children’s Houses: With Additions and Revisions by the Author (New York: Stokes, 1912) 64. 11. Montessori, The Montessori Method, 16–18, Maria Montessori, L’Autoeducazione nelle scuole elementari: continuazione del volume Il metodo della pedagogia scientifica applicato all’educazione infantile nelle Case dei Bambini, (1916) (Milan: Garzanti, 1992) 126. 12. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 59–63, Maria Montessori, Il Metodo della pedagogica scientifica applicato all’educazione infantile nelle Case dei Bambini, Edizione critica (Rome: Opera Nazionale Montessori, 2000) 272. 13. Montessori, The Montessori Method, 80–85. 14. Montessori, The Montessori Method, 122–123, Montessori, Il Metodo, Edizione critica, 241–248, Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 130–134, Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018) 79–101, 136–158. 15. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 132, Montessori, The Montessori Method, 348, Valerie Polakow, The Erosion of Childhood (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) 98. 16. Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method, 72. 17. Enzo Catarsi, La giovane Montessori. Dal femminismo scientifico alla scop­ erta del bambino (Ferrara: Corso Editore, 1995) 165–168, Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 65. 18. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 61–73. 19. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 66 20. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 366. 21. Montessori, The Montessori Method, 7–14.

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22. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 115, 116, 121. 23. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 111–124. 24. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 113. 25. Montessori, The Montessori Method, 88. 26. Montessori, The Montessori Method, 91–93. 27. Maria Montessori, Das Kind in der Familie und andere Vorträge, (1923) (Stuttgart: Klett, 1954) 86. 28. Montessori, Das Kind in der Familie, 87, Montessori, The Montessori Method, 88. 29. Montessori, Das Kind in der Familie, 82. 30. Montessori, The Montessori Method, 107–108, 338–345. 31. Montessori, The Montessori Method, 109, 177–178. 32. Montessori, The Montessori Method, 212-214, 329, Montessori L’Autoeducazione, 337–343, 453–454. 33. Montessori, The Montessori Method, 224, Montessori, Das Kind in der Familie, 84, Maria Montessori, “The organisation of intellectual work in school”, Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the Fifty-third Annual Meeting and International Congress on Education, Held at Oakland, California, August 16–27, 1915 (Ann Arbor Mich., 1915) 719. 34. Montessori, “The organisation of intellectual work”, 717–722. 35. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 86–91, Maccheroni, Come conobbi Maria Montessori, 165–173. 36. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 92–107. 37. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 103–110, 625–634. 38. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 636–638, Maria Montessori, The Advanced Montessori Method, vol.II, The Montessori Elementary Material (Madras: Kalakshetra Publications, 1965) 387. 39. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 638. 40. Maria Montessori, Antropologia Pedagogica (Milan: Vallardi, 1910) 354–392, Montessori, The Montessori Method, 71. 41. Montessori, The Montessori Method, 116–117. 42. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 294.

3 Influencing Public Opinion

3.1 The Dynamics of the Movement The Montessori movement was not able to root itself in the United States but was all the more successful in Europe, the epicentre of the international Montessori movement during the interwar period. The strongholds were in London, Amsterdam, Rome and Barcelona—cities where Montessori had lived or spent longer periods. The first national Montessori associations were established around the time of World War I. It was an expansive movement—“missionary”, according to the newspapers. By the beginning of the 1930s Montessori’s seminal work Il Metodo had been translated into a dozen languages. There were Montessori schools and preschools in some sixty countries around the world—most of them independent but some public, as in Switzerland.1 How are we to understand the dynamics of the Montessori movement and its rapid, almost worldwide progress? The commercial driving forces behind the expansion are sometimes mentioned. While the term “Montessori” designated a pedagogical method it was also a registered trademark through which patented teaching aids were marketed. Critical voices were quick to mention this financial side. In 1913 the journalist Albert E.  Winship described the American tour as a marketing sideshow—a “noisy and brilliant circus parade”. Ruth Philip, who recounted © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Quarfood, The Montessori Movement in Interwar Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14072-3_3

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her visit to an Italian Casa dei bambini in the Swedish magazine Hertha in 1914, expressed concern over expensive didactic materials and high course fees. From this perspective the interwar Montessori movement appeared to be a business corporation that was successfully gaining ground in the competitive field of rival pedagogical institutions.2 However, when it comes to the movement’s core group—the female teachers—a different picture emerges. In this light, the idealistic commitment stands out as being fundamental. Being a Montessori teacher in interwar Europe was almost a vocation. The movement appears to have assigned a dignity to its teachers that outweighs profitability. Montessori’s reluctance to delegate teacher training is a notable example. She insisted on leading almost every single course, which slowed down the recruitment of teachers and the establishment of new schools. With a more flexible organisational structure she would not, on the other hand, have been able to remain close to her disciples and thereby ensure their loyalty and orthodoxy. Some commentators hold that Montessori teacher training in the interwar period not only communicated professional skills but also served as an initiation rite for entrance into a quasi-religious sect. The sect argument was a compelling one for those who questioned the scientific value of the Montessori method. It was then possible to dismiss it as “an occult science (or, rather, a religion?)”, as the Swedish school inspector Georg Brandell did in 1924.3 According to a more widespread hypothesis, the Montessori movement owed its success to the scientific design of the didactic apparatus—a fundamentally neutral teaching aid devoid of theoretical and ideological connotations. A recurring theme among Montessori critics was indeed the artificial nature of this method. For example, while admitting that Montessori’s mechanical apparatus stimulated technical competence, the German Froebel expert Eduard Spranger concluded that “we do not want any technicians at such an early age.” Technology optimists, on the other hand, saw the Montessori method as one aspect of a general, global technological shift that included inventions such as aircraft and telephones for the benefit of humanity. From this purely technological standpoint the focus shifts from the movement phenomenon itself towards questions about how the techniques worked and how well they met the users’ requirements.4

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It is hardly surprising that a multifaceted organisation such as the Montessori movement can appear in a different light depending on how you choose to present it. However, none of the explanations mentioned above seem to entirely hit the mark. There was, of course, a commercial side to the movement, but why should that exclude other, non-­commercial purposes? Is it credible that only sectarianism of the utopian kind motivated Montessori’s many followers? And why would Montessori’s message have been so enthusiastically received if it had simply been about a new, largely anonymous set of tools? All these explanations—the Montessori movement as a business, church or mechanical workshop— tend to overlook the most important aspect: the social engagement mobilised by the movement. In my opinion the cultural critique of the Montessori movement and its attempts at shaping public opinion has not been sufficiently examined. The lack of interest in studying the cultural criticism and politicising tendencies of the Montessori movement may be linked to a form of gender blindness. The movement would probably have been assessed differently if its leader had been a man. Comparisons can be made with preschool educational movements founded by men such as Owen and Froebel. While researchers have duly studied the sociopolitical and ideological dimensions of these movements, a different yardstick has clearly been used for the Montessori movement—one that is private and person-­ centred rather than public. As a result, Montessori’s movement has been perceived as little more than an extension of its leader. In Rita Kramer’s seminal biography the movement becomes a chorus that accompanies the powerful voice of the soloist. Kramer’s focus on Montessori’s dominant, almost matriarchal management style may also have contributed to cementing the impression of the Montessori movement as a one-woman business. In a well-documented biography (2000) Italian historians Luisa Lama and Valeria Babini have firmly anchored Montessori’s early career in the feminist suffrage movement, socioliberal philanthropy and positivist anthropological science. But their biography only describes Montessori’s formative phase and does not include the internationalisation of the movement that took place after 1909. It is generally accepted among scholars that the 1907–1909 Casa dei bambini experiment was a turning

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point in Montessori’s life in terms of the move not only from clinical special-needs education to preschool pedagogy, but also from a socioliberal concern for the plight of underprivileged children to a more apolitical stance. Carmelo Cottone (1951) and Tina Tomasi (1971) claim that in her eagerness to reach out to as many people as possible Montessori did not live up to her ideals. In his article “Montessori una e due” Cottone affirms that “also in terms of the sociological stance, you could say there are two Montessoris”: one who cared for poor children in the slums and created the first Casa dei bambini in 1907 and another who later offered her services to an affluent middle class. According to Tomasi this shift was predominantly due to the internationalisation of the Montessori movement. Montessori became a victim of her own success. By winning worldwide renown during her American tour in 1913 and no longer addressing “the oppressed, but all people across all borders” her message became diluted. The “robust social dimension” of the Montessori method was lost and replaced by a vaguely utopian, non-committal universalism.5 However, in his article “Maria Montessori e la politicità della pedagogia: una doppia frontiera” (1992), Franco Cambi contests this interpretation. Political action and utopian visions are not necessarily contradictory, although the emphasis is generally on one or the other. Cambi therefore attempts to widen the perspective without completely rejecting the hypothesis of the two phases of Montessori’s career: The Montessori method serves human emancipation during both the first and the second phase, but from two different points of view: political-­ operative and more “local” and philanthropical in the first case, political-­ utopian and more universal and spiritual in the second.6

The fact that the utopian aspects of Montessori’s ideas were gradually reinforced does not necessarily imply a departure from her original principles. According to sociologist Håkan Thörn the utopian dimension is a crucial component of social movements that share the conviction that “a radical transformation of society is possible and that it can be brought about through collective action.” Herein lies the difference between

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genuine social movements and more temporary protest movements, according to Thörn: A social movement can include the struggle for the right to vote or citizenship for a certain group, religious renewal, lower taxes or attempts at preventing the construction of a new road. For a social movement to take place, these kinds of themes need to be articulated in relation to the construction of a utopian discourse, that is to say through totalising and universal claims.7

The utopian discourse combines futuristic goals such as the Montessori movement’s vision about a superior human being with more detailed programmes and plans for the realisation of this vision. Even though the future plays a central role, there is often a link to a pre-existing model institution such as Owen’s Infant School or Froebel’s Kindergarten. I would add Montessori’s Casa dei bambini to this category. Michel Foucault, who has drawn attention to the institutional framework of utopias, has made an interesting distinction between utopias and heterotopias. Whilst the word “utopia” refers to a non-place, an imaginary construct, Foucault’s heterotopia refers to an existing, but different, space. Just like the fictional spaces of utopian narratives these other spaces function according to distinct sets of rules that overturn prevailing precepts, for example the hot sauna, where the taboo of nakedness has momentarily been suspended. Other examples are the cemetery—a city of the dead alongside that of the living—and the brothel, which draws attention to and offers a contrast to the conjugal bedroom. The compensatory heterotopia is a special case, “forming another space, another real space, as perfect, meticulous, and well-arranged as ours is disordered, ill-­ conceived, and in a sketchy state.”8 Foucault refers to the model colonies founded by the Jesuits in Paraguay in the seventeenth century as an example of a compensatory heterotopia. I believe that Montessori’s Casa dei bambini could serve as another appropriate example. This new preschool institution was not launched simply as a complement to traditional child rearing but rather as a corrective compensation for the many shortcomings of the home. The utopia of the autonomous child could be realised in this prepared environment

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where parental authority had been removed. It was not only a question of bridging the gap between family and society—the aim was also to minimise the more fundamental age gap between childhood and adulthood.

3.2 The Social Agenda: Children’s Rights What were the issues that the Montessori movement brought to the table? Aiming higher than just a reform of teaching methods, the movement also had a social agenda, addressing questions about the child’s psychosocial situation within the family and society. The idea was to influence public opinion, paving the way for a more profound change of attitude. According to Montessori’s son Mario this was clearly stated in the International Montessori Association (Association Montessori Internationale, AMI) statutes that were adopted at the inaugural meeting in 1929. The aim of the AMI was not only to serve as an official body for quality assurance and certification of Montessori courses and schools but also to propagate Montessori’s ideas and thereby contribute to a more peaceful world. As Mario pointed out in 1952, AMI was founded with the purpose of generating a “policy of childhood”.9 The war between the generations was, according to Montessori, the most fundamental conflict in society. Every kind of oppression, violence and crime followed in its wake. Montessori was not alone in bringing to attention the older generation’s power over the younger generation. Like other radical reform educationalists she questioned the patriarchal, authoritarian child-rearing patterns that were predominant in the home and at school. But unlike precursors such as Rousseau, Froebel and Key, she did not look for a solution to the educational equation in idealised motherhood. While Montessori in her early writings speaks of the Casa dei bambini as embracing “its inmates with the tender, consoling arms of a woman”, she would later distance herself from sugared descriptions of family life and address the question of women’s capacity to rear children. Mothers, who were traditionally in charge of the child’s early education, were as much part of the problem as fathers.10 In L’Autoeducazione Montessori raises the issue of children’s rights. She draws attention to the difference between physical childcare and the

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education of the child. Only the former has undergone complete modernisation. Child mortality remained sky-high for as long as the old wives’ tales were passed down from mother to daughter. Innocent mistakes were made, for example by hanging nappies out to dry without washing them first. Children were breastfed at every opportunity, resulting in indigestion. Growth was controlled by means of swaddling and leashes in the belief that nature needed a helping hand. Then medical science came to the rescue and liberated the children by offering them “an entirely new world, clean, intelligent and full of amenity”. With this new hygienistic approach came greater trust in natural development, as well as clear and practical guidelines for the proper care of the child: So then, when we say that in like manner the baby should be left at liberty spiritually, because creative Nature can also fashion its spirit better than we can, we do not mean that it should be neglected and abandoned.11

How shall we then promote the freedom of the child? And what are the natural rights of the child? At a lecture in Los Angeles in 1915 Montessori claims, rather provocatively, that we are still stuck in the Roman epoch when it comes to the rights of the child. For even though the paternal rights of Roman law are no longer applicable, patterns of superiority and subordination persist in children’s education. Time has stopped in this respect. Children are considered to be in debt to the parents that gave them life. Montessori does not deny that “the child in a certain way is inferior to the adult” and that becoming an adult implies perfection. However, no demands for slavish submission necessarily follow from this. “The child comes into the world as a man who has rights” and these human rights are “sacred”. The fact that “a child cannot express his needs as adults can,” nor make clear demands, complicates the issue. Scientific pedagogy has thereby taken on the task of clarifying these needs through rigorous investigation in order to determine the rights of the child.12 The social dimension of the freedom principle is also pointed out. Montessori mocks teachers who want to develop social skills through dance games and group work. Montessori children do not march in line like a “prison chain gang”, they interact freely and unrestrainedly, they

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like to help each other and unlike most other children they have access to their very own social setting.13 Looking at it from a social perspective, you realise that this emancipation must apply to every child in society. Montessori claims in L’Autoeducazione that children are oppressed even among the privileged. Children have been belittled for too long—they have barely been assigned human status. The old adage that calls children little flowers is a good example of the general attitude: the child being considered a passively vegetating presence—a plant to nurture and care for. It is now time to change these attitudes and view the child as a member of society, someone who will create a life of their own through heroic effort. The emancipation of the child is in fact the most urgent social issue: What are the rights of children? Let us consider them for a moment as a social class, as a class of workers: they are in fact labouring to produce men. They are the future generation. It is they who work by enduring the fatigues of physical and spiritual growth.14

Children as a social class suffer from discrimination. They are denied fundamental rights. Take proprietary rights, for example—the very basis of modern society. Is not the mother’s milk the rightful property of the infant, “all his wealth” and “sole capital”? No milk can surpass that of your own mother’s milk, says Montessori, referring to the nutritional theories of the time. Yet the traditional use of wet nurses perseveres in many places! The fact that this tradition is disappearing in the most developed countries bodes well, but it has more to do with better hygiene and a reluctance among mothers to appear old-fashioned than with a genuine desire to take their children’s side.15 Montessori could not of course reveal to her readers that she had once resorted to this emergency when as a young mother she left her son, Mario, with a foster family. She had been forced to bend to false conventions, which made being a single mother a greater disgrace than abandoning one’s own child. This bitter experience most likely contributed to the intensity of Montessori’s cultural critique. The façade was upheld even after mother and child were reunited. The lost son was introduced as a relative for whom Montessori had assumed responsibility; only her

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closest associates knew the real situation. It is clear from Maria Grazia Corda’s interviews with some of the pioneers of the Italian Montessori movement that the enforced separation was a sore point that was hard to discuss. One of the pioneers who knew Montessori in the 1930s remembers how painful it was to approach the subject: Although she could tell me “you know that Mario had a difficult childhood” she did not even want to talk about it … Thus the greatest respect on my part and on hers a subject she did not like to touch upon.16

In L’Autoeducazione as well as in the California lecture “The Mother and the Child” (1915), Montessori also discusses more subtle violations of which all children can be victims. If, like Gulliver, we were forced to visit a land of giants, chances are that we would find it easier to empathise with children. We would hardly be comfortable with chairs reaching up to our shoulders and steps to our knees. Even less so if our hosts casually carried us around, fed us and dressed us. Then again, don’t all those lovely toys offer some compensation? In the child version of the alienation theory that Montessori draws up in line with the social class perspective, the make-believe world of the nursery becomes the ultimate deception. The doll’s house with its miniature furniture suits the dolls, but hardly the child who “cannot actually live with all these things—he can only play with them”. Play is set against life in Montessori’s argument; it is no longer salaried employment but aimless play that causes loss of identity and alienation. Play becomes a distraction from truly meaningful occupations, from the child’s active investigation of the surrounding world.17 The idea of the child as living in a fantasy world divorced from reality is discussed in the California lecture “Education in Relation to the Imagination of the Little Child” (1915). A later, more pessimistic, version of this romantic view is the Darwinian recapitulation theory according to which the child is at the primitive mental level of the savage and is therefore “fascinated by the fantastic, the supernatural, the unreal”. Montessori adds that the recapitulation theory may be accurate in the sense that children and savages demonstrate primitive tendencies such as poor language skills. However, it does not follow that the child should be kept at this basic level. Education should hasten development, not delay

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it by artificial means. The notion that the childish imagination is a divine gift is a myth that Montessori wants to dispel. Pretend games are not evidence of a rich inner life but of unfulfilled desires—the rich man’s child who owns a pony does not ride around on a stick like a poor child. Trapping children in illusory fantasy worlds like the ones Froebel envisaged with his games is deplorable: Artificially to halt one stage of development and amuse one’s self thereby— as in the ancient courts, where they were wont to arrest by artificial means, the growth of some poor victims to make dwarf jesters for the king—is one of the unnoticed faults of our times.18

The creativity of successful artists and scientists is not divorced from reality. Artistic imagination has a solid sensory basis. The same applies to children, whose creativity is best cultivated through early sensory training. It is unfortunately a common misconception that neglecting the childish imagination will result in the loss of religious beliefs. Religion is not a purely imaginary construction and therefore cannot be threatened by an education that stimulates the intellect and prepares the child for the real world.19 L’Autoeducazione was published at a time when the world was on fire and Montessori launched an initiative involving traumatised children in war-torn Europe. Mary Cromwell, an American Montessori supporter and relief worker, had rehabilitated Belgian refugee children in Paris using the Montessori method, and Montessori thought it should be practised on a larger scale. During her last visit to the United States in 1917, in connection with a teacher training course she led in San Diego, she propagated the idea of founding a children’s “White Cross”. Instead of soldiers, this independent parallel organisation to the Red Cross was to target children affected by war. The plan that Montessori presented to British and American media included groups of volunteers led by medical and psycho-pedagogical experts. Montessori also presented her plan to dignitaries of the Catholic Church and to Augusto Osimo, head of the Umanitaria Society. The latter expressed strong support for Montessori’s plan through articles in La Coltura Popolare 1917–1920. Montessori’s White Cross plan was thus a precursor to the aid organisation Union

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International de Secours aux Enfants (UISE), founded in Geneva in January 1920. However, the Union did not operate according to the plan outlined by Montessori but was based on groups associated with the Red Cross and the British Save the Children Fund. An outcome of the Union’s work was the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1924, a precursor to the UN convention of 1989.20

Notes 1. Mario M. Montessori, “Montessori nel mondo”, Introduzione a Mario M.  Montessori, Augusto Scocchera (ed.) (Rome: Opera Nazionale Montessori, 1998) 19–31. 2. Albert E. Winship, “Montessori - Mc Clure”, Journal of Education (78: 25/12, 1913) 662–663, Ruth Philip, “Montessorimetoden”, Hertha. Tidskrift för den svenska kvinnorörelsen (1:10, 1914) 212. 3. Georg Brandell, “Montessorimetoden. En replik och kritisk granskning”, Pedagogisk tidskrift (60:4, 1924) 149. 4. Eduard Spranger, “Sinnesövningar i den tidiga barnaåldern”, Svenska Fröbelförbundets Tidskrift Barnträdgården (4:2, 1921) 1–5. 5. Carmelo Cottone, “Maria Montessori una e due”, Nuova Rivista pedagogica (1:4, 1951) 22. 6. Franco Cambi, “Maria Montessori e la politicità della pedagogia: una doppia frontiera”, Scuola e Città (43:8, 1992) 322. 7. Håkan Thörn, Modernitet, sociologi och sociala rörelser, Dissertation (University of Gothenburg, 1997) 46–47, 113. 8. Michel Foucault, “Of other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias”, Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, Neil Leach (ed.) (NewYork: Routledge, 1997) 335. 9. Mario M. Montessori, “Che cosa è l’A.M.I.”, Vita dell’infanzia (1:10–11, 1952) 14–15. 10. Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method: Scientific Pedagogy as Applied to Child Education in the Children’s Houses: With Additions and Revisions By the Author (New York: Stokes, 1912) 68–69. 11. Maria Montessori, L’Autoeducazione nelle scuole elementari: continuazione del volume Il metodo della pedagogia scientifica applicato all’educazione infantile nelle Case dei Bambini, (1916) (Milan: Garzanti, 1992) 3–10.

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12. Maria Montessori, “The rights of children to develop physically, intellectually and morally”, The California Lectures of Maria Montessori 1915: Collected Speeches and Writings, Robert G. Buckenmeyer (ed.) (Oxford: Clio Press, 1997) 23, 28. 13. Montessori, The California Lectures, 28–29, Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 274. 14. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 11–12. 15. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 13–17. 16. Maria Grazia Corda, “Maria Montessori e l’eredità di un percorso femminile”, Donne educatrici. Maria Montessori e Ada Gobetti, Letizia Comba, Maria Grazia Corda, Caterina Spillari (ed.) (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1996) 66. 17. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 17–21, Maria Montessori, “The mother and the child”, Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the Fifty-Third Annual Meeting and International Congress on Education, Held at Oakland, California August 16–27 1915 (Ann Arbour: National Education Association, 1915) 1121–1130. 18. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 223–227, Montessori, “Education in relation to the imagination of the little child”, Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the Fifty-Third Annual Meeting and International Congress on Education, Held at Oakland, California August 16–27 1915, (1915), 661–667. 19. Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, 211–223, 233–235. 20. Enrico Decleva, Etica del lavoro, socialismo, cultura popolare. Augusto Osimo e la Società Umanitaria (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1985) 250–257, Augusto Osimo, “Salviamo i bambini”, La Coltura Popolare (8:2, 1918) 81,86, Mary Cromwell, “The Montessori Method adapted to the Little French and Belgian Refugees”, Communications: Association Montessori Internationale (2006:2) 11–13, Erica Moretti, Alessandro M. Dieguez, “I progetti di Maria Montessori impigliati nella rete di mons. Umberto Beningni”, Annali di storia dell’educazione (25:2018) 89–114, Erica Moretti, The Best Weapon for Peace. Maria Montessori, Education, and Children’s Rights, (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2021) 79, 84–124.

4 Individual Work: British Montessorism

4.1 The 1919 London Course To begin with, the Montessori Society of the United Kingdom, founded in 1912, operated rather freely. The new pedagogical trend won followers not only among reform-friendly groups that invited cultural criticism and psychoanalytical perspectives but also within more solidly bourgeois circles. There was collaboration with the Child Study Society, and there were theosophical connections. Among the committee members were Sir William Mather, also head of the Froebel Institute, London, and illustrious aristocrats such as the chairman, Lord Lytton, later Viceroy of India.1 The weekly Times Educational Supplement, which followed the latest developments in school policy and pedagogical debate, was instrumental in spreading the word about the Montessori method. The TES was launched in 1910 during a surge of optimism about pedagogical reform. The British Empire was at the forefront in terms of education—a grand “educational laboratory” according to the first editorial. The TES offered detailed reports on Montessori courses held in London between 1919 and 1939, as well as on the movement’s development worldwide.2 The newly formed society included practitioners—school leaders and teachers—as well as supporters with more far-reaching visions. Among

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the former were two of the movement’s pioneers, the landowner Bertram Hawker and the Reverend Cecil Grant, who had opened Montessori schools in 1912 and 1913, respectively. By the time the Montessori Society was founded at least ten similar experimental schools were up and running. By the time of Montessori’s first course in London in 1919 the number had increased to around one hundred.3 The second and more theoretically inclined group included Edmond Holmes, co-founder of the Montessori Society alongside Hawker. During a long and distinguished career as a school inspector Holmes had gained insight into the problems confronting elementary schools. Before he had even heard of the Montessori method, Holmes had advocated a change of course in a debate book entitled What Is and What Might Be (1911), which came to have a major impact. An encounter with a village schoolmistress had alerted Holmes to what could be achieved if the disciplinary regime that resulted in “blind, passive, literal, unintelligent obedience” were to be abandoned.4 The following year Holmes submitted a report on Montessori schools in Rome to the UK Board of Education. It was very laudatory. Montessori’s “master principle” was “self-development in an atmosphere of freedom”. Holmes had a somewhat pragmatic attitude to the didactic materials, however. Although excellent, they could surely be modified and complemented with other teaching aids. Two more reports—submitted in 1914—joined in the praise. Lily Hutchinson, a primary school teacher sent to Rome by London County Council to attend Montessori’s 1913 international course, had returned as a convinced Montessorian. She opened a school that provided a model class for the 1919 Montessori teacher training course. The second report, by Dr Jessie White, gave an account of Montessori schools she had visited in Italy and Switzerland.5 During the Society’s first conference in 1914, Holmes and Lord Lytton encouraged all champions of the “emancipation of the child” to unite with Montessori. The 250-plus participants—including renowned educationalists such as Norman MacMunn and Percy Nunn—voted through a plan in favour of expanding the organisation to form a broad platform “embracing Montessori and other kindred movements”. The new umbrella organisation—New Ideals in Education—held its first conference the following year. In 1921, under the leadership of the theosophical

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educationalist Beatrice Ensor, the NIE was converted into the New Education Fellowship—an international network for radical educational reform, which had parallel organisations in Germany and France.6 Montessori did not much appreciate attempts at hijacking her movement, and the Montessori Society was reorganised after the 1914 conference. Holmes and the other NIE members were still able to work within the Montessori Society, but leadership was now entirely in the hands of the orthodox Montessorians.7 In order to better defend her interests in the future, Montessori employed as her representative C. A. Bang, who was authorised to deal with her business commitments and contacts with authorities and the media in the United Kingdom. Described by a training-course participant as “Montessori’s shadow and impresario”, Bang had been recruited from Heinemann, Montessori’s English publisher.8 The much-anticipated Montessori teacher training course did not take place until September 1919, after the war. Every Monday for 4 months Montessori gave lectures at the St Bride Foundation, just off Fleet Street. Since the course was vastly overbooked, a shorter introductory course for a further 1500 teachers was held at Kingsway Hall over 3 days in November. Montessori was received with great enthusiasm at her many lectures. A banquet in Montessori’s honour was held at the Savoy towards the end of the course. It was chaired by the President of the Board of Education, Herbert Fisher, the man behind the 1918 Education Act. The Fisher Act sought to provide a “ladder of opportunity” that would make secondary education accessible to working-class children by making school attendance compulsory until the age of fourteen and proposing continuation classes. In her banquet speech Montessori accentuated the importance of continued efforts to make schools more democratic. Montessori claimed that the school system could not be called the mother of the nation until schools welcomed all children on equal terms. The father was the State, which would have to wed the school to allow its hopes to come to fruition. In this respect Montessori agreed with the workers’ movement. In a 1920 letter to her friend Arturo Labriola—a socialist politician who had just been appointed Minister of Labour in Giovanni Giolitti’s last cabinet—she mentioned the positive response her method had received from British trade unions: “The trade unions have

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decided to defend my method, and it is they who start most of my schools in England.”9 A session on the Montessori method organised by the British Psychological Society took place before the banquet. Dr Charles W. Kimmins, chief inspector of London’s elementary schools, and Hugh Crichton-Miller were among the speakers. The latter was among the first to introduce psychopedagogical perspectives to the British debate. He emphasised the preventive function of the Montessori method through its ability to prevent the suffering that psychoanalysis attempted to alleviate.10 In her address to the Psychological Society, Montessori responded to criticism referring to the clinical aspects of her method. Many people seemed to believe that a method once designed for children with disabilities was inappropriate for children without disabilities. However, it was precisely by studying pathology that progress could be made within the field of medicine. Moreover, all children, both with and without disabilities, had their exclusion from society in common. It could therefore be supposed that a method that facilitated integration of children with disabilities could also help other children. By comparing the ways in which the two groups responded to the method, Montessori had been able to define a criterion for normality—the polarising phenomenon. The ability to focus attention for longer periods was only manifested in the children without disabilities.11 Sheila Radice, assistant editor of the Times Educational Supplement, was helpful in popularising Montessori’s message, and she accompanied Montessori on her lecture tour. Radice’s articles in the TES in 1919, highlighting Montessori’s views on life as much as her method, were published in a somewhat expanded book version in 1920. Unique of its kind as a reportage book on Montessori, The New Children: Talks with Dr  Maria Montessori has often been referred to within Montessori research. Rita Kramer’s ten-page account of the 1919 London course is almost exclusively based on Radice’s book. Kramer presents Radice as an astute, balanced observer: “A better spokesperson for the Dottoressa than those who worshiped uncritically”. This may be taking it too far. Radice herself claimed she had been a Montessori supporter for years, and her attitude as a reporter was not particularly critical. Nor is it in any way

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certain that she was able to get very close to Montessori in private. Radice’s reportage is more likely to have reinforced the public image of Montessori as a misunderstood genius.12 Most of the discussions revolved around criticism of the Montessori method by followers of Froebel and American progressive educationalists such as Kilpatrick. Radice implied that such criticism was due to cultural misunderstandings—an inability to comprehend the southern European mindset. Radice, whose mother-in-law was Italian, appears to have shared Montessori’s understanding of Britishness, according to which British cultural life is polarised to such a degree that only two approaches are admissible when it comes to children’s education—either rigid, Prussian discipline or unbridled anarchy. The recent world war has shown the devastating consequences of German educational methods. It is therefore obvious to all that Froebelian and Herbartarian principles must be abandoned. Eccentrics who refuse to adapt to social mores and choose to form cliques of like-minded people with experimental schools of their own— “where little cranks and faddists can be bred”—are just as misguided. Such extremism, Radice explains, is entirely foreign to an Italian like Montessori, in fact almost comical. It has not occurred to Montessori’s Anglo-Saxon critics that her method represents the standpoint of common sense, the middle way between freedom and discipline. They instead apply their black and white matrix, making Montessori either a school Bolshevik or a rigid disciplinarian. When the Montessori method first became known in Britain her auto-education principle was understood to be in line with experiments in self-rule conducted by radical British educationalists, and Punch cartoons illustrated all the mischief these children might get up to. As people discovered that Montessori children did not correspond to this caricature the critics changed their tune and suspected some form of manipulation. Montessori tells Radice how the exemplary discipline of Montessori children was construed as some form of remote control, rather than self-control, leading to speculations about whether the Montessori children were hypnotised—something that even came up at the conference during the 1915 San Francisco Exposition. Such accusations are due to an inability to grant children agency and acknowledge their willingness to work. All education is in fact a matter of exerting influence, as children do not enter the world pre-programmed

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like insects. The advantage of the Montessori method is that direct control by adults is minimised, so it is possible to discover what children can accomplish on their own. To disregard these results only because they do not confirm fashionable pedagogical theories is to give these theories greater weight than reality. Kilpatrick “should open his eyes. I cannot help it if things which he states to be impossible continually happen”.13 Radice clears up various misunderstandings about Montessori’s didactics, from the apparatus and writing explosion to the role of the teacher. The passages where Radice touches on the psychosocial implications of Montessorism are especially interesting. Montessori tells a group of children’s nurses at the Norland Institute about her new interest in infant psychology. Even seventeenth-century Jesuit educationalists were aware of the importance of a child’s early years. They claimed that if they could only raise children from birth, they would be able to shape their minds in the right direction. The problem today is the opposite, according to Montessori, namely that of finding a way to loosen the parents’ firm grip on their children, for “if we can keep the hands of the adult generation off the child from birth till seven it will have a good chance of growing up as Nature intends.”14 Montessori also tells the nurses how her recently initiated collaboration project with the children’s home in Barcelona will lead to new knowledge about child psychology. The idea is to offer these orphans the best possible care and to establish guidelines, not only for institutions but also for families. The Barcelona institute will in future provide training for mothers, and “some day there will be no mother who has not undergone this kind of preparation for the responsibilities that she undertakes.”15 One could argue that the scientifically designed infant care outlined above has more in common with the Jesuits’ institutional utopia than Montessori would like to admit. The fundamental premise in both cases seems to be that parents are the ones who ruin their children. Montessori’s claims also seem to correspond to those of her Jesuit precursors when she dwells on the risk of losing a childlike perfection, even though she does not speak in terms of innocence and sin but rather about a clash between nature and culture. Montessori tells Radice that the purpose of her research on the psychology of the child is to discover at what point the

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developmental process becomes distorted, forcing the perspective of the adult world on the child. By means of a metaphor not unlike the Marxist reading of Hegelian idealism as a worldview turned on its head, Montessori affirms that “as we grow older we educate ourselves, laboriously, to stand on our heads and to look at everything upside down.”16 Montessori had questioned the hegemony of kindergarten pedagogics with its focus on fantasy play, and in the 1920s she was to expand her critical stance to include not only the playroom but also the home life that surrounded the child before it started preschool and school. The question was whether the emotionally charged home environment could ensure the harmonious development of the child. Such doubts, clearly expressed in Das Kind in der Familie (1923), also appear in Radice’s interviews. For example, against Dewey’s description of infants as more person-­oriented than object-oriented, Montessori argues that such a narrow focus on relationships is an effect of adult influence, which has limited the child’s exploration of its life-world to this personal level. “The older generation, in fact, must not meddle with childlife, any more than an expectant mother meddles with embryonic life.” But the parents should, of course, be there for their children and ensure they have access to everything they need.17 Perhaps Montessori’s new interest in the problems of family life partly had to do with her own changed circumstances. Her 19-year-old son, Mario, had married Helen Christy, a 20-year-old American woman, and in spring 1918 the newlyweds moved in with Montessori in Barcelona. Four children were born to the couple between 1919 and 1929, and the two eldest came to be very close to their grandmother. Mario and Helen were divorced, probably in 1936. It is not clear how well Montessori got on with her daughter-in-law. There is almost no mention of Helen in the Montessori literature.18 Contemporary commentators, including Crichton-Miller and Radice, saw a connection between Montessori’s criticism of the family and that expressed by psychoanalysts. According to Radice, Montessori not only had her medical background in common with Freud but also shared his views on childhood complexes that omnipotent, domineering adults inflicted on their children. Freud’s daughter, Anna, founder of child psychoanalysis, claimed that these neurotic complexes could be prevented by

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educational means. Moreover, there was general distrust of mother and child interaction within the early psychoanalytic discourse before John Bowlby’s attachment theory had become better known.19 Radice, and many with her, believed that psychoanalysis did not describe normal development but various deviations or maladjustments. According to Radice the suffering that psychoanalysts sought to alleviate would never have occurred with the right upbringing. The psychologically strengthened Montessori children would, during their life journey, not “go aground or drift into backwaters”. Since the days of Philippe Pinel, there had been a branch within psychiatry that aimed to cure nervous conditions through moral treatments. Montessori joined this tradition when in her conversations with Radice she referred to the French neuropsychiatrist Joseph Jules Déjerine as a major source of inspiration. Déjerine, who had developed the Swiss physician Paul Dubois’ version of Pinel’s moral cure, argued that neuroses were caused by irrational thought processes and that they could be cured through a kind of cognitive therapy. Best of all would be to develop methods for mental hygiene that would strengthen the higher mental faculties, thus preventing mental delusions from gaining ground. This was the kind of psychological hygiene that Montessori claimed to have achieved with her educational method.20 With The New Children Radice also aimed to link Montessorism to Bergsonism. An earlier interpretation along those lines had not, however, been well received in Montessorian circles. The American Harriet T. Hunt’s study The Psychology of Autoeducation Based on the Interpretation of Intellect Given by Henri Bergson in His Creative Evolution, Illustrated in the Work of Maria Montessori (1912) was dismissed rather brusquely in Claude A. Claremont’s A Review of Montessori Literature (1919). Claremont did not mind the reference to Bergson, but he seems to have found fault with Hunt’s conclusion that the Bergsonian concept of intuition had provided the Montessori method with the theoretical framework it had hitherto lacked. According to Claremont, Hunt “maintains that the Dottoressa is right, but she does not know why she is right, and this the author explains”. Radice did not refer directly to Hunt, whose name only appeared in the bibliography of her book. She instead relied

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on Dr Wildon Carr, who had introduced Bergson’s philosophy in the United Kingdom, and on statements made by Crichton-Miller.21 Radice found clear parallels between the life philosophies of Montessori and Bergson. They were kindred spirits; both wanted to overcome mechanical, materialistic perspectives. In January 1920 they had also met at a ceremony in honour of Montessori at the Sorbonne. Radice’s rather impressionistic interpretation of Bergsonism relates it to creeds such as Stoicism and Christian spiritualism: the Realm of God is within—“We are free, whenever we are willing, to get back into ourselves.” Radice also links Bergsonism to the Christian Science movement, introduced by Mary Baker Eddy in the 1870s. According to this nonconformist Christian therapy, disease and physical suffering could be cured by the realisation that the material realm is simply an illusion. The right faith will cure you. Bergson had succeeded in explaining, by means of metaphysical speculations, what the Christian Scientists had discovered on an emotional level. Although such revivalist movements may seem too ecstatic, they lead the masses towards a Bergsonian view of life. Radice emphasises the concrete aspects of Bergsonism—that it in fact simply confirms the common-sense opinion about the priority of feeling over reason. At the same time she becomes entangled in Bergsonian metaphysics to such an extent that she is prepared to give up the idea of the irreversibility of time: “If all be, as Bergson has taught us, an interpenetration, a simultaneity, which for private reasons we have pigeon-holed and considered piecemeal, the past may come after the future just as well as the future after the past. All may, in fact, be happening at once.”22 In her eagerness to discover similarities between Bergsonism and Montessorism, Radice even ascribes a kind of anti-analytic intuitionism to Montessori, claiming contrary to all the evidence that she valued the irrational aspects of the child’s soul highly. However, Montessori may have invited such overinterpretations. The synthesis of empirical and spiritualist ideas that Montessori presented in L’Autoeducazione was not particularly consistent. On the one hand, the spiritual aspects of the child’s development were emphasised—the way its “psychical embryo” matured of its own accord. On the other hand, environmental factors, such as the didactic materials, were considered of equal importance.23

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4.2 Teachers and Teaching Materials Radice’s reportage made it clear that Montessori was not sharing the barricades with the avant-garde within British educational reform. Montessori’s auto-education must in no way be mistaken for the so-called classroom republics that Norman MacMunn, Homer Lane and Alexander S. Neill experimented with. Around the time of Montessori’s teacher training courses in London in 1921–1923, it became clear that she also disapproved of the more moderate, eclectic reform programmes promoted by the New Education Fellowship. Forming broad alliances that included a variety of educational methods other than her own was not Montessori’s style. When she left England after the 1921 course, tension increased between the two factions within the London branch of the Montessori Society—between the eclectics and the “pure” Montessorians. This sequence of events has been outlined by Rita Kramer and Sol Cohen with a focus on Montessori’s autocratic attitude. The fact that Montessori did not grant the same freedom to her followers as she did to children was in their view “the central paradox”. They also shared the opinion that it was because of certain personality traits—for example an exaggerated need to be in control—that she distanced herself from the liberal, eclectic faction within the Montessori Society, rather than rational self-interest or ideological differences. Cohen, who is not against the Montessori method as such, lists in no uncertain terms the personal qualities that rendered Montessori incapable of building a vital movement. He concludes that Montessori was so “exceedingly vain and egocentric” that she could only tolerate the fawning of devoted followers. She was therefore unable to form more productive and equal relationships with pedagogues who shared her scientific approach and could have inspired her to develop her method. Without considering the fact that as an outsider and a freelancer (as well as a woman) Montessori lacked the kind of professional network that a secure position within academia would have offered, Cohen makes the following harsh judgement: Where others—Decroly, Claparède, Dewey—had colleagues, Montessori had disciples. There seems to have been no one except Itard and Seguin (and Christ) from whom she felt she had ever obtained support or

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i­nspiration. Intellectually, she seems always to have “gone it alone”. Her reading seems to have been directed toward finding support for her own ideas rather than toward learning from others; her writings convey no sense of dialogue with other minds.24

Although Kramer is less condemning, she does regret that Montessori never entered into a closer working relationship with the wider reform movement that promoted the emancipation of the child. Montessori “proved her own worst enemy” when she valued the methodological orthodoxy of a small number of faithful followers higher than widespread support from those who embraced pluralism. According to Kramer, Montessori should have been more willing to compromise: “She ensured the purity of the method she had systematized at the price of its place in a larger movement.”25 Kramer’s and Cohen’s reasoning seems to be based on the assumption that all advocates of the emancipation of the child would easily have been able to cooperate, as they all shared the same liberal outlook. As shown by Richard Selleck, there was room, however, for many diverging opinions in the loosely formed educational reform movement during the interwar period, and concepts such as freedom and liberty could be defined in very different ways. Selleck goes on to say that “the progressives were not a disciplined army marching, united, on a particular town,” but rather travellers walking together for a while on their way to different destinations. As Selleck also points out, Montessori was not the only one among these reform-friendly enthusiasts who shared the missionary’s conviction of having seen the light. Although innovative, she “could take dangerous terms such as ‘freedom’, ‘individuality’ and ‘independence’ and make them acceptable”. More respectable than radicals like Neill and Lane, but no less committed to the great cause, she refused to “dilute her views in order to make them popular”.26 In the years preceding World War I, Holmes had drummed up public opinion by condemning the school system he had previously administered: […] then Lane to add Freud and a personal twist, and carry everything to an extreme, successfully; and finally Montessori, to bring things back into the realm of the possible and nearly normal, to show that what wilder

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s­ pirits had preached could be practised, even in the large classes of the elementary school.27

I will here take a closer look at Britain’s reception of Montessorism in the early 1920s, as reflected in the press. Like Kramer, I will mainly be referring to the Times Educational Supplement, but with a greater focus on the wider school debate in 1921–1923 and the response from teachers and their organisations. Before her return to the second London course, Montessori had reorganised the Montessori societies of England, Ireland and Scotland, forming a single national society for Great Britain and Ireland. During the conference week in January 1921, many organisations focused on the individualistic aspects of the Montessori method. As is clear from the TES articles, “individual work” and similar word combinations now became the catchphrases of the British Montessori debate. Various teaching materials were demonstrated at the joint conference of Educational Associations, including Montessori’s apparatus for individual work. It was also the main topic of debate at the annual meeting of the Froebel Society, at which “individual occupations” were discussed as well as what Montessori’s materials for writing and counting could add to Froebel’s method. When Montessori’s course started in April 1921 the TES dedicated a full-page editorial to individual teaching methods. The author of the article wrote that the Montessori method indicated a shift from the school class as an organism to a rationally organised unit. Modern society was undoubtedly moving in this direction; collectivism was a thing of the past. The New Education Fellowship simultaneously published a special feature issue of their new quarterly magazine The New Era, which focused on self-government in the classroom. At a symposium organised by the Child Study Society in May 1921 alternative teaching methods such as group work and individual work were discussed, and Florence Webb, study group leader at the Montessori Society, London, explained the basics of the Montessori method.28 Another much-discussed topic concerned the method’s psychological impact. Margaret Drummond, the author of books on popular psychology and chair of the Edinburgh Montessori Society, gave a lecture on the psychological foundations of the Montessori method at University

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College London in February 1921. In true Montessorian spirit she called attention to the child’s need for order. Allowing instincts free rein did not lead to real emancipation; what the child needed most was freedom to “follow his intelligence”. Crichton-Miller had touched on the same subject during the conference, but from a more explicitly psychoanalytical point of view. Crichton-Miller—who preferred Jung to Freud, as he believed that only idealistic psychoanalysis had educational potential— was the principal speaker at the 1921 Montessori Society conference. Various obstacles threatened to hamper the child’s progression from imitation to individuation, according to Crichton-Miller. An overprotective upbringing could be as devastating as an excessively strict one. In both cases the child regressed to a more infantile developmental stage. Psychosomatic symptoms such as stuttering might also develop. The Montessori method eliminated these obstacles by offering an environment with the right level of stimulation: neither too demanding nor too permissive. Crichton-Miller mocked teachers who set aside all norms of conduct for fear of causing inhibitions. Tendencies to lie and steal must, on no account, be encouraged.29 After the lecture the chair, Lady Betty Balfour, expressed the opinion that thanks to new psychopedagogical approaches bad conduct in children was no longer considered in a moral light. It was simply a question of abnormal behaviour. She also took the opportunity to voice regret about the acute lack of Montessori teachers caused by Montessori’s reluctance to delegate Montessori teacher training. Lady Betty Balfour probably had Lillian de Lissa in mind. Some years previously de Lissa had wanted to lead Montessori teacher training courses together with Belle Rennie at their teacher training college, but was prevented by Montessori.30 Lady Betty Balfour received a reply a week later. Montessori announced through her representative, Bang, that none of her British disciples had yet reached the required level of proficiency for leading the teacher training course. However, there were plans, if sufficient funding could be raised, for establishing an institute in the United Kingdom where Montessori would participate in teacher training on a regular basis. These plans were realised 2 years later when Claude Claremont was appointed head of the Montessori Training School, initially located at the theosophical St Christopher School at Letchworth, and later in London. The

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two-year training course culminated in Montessori’s bi-annual 4-month London course.31 While educational organisations were primarily concerned with the didactic aspects of the Montessori system—its application in schools and preschools—the general debate was more ideologically charged. To many the most pressing issue was whether the children became polite and well behaved or not. Several letters to the editor and feature articles addressed this crucial issue. One angry letter dated 13 January 1921 mentioned Lady Betty Balfour’s statement, and argued that it was because of people like her that Montessori did not dare delegate the teacher training. Far too many of her followers in the United Kingdom had completely misunderstood Montessori’s message by attaching the most egregious radical opinions to it, when she was in fact firmly devoted to conservative values and traditional Christianity. There was no doubt that Montessori was “a churchwoman with definite standards of right and wrong”. Auto-­ education was not about handing over power to the children—a dangerous experiment doomed to fail like the Bolshevik one. It was about persuading adults to take full responsibility for their children’s upbringing.32 In his reply to this letter the historian Herbert M. Beatty asked whether Montessori’s educational philosophy had been misinterpreted. Had Holmes, and all who had joined him in celebrating Montessori as a prominent figure in the struggle for children’s emancipation, been so spectacularly wrong? Did not many passages in Montessori’s own work point in this liberal direction, as when she condemned slavery in schools? How was this compatible with a conservative stance? Had Montessori changed sides?33 A hint as to Montessori’s own opinions in terms of morality and conduct was offered in the article “Dr Montessori on Behaviour”, published in the TES on 21 April 1921. By this time Montessori was back in England to lead her second training course. The article’s author, who reported what Montessori had said in an interview, pointed out the fixed nature of moral principles and children’s need to be checked when they misbehaved. An air of ridicule surrounded the overly tolerant teachers in the new schools, who for fear of causing inhibitions accepted all manner of bad behaviour:

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The children are allowed to eat like little animals, to tease each other, to flout their grown-up companions, till almost everybody hates them except the teacher who is awaiting a result that she believes will compensate her and everybody else for present martyrdom.34

Montessori had also mentioned that just as cars have both an accelerator and a brake, children need to develop not only a sense of initiative but also self-control. An article entitled “Culture or Anarchy?” expanded on Montessori’s statements. “We are not all born little angels,” wrote the author, “for, if we were, we should all grow into big angels, and we do not.” According to the author, Montessori had reinterpreted the concept of original sin in psychological terms and turned it into a question of impulse control. Instead of uninhibitedly giving in to every impulse or resorting to the opposite extreme by trying to eradicate them, it should be possible to cultivate them in a useful way.35 Sheila Radice’s husband, Lieutenant Alfred Hutton Radice, now felt obliged to explain Montessori’s viewpoint. In England, where children traditionally boarded, schools had taken over the task of bringing up children, but this was not the case in Italy. While the English word “education” was a moral as well as an intellectual concept, the Italian equivalent was only applied to moral education. Montessori’s ideas about emancipation thus only related to the acquisition of knowledge, istruzione in Italian—not educazione, meaning upbringing in the moral sense, which was the family’s responsibility. What Hutton Radice failed to mention was that the titles of Montessori’s two publications Il Metodo and L’Autoeducazione only referred to educazione.36 The lectures given by Montessori—referred to in the TES in 1921— focused on the prepared school environment. At the British Psychological Society Montessori emphasised that she in a sense had more in common with psychologists than with teachers, as her schools aimed not only to educate children but also to create the “psychological environment” that the founder of test psychology, Alfred Binet, was trying to achieve. That is to say an environment designed to facilitate scientific observations. In Montessori schools the children’s performance is continuously monitored, with more accurate results. Whereas the tests conducted by psychologists only measure momentary reactions to stimuli, like snapshots,

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the observations conducted in Montessori schools offer a “moving picture”. Nor do the test psychologists account for negative results due to a poor school environment.37 In the speech “Theory and Reality” that she gave at the start of her course—a summary of which was published in the TES on 7 April— Montessori reflected on the relationship between schools and society. After an introduction in which she sang the praises of science, which had “created almost a new world”, Montessori changed her tune. Scientific progress had not reached the schools, which were “still in bondage to the ideas of dead philosophers”. Experimental psychology had managed to gain a foothold, but without achieving any real change despite the scientific approach. Psychologists such as Gustav Fechner and Wilhelm Wundt had limited their work to simple observation and theorising. Montessori describes her own approach as bolder—an efficient alternative to barren theories. At the same time she is keen to distance herself from activism. Real emancipation can only be achieved through planning and scientific organisation. Seemingly radical educational experiments that break the children’s chains only to allow them to drift are doomed to fail.38 In this lecture Montessori proposes a kind of middle way between liberalism and conservatism—a third way beyond the logic of the traditional left-right political spectrum. What the child needs “above all” is to “be liberated from the immediate action of the adult”. Instead of the paternal family relationships typical of conservatism or the more equal interaction between children and adults typical of liberalism, Montessori seems to advocate liberation from actual interaction. Adults, quite simply, take up too much space in children’s lives; they give them no leeway. In the free zone that Montessori claims to have introduced with her schools, this interaction is suspended so that the children may emerge as agents. To get back to Foucault, this compensatory aspect of Montessori’s utopian vision is perhaps most beautifully formulated in the lecture “Theory and Reality”, in which Montessori proclaims that “in order to liberate the child it was necessary to create for him a better world than that which commonly existed around him.”39 After the 1921 course Montessori left behind a movement in crisis. Prominent members of the London Montessori Society resented her strict regulations. Some formulations in Radice’s interview book

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discreetly hinted at such tensions, for example when she mentioned that many educationalists had chosen “to sail for the present at least under Dr Montessori’s own flag”. Holmes was more outspoken in his preface to a book on Montessori school experiments (1920), in which he warned about the perils of orthodoxy. “Refraining from exercising their own judgement”, orthodox Montessorians made Montessori’s words their law and followed her directions to the letter. These purists went as far as to “condemn fairy tales and playing at make-believe for no other reason than that she has condemned them”.40 The crisis escalated after a speech that Dr Kimmins gave in September 1921 on “The Future of the Montessori Movement”. An educational reform movement that limited the agency of teachers was bound to fail, Kimmins declared. It would be unfortunate if the Montessori movement were to be so intimately associated with the name of its founder as to no longer leave any room for the initiatives of individual teachers. Kimmin’s speech, widely reported in the British press, brought matters to a head concerning the key issue: whether Montessori’s name could be perceived as a general designation—a loose label applicable to any group inspired by her writings—or whether it was a brand that could not be used without permission. The issue was resolved once and for all when Montessori announced in the TES, on 17 December 1921, that she had withdrawn her name from the London Montessori Society and that she had stepped down from the post as its president. At the annual meeting in January 1922 the eclectic faction was finally outmanoeuvred and a provisional committee was formed, headed up by Bang, Claremont and Hutchinson. The former members who had now left complained in a circular letter about Montessori’s “extreme autocratic government”, which did not “permit the same freedom to its members as the method permits to the child”.41 The great controversy surrounding the use of Montessori’s name had to do with the importance of the didactic materials. At the time of the first split, when the Montessori Society was reorganised owing to the formation of the NIE, the controversy was more about general principles. Holmes and other like-minded people had believed that methodological pluralism must follow from Montessori’s principles on freedom and

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auto-education, and they had thus invited cooperation with other pedagogical reform groups. However, sweeping discussions about principles was not enough for the teaching community from which the Montessori movement recruited most of its followers. There was great demand among the teachers for practical teaching aids to use in the classroom. In 1921–1922 the Montessori controversy revolved around what liberties teachers inspired by the Montessori method were allowed to take in terms of teaching materials. This time the battle was not between practitioners and visionary theoreticians, but between a majority of teachers who wanted freedom to choose from a wide selection of materials and a minority who followed the Montessori commandment: You shall have no other didactic materials than mine. In October 1921 an “Ex-official of the Montessori Society” suggested in a letter to the editor of the TES that Montessori could hardly have explored every teaching aid that human ingenuity had come up with throughout the ages. Montessori was therefore not in a position to reject “what she had never thought of or tested”. The author was probably Dr Jessie White, who during the dispute had been ousted from her post as secretary of the Montessori Society despite her having financed and run the Children’s House of St Bartholomew for the Society. She had also produced a scientific report on Montessori schools in Italy and Switzerland (1914). Claremont did not think much of her scientific ability. Her report was, according to Claremont, “an illustration of that which scientific observation is not, namely chronological note-taking of events, without plan, discrimination, or arrangement”.42 Claremont had every reason to distance himself from White. She belonged to a category of enterprising teachers who not only wanted freedom to combine a variety of useful teaching aids but also made a point of producing their own didactic materials. White’s apparatus, Dexterito—which included abacuses, numerical rods and multiplication boards—was mentioned in the TES on 28 January 1922 as one of many auto-educational materials that had recently flooded the market. Another article, published on 27 May, commended White’s apparatus as vastly superior to the “multiplicity of untidy things” that could be found in infant schools. The reasonable price was another bonus.43

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White was not the first to market Montessori-inspired materials. In 1919 Jessie Mackinder, head of Marlborough Infants’ School in Chelsea, produced a more affordable version of the famous apparatus. Montessori allegedly refused to visit Mackinder’s school owing to her resentment of this caricature of her invention. The problem of plagiarism was alluded to in Claremont’s review of Montessori literature. It was not for commercial reasons that Montessori had patented her apparatus, explained Claremont, but as a guarantee safeguarding the authenticity and scientific relevance of the method. Ordinary schoolteachers could not be expected to succeed in “so delicate a task as the experimental determination of apparatus which shall reflect the child’s psychological needs”. According to Claremont it would be as absurd as allowing nurses to set hygiene standards any way they pleased.44 The National Union of Women Teachers organised an exhibition of individual teaching aids in spring 1922. Exhibitors included educational publishers such as Philip and Tacey, who marketed the Montessori apparatus, and the New Era publishing company. The Cruickshank Auto-­ Education Material for reading and writing was also launched. According to the TES, Miss Cruikshank’s “reading outfit” was better adapted to English spelling and corresponded better to the testing methods of British school inspectors, than Montessori’s reading materials. In May Florence Webb, a former member of the Montessori Society committee, organised a conference on individual work, and in June Mildred Swannell of the London Montessori Society lectured on “Individual Work and Dr Montessori”. She reminded the audience of Montessori’s pioneering work and asked them to stick to the original scientifically designed self-­ instructing apparatus. It was also reported in the TES that the Montessori material for learning to read would soon be adapted to the English language.45 A discussion group—the Auto Education Allies—was established during this surge of enthusiasm for individual work, with the aim of exploring the different techniques available for the promotion of children’s self-education. The AEA was open to teachers who applied these principles, and it attracted some previous members of the Montessori Society. It was led by Jessie White, whose Auto Education Institute also offered courses and sold her Dexterito teaching materials. Comparison of the

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Montessori method with other methods, such as Helen Parkhurst’s Dalton Plan, was also on the AEA agenda.46 In connection with Montessori’s third London course the following year, Claremont claimed, in the TES, that the English educational world resisted the idea of a high-precision “ready-made and definitive didactic apparatus” because of the very British reluctance to bow to authority. Not being permitted to modify the apparatus as one saw fit was even more shocking. But, as Montessori pointed out in one of her lectures, nobody questioned the rules of all those games and sports that were so popular in English educational institutions: cricket and tennis, for example. The Montessori method was in no way static—there was room for development, but it had to be done in an organised manner. Claremont concluded that “if people quite new to her method, who have not yet grasped the many technical details necessary for its successful application, begin to make changes, the results will inevitably be worse.” White responded to Claremont by accusing him of discrediting the teaching community, which had made major financial sacrifices in order to acquire the Montessori apparatus. If hundreds of teachers spent time and effort on manufacturing their own, similar, materials and thereby introduced minor changes, it was not out of malice but “because they were afraid of infringing on Dr Montessori’s rights”. Three different attitudes to the Montessori materials could be discerned, White continued. There was the right-wing stance represented by Holmes, who had more faith in the teacher’s personality than in the materials. The left-wing stance, represented by Claremont and other orthodox members of the Montessori Society who instead insisted that teachers should not “alter or adapt the material at will”, formed another faction. White positioned her own organisation, the Auto Education Allies, between these two extremes. This “centre” group included those who wanted to use the Montessori materials in a broad-minded, scientific way, and were open to suggestions for improvement. It was, for instance, obvious that the reading material could in some respects be modified to better suit British children. And why should Montessori’s vertical abacuses be better than traditional horizontal ones? Montessori’s reply was invariably the same: the material was selected by testing it on groups of children. But how could the children decide what materials were superior unless they had access to materials

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other than those Montessori had thought fit to test? How many different makes of abacus had they been offered to choose between?47 More urgent problems loomed while this debate was in full swing. The 1918 Education Act had pledged major spending on expanding the school sector, but the Geddes Committee’s national savings plan, made public in February 1922, instead proposed dramatic cuts. Not only did the plan—known as the Gedde’s Axe—affect education but there were also severe cuts relating to defence and social services. The Geddes Committee proposed a reduction in teachers’ pay, larger school classes, no continuation classes and raising the school starting age from five to six. General outrage among teachers was reported in the TES. Trade unions called for opposition to the proposed salary cuts and organised protest meetings and demonstrations. The National Association of Head Teachers warned of the consequences if thousands of children were to be prevented from starting school.48 The government modified some of Geddes’ proposals. Herbert Fisher, president of the Board of Education, stated that school was a far better place than the street for poor children of working mothers. Staff cutbacks, however, were conceivable. Day care was sufficient for 5-year-olds. It would thus not be necessary to hire trained teachers.49 Many saw the minister’s statement as a way of discrediting nursery staff and infant-school teachers. The above-mentioned exhibition of auto-­ educational methods for individual work, organised by the National Union of Women Teachers in March–April 1922, was not only a contribution to the debate on alternative education but also a manifestation of the professionalism that might be lost if infant classes were taught by unqualified staff. A letter to the editor, published in the TES on 18 March, pointed out the complete disregard for a professional group that “had been spending their own money on providing equipment” and attended courses to increase their knowledge of child psychology and pedagogy at their own expense.50 In an open letter published in the TES in June 1922, Montessori reminded Fisher that England had not very long ago led the movement for emancipation of children. All over Europe, she writes, this movement for “the welfare of young children” is gathering force. It is never too early to begin education, as it is essential to “the protection and nurture of

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life”. The best possible care for every child during its formative years is a precondition for the progress of society. This has been understood in Austria, where, despite the financial crisis, the population has voted through investments in infant schools. Now England is prepared to sacrifice this most vulnerable group through a policy every bit as inhumane as the ancient Chinese practice of disposing of babies in order to keep the population rates down. “The idea of handing over the smallest children to untrained and ignorant women” completely disregards all scientific progress within the field of child rearing. It is a return to the old idea of the “crèche”. Should it be said of prosperous England that it enriched itself at the expense of its children?51 Helen Parkhurst, who visited the United Kingdom that summer, and her British supporter Belle Rennie joined the protest and thanked Montessori for supporting all Englishwomen who cared for the children of their country. Montessori’s principles had revolutionised infant schools. It would be criminal to turn the clock back. Joint protests of this kind could, however, only momentarily gloss over the conflict between orthodox Montessorians and the supporters who were merely inspired by her teachings. While Parkhurst and Rennie found that infant-school teachers were becoming more professional, there was scepticism in Montessori circles about the “individual methods” that had been adopted in infant schools in the wake of the Montessori method. In her retrospective on the reception of Montessori in England, written in 1924, the Montessorian Lily Hutchinson claimed that teachers who had not fully understood the demands associated with the Montessori method, or who lacked the courage and energy to live up to them, had replaced the real thing with “sporadic and spurious” substitutes. There was no shortcut to the Montessori method. “Study and personal reconstruction of teachers themselves” was crucial if you wanted results.52 A certain amount of criticism of infant teachers with a hang-up about materials could also be found in the TES. An anthology published by the National Union of Women Teachers and a book by Lucy Bone and Marie E.  Lane entitled Child Training through Occupation—both reviewed in August 1923—addressed these issues. The authors pointed out Montessori’s major influence on infant schools and the importance of offering the children sensible play materials. They also made it clear that

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“the mistake of most of our infant teachers has been to overload their little classes with attractive materials, so that the children do not stick to their jobs, but flit like little wasps from one jampot to another.” Another common mistake was that the teachers controlled the work process in such a way that the children were drilled just as they had been before.53 Another article, published in the TES on 20 October 1923, commented on the cupboards in infant schools, which were well-stocked with materials “made by the teachers in their own leisure time and at their own expense”. Unfortunately, most of this “home-made apparatus” was badly put together and not durable. Another problem was their narrow pedagogical focus on comprehension and an almost complete lack of sensory training. Fortunately, a good supply of better-quality standardised materials was available commercially, including Jessie White’s Dexterito and the Croydon Individual Occupations, marketed by Philip and Tacey.54 According to H. E. Lawrence, many materials that were marketed as suitable for “individual work” did not meet requirements. Lawrence was principal speaker at a meeting organised by the Montessori Society in April 1923. The description was misleading, Lawrence claimed, partly because the element of freedom was lacking. In most cases it was simply a question of conducting ordinary class lessons.55 Martin Lawn has in several studies described the role of technical teaching aids and various objects in the classroom. According to Lawn, the tendency to collect a wide variety of materials grew out of the use of object lessons in the Pestalozzi tradition, which found a major following in primary schools during the late 1800s. Even though object lessons became outmoded, new methods and materials were to take over within the make-do-and-mend culture that characterised a school system that “found solutions which did not involve expenditure” and “conserved and re-used any found material”. In view of this, the infant teachers’ adoption of new teaching materials appears to be more traditional than innovative. To a teaching community so deeply rooted in a do-it-yourself tradition, the Montessori method’s explicit materiality was probably considered more important than its more experimental aspects. The Montessori apparatus, whether authentic or home-made, was a welcome addition to the collection of classroom materials.56

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Montessori’s loyal follower Maccheroni mentions in her memoirs that in the 1920s she was intrigued by the fact that individual work in British schools appeared to involve the same teacher control as before. The only difference was that the teacher now had to guide each individual child instead of the whole class. It was rather like a lady she knew who at first walked her dogs on the same lead and then gave them one each. She also pointed out that teacher-led lessons were expected by school inspectors: To guide and control the child step by step is an enormous task, but it gives peace of mind to the teacher, who cannot help seeing in front of her the inspector’s visit and the examinations.57

One factor contributing to the slow adoption of progressive education in the interwar period was, according to Selleck, the British school examination system that began to take shape during the latter half of the 1920s. When continued schooling was determined through examinations at the age of 11, pressure on primary schools increased. There was less incentive for pursuing experimental methods when teaching increasingly focused on preparing pupils for examinations.58

Notes 1. Richard J. W. Selleck, The New Education, 1870–1914 (London: Pitman, 1968) 210, Peter Cunningham, “The Montessori Phenomenon: Gender and Internationalism in Early Twentieth-Century Innovation”, Practical Visionaries: Women, Education and Social Progress 1790–1930, M. Hilton, P. Hirsch (ed.) (New York: Longman, 2000) 203–220. 2. Cunningham, “The Montessori Phenomenon”, 218. 3. Rita Kramer, Maria Montessori: A Biography (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978) 271, Sol Cohen, “The Montessori Movement in England: 1911–1952”, History of Education (2:2, 1973) 51–67. 4. Richard J.  W. Selleck, English Primary Education and the Progressives, 1914–1939 (London: Routledge, 1972) 23–25. 5. Cohen, “The Montessori Movement”, 53–55, Claude A. Claremont, A Review of Montessori Literature (London: Dent & Sons, 1919) 16–17, 23–26, Kramer, Maria Montessori, 242, 244.

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6. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 243, Cohen, “The Montessori Movement”, 57, 60, Selleck, English Primary Education, 44–46, Selleck, The New Education, 210–211. 7. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 244, Cohen, “The Montessori Movement”, 60. 8. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 244, 274, Anna Pallin, “Några intryck från en kurs i London hösten 1919”, Skola och samhälle (1:2, 1920) 93. 9. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 254–258, 264–265, Sheila Radice, The New Children: Talks with Dr Maria Montessori (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1920) 40, 119–122, 154–161, Maria Montessori, Letter to Arturo Labriola 24 Sep. 1920, Il metodo del bambino e la formazione dell’uomo. Scritti e documenti inediti e rari, Augusto Scocchera (ed.), (Rome: Opera Nazionale Montessori, 2002) 258–260. 10. Radice, The New Children, 139. 11. Radice, The New Children, 5–9, Kramer, Maria Montessori, 264. 12. Radice, The New Children, ix-xiv, Kramer, Maria Montessori, 258. 13. Radice, The New Children, xi-xii, 34–35, 43–45, 49–51, 60, 75–80, 98, 100, 104. 14. Radice, The New Children, 67. 15. Radice, The New Children, 70. 16. Radice, The New Children, 95. 17. Radice, The New Children, 106. 18. Grazia Honegger Fresco, Maria Montessori, una storia attuale (Naples: L’Ancora, 2008) 109, Daniele Novara, “Educatori senza frontiere: un intervista a Renilde Montessori”, Montessori perché no? Una pedagogia per la crescita, Grazia Honegger Fresco (ed.) (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000) 350–354. 19. Radice, The New Children, 42. For Bowlby’s theories see Denise Riley, War in the Nursery (London: Virago, 1983). For Anna Freud and pedagogy inspired by child psychoanalysis, see Sol Cohen, “In the name of the prevention of Neurosis: the search for psychoanalytic pedagogy in Europe 1905–1938”, Regulated Children/Liberated Children: Education in Psychohistorical Perspective, Barbara Finkelstein (ed.) (New York: Psychohistory Press, 1979) 184–217, Nicola Palumbo, Maria Montessori e Anna Freud. Una storia femminile della psicologia del bambino (Rome: Edizioni Universitarie Romane, 2019). 20. Radice, The New Children, 78–79, 97, 139, 147. For Dubois and Déjerine, see Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious: The

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History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (London: Basic Books, 1970) 791, 793, 795, 797, 800. 21. Radice, The New Children, x, xiii, 5, Claremont, A Review of Montessori Literature, 20. 22. Radice, The New Children, 37, 82, 86, 92–99, 103, 144. 23. Maria Montessori, L’Autoeducazione nelle scuole elementari: continuazione del volume Il metodo della pedagogia scientifica applicato all’educazione infantile nelle Case dei Bambini (1916) (Milan: Garzanti,1992) 151. 24. Cohen, “The Montessori Movement” (1973) 63. 25. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 276–277. 26. Selleck, English Primary Education, 29, 61, 63–67. 27. Selleck, English Primary Education, 30. 28. “Conference Week, Reports and Summaries” TES (6/1, 1921) 7, “Joint Conference of Educational Associations” TES (6/1, 1921) 8, “Froebel Society, 46:th Annual Meeting, Individual Occupations” TES (13/1, 1921) 21, “The Montessori Method” TES (10/2, 1921) 62, “The New Era” TES (31/3, 1921) 145, “The Future of the Class” TES (14/4, 1921) 165, “Child Study Society, Individual Training” TES (19/5, 1921) 227. For The New Era, see Kevin J Brehony, “A New Education for a New Era: Creating International Fellowship through Conferences 1921–1938”, Paedagogica Historica (40:5–6, 2004) 733–755. 29. “Joint Conference of Educational Associations” TES (6/1, 1921) 8, “Conference Week, Montessori Society” TES (13/1, 1921) 21, “The Montessori Method, Address by Miss Drummond” TES (17/2, 1921) 71. 30. “Conference week, Montessori Society” TES (13/1, 1921) 21. 31. Bang, “The Montessori Method” TES (20/1, 1921) 29, Cohen, “The Montessori Movement” 61. 32. “The ‘New’ Psychology” TES (13/1, 1921) 17. 33. Herbert M. Beatty, “Montessori Principles” TES (3/2, 1921) 48. 34. “Dr Montessori on Behavior” TES (21/4, 1921) 179. 35. “Culture or Anarchy?” TES (28/4, 1921) 195. 36. Alfred Hutton Radice, “The Montessori Method” TES (5/5, 1921) 204. 37. Maria Montessori, “Dr Montessori on Mental Tests” TES (11/6, 1921) 261. 38. Maria Montessori, “Dr Montessori’s First Lecture: Theory and Reality” TES (7/4, 1921) 159. 39. Montessori, “Dr Montessori’s First Lecture”, 160. 40. Radice, The New Children, 163, Cohen, “The Montessori Movement”, 61.

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41. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 272–277, “The Montessori Society” TES (21/1, 1922) 32. 42. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 272–273, Claremont, A Review of Montessori Literature, 23, “Notes”, TES (10/3, 1921), 10, “Infant Teaching, the Children’s Part”, TES (27/5, 1922) 243. 43. “Educational Apparatus” TES (28/1, 1922) 41, “Infant Teaching, the Children’s Part” TES (27/5, 1922) 243. 44. Selleck, English Primary Education, 43, Claremont, A Review of Montessori Literature, 12–13. 45. Individual Work” TES (4/2, 1922) 51, “Individual Work” TES (1/3, 1922) 110, “Individual Work” TES (15/4, 1922) 169, “Teaching Appliances” TES (6/5, 1922) 212, “Infant Teaching, the Children’s Part” TES (27/5, 1922) 243, “Individual Work, The Montessori Method” TES (10/6, 1922) 267. 46. “The Montessori Method”, TES (8/4, 1922) 161, “Individual Work, the Montessori Method” TES (3/6, 1922) 255, “Methods Compared”, TES (25/11, 1922) 511. 47. Jessie White, “Letters to the Editor, Teaching Apparatus”, TES (12/5, 1923) 228. 48. Selleck, English Primary Education, 22, 130–131, “Cuts in Education, Unanimous Protests”, TES (11/2, 1922) 66, “Teachers on the Geddes Proposals”, TES (4/3, 1922) 102. 49. “Mr Fisher at Birmingham”, TES (4/3, 1922) 103, “The Education Cuts, Mr. Fishers’s Statement”, TES (11/3, 1922), 114, “Mr. Fisher’s Apologies”, TES (11/3, 1922) 115. 50. “Children Under Six”, TES (18/3, 1922) 128, “Individual Work”, TES (15/4, 1922) 169. 51. Maria Montessori, “Letters to the Editor, Children Under Six”, TES (24/6, 1922) 295. 52. Belle Rennie and Helen Parkhurst, “Letters to the Editor, Staffing of Infant Schools”, TES (1/7, 1922) 307, Lily Hutchinson, “A Review of the Montessori Movement in England”, The Call of Education (1:1, 1924) 68–73. 53. “New Books”, TES (4/8, 1923) 363. 54. “Teaching Material, New Devices”, TES (20/10, 1923) 464. 55. “English Montessori Schools”, TES (7/4, 1923) 163. Lawrence’s lecture was entitled “How the Montessori Class Develops True Individual Work”.

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56. Martin Lawn, “A Pedagogy for the Public: the place of objects, observation, mechanical production and cupboards”, Materialities of Schooling, Design – Technology – Objects – Routines, Ian Grosvenor (ed.) (Oxford: Symposium Books, 2005) 145–162. 57. Anna Maria Maccheroni, A True Romance, Doctor Maria Montessori As I Knew Her (Edinburgh: The Darien Press, 1947) 105–107. 58. Selleck, English Primary Education, 136–150.

5 The Call of Education

5.1 The First International Montessori Journal The Call of Education (1924–1925) was the Montessori movement’s first journal intended for an international audience. Previous organs had been in the form of newsletters issued by local and national Montessori societies. This was more ambitious. Montessori let it be known that the name The Call of Education—La chiamata dell’educazione in Italian and L’appel de l’éducation in French—was a clarion call appealing to forces for good around the world to join the Montessori movement’s struggle for the emancipation of the child. Each issue included an article by Montessori, and additional material was submitted by members of the movement or researchers sympathetic to Montessori’s ideas. The quarterly journal was published in Amsterdam. Just as with The New Era and its French and German versions—Pour l’Ère nouvelle and Das Werdende Zeitalter—the editors of The Call of Education wanted to provide a movement-based journal with the added purpose of rousing public opinion in favour of alternative views on education.1 The movement behind The New Era—NEF, an international network of organisations promoting educational reform—published journals in

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several languages. With access to fewer resources, The Call of Education instead varied the language of the articles, which were published in English, French, German or Italian. While The New Era mobilised a number of educational reform currents, the editors behind The Call of Education declared that their intention was solely to promote Montessori’s ideas and consolidate the various strands of the Montessori movement. The journal’s subtitle—Psycho-Pedagogical Journal, International Organ of the Montessori Movement—reflected its dual function of disseminating information within the movement and contributing to the wider cultural debate.2 The Call of Education was the result of research collaboration initiated when Montessori gave a renowned series of lectures in January 1920, as guest lecturer at the University of Amsterdam. When Montessori arrived in 1920 there was already a Montessori society in place. The Nederlandse Montessori Vereniging was established in 1917, and a journal—the Montessori Opvoeding—was launched in 1918. There were also Montessori preschools in several cities and a Montessori teacher training college in the Hague, under the direction of Cornelia Philippi-Siewertsz van Reesema. Over the coming years Montessori returned several times to help steer the Dutch Montessori society, NMV, in a more orthodox direction. In the Dutch cultural milieu she was able to develop her school programme all the way to upper-secondary level. The response from the Dutch scientific community—among whom not only pedagogues were interested in her ideas—may explain why she chose the Netherlands as the main arena for development. By this time she had lost her previous collaborators in Barcelona owing to growing political unrest in Catalonia. A further factor contributing to the suitability of the Netherlands was new legislation for independent schools, adopted in 1920 to meet the demands of various religious and political organisations. The law stipulated that independent schools that were able to present a sufficiently comprehensive curriculum were eligible for government subsidies on terms similar to those for public schools. During her visit to Amsterdam Montessori reported on the new law in the TES (12 February, 1920): There is now a political movement for new legislation which will set the Dutch schools free from the rigidity of the former regime, and on January

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29 the minister of education received me officially and agreed to press forward legislation under which new methods can be introduced into the schools.3

It was mentioned in the TES article that a group of researchers at the University of Amsterdam assisted Montessori in developing her method. According to Kramer this collaboration was in the form of a committee consisting of scientists representing the social and natural sciences, whom Montessori could consult when designing new materials for secondary and upper-secondary subjects such as history, geography, physics and chemistry. The group also included pedagogues and two psychologists— Géza Révész and Joffrey Godefroy—who alongside Montessori were editors-­in-chief of The Call of Education. The Hungarian Révész was a professor of psychology—specialising in language and music psychology—as well as head of the psychology laboratory at the University of Amsterdam. Godefroy was an associate professor and psychopathologist. He visited the certified Montessori school at Lairestraat 157 every week to conduct psychological observations of the children and instruct the teachers, as it was here that new materials for older children were being tested.4 The Amsterdam Montessori school for preschool and primary-school children was founded in 1920 by the pioneer Caroline Tromp, who attended the London course in 1919, and Rosy Joosten-Chotzen, who attended a course at a later date. After an inspection in 1922 Montessori suggested improvements that would allow the school to be upgraded to an experimental school as well as a model school for her teacher training course in Amsterdam in 1923–1924. In November 1922 Maccheroni was sent there to assist the Dutch Montessori teachers during the upgrading process.5 The articles published in The Call of Education offer a glimpse of how the Montessori movement presented itself to the world, and some insights into the internal discussions. Most of the articles submitted by Montessori were based on lectures given in Belgium and England; some of these were included in Das Kind in der Familie (1923), which will also be referred to here.6

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In the first issue the editors, Révész and Godfrey, addressed the issue of why a periodical about the Montessori method had been launched. They argued in slightly different ways about the journal’s relevance. While Révész was keen to emphasise the way the Montessori method harmonised with other educational reform programmes, Godefroy highlighted its uniqueness. According to Révész, all educationalists whose work was moving in the right direction were worthy of support, as “many ways meet in one town”. The objective was a pedagogy based on experimental psychology, although it was for the moment logical to focus on the Montessori method on account of its clear structure and practical applications, which constituted an important step on the way to attaining the ultimate aim. There was also good reason to let the different methods develop independently as far as possible, in order to facilitate evaluation of the respective results. On a practical level the Montessori method had the advantage of offering average teachers and school directors a complete programme with clear guidelines—“a firm basis” they could rely on. Only a few schools had access to the expertise and resources to enable them to make the right choice from all the methods available, or to conduct independent experimental research. Révész argued that the Montessori system still allowed teachers a certain amount of freedom to make their own choices on how to apply the method in each individual case.7 Révész clarified his position in terms of the merits of the Montessori system in a review of the new American journal Progressive Education. It was remarkable, he wrote, that in a special issue “devoted to the problem of individual education” there was no mention of Montessori’s groundbreaking work. Her didactic methods could perhaps “be replaced by others of a similar nature”, but not her overall ideas, which had “become the common property of the pedagogue”. As far as Révész could see, this was where the “great merits” of the Montessori method could be found.8 Godefroy’s article adopted a different tone. The unprecedented success of the Montessori method, he wrote, proved its epoch-making significance. Its popularity in all camps and its indifference to geographical borders showed that it was based on a universal idea. It was not only about a new beginning in the history of pedagogy. Godefroy asserts that the doctrine of Madame Montessori “has awakened in man a sentiment which up till now had lain unknown and still latent in hearts, and which

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was only waiting for the stimulant necessary to make it rapidly and powerfully conscious of itself ”. Everyone seems to find what they seek in this method, which has succeeded in overcoming political as well as religious differences of opinion. Montessori was so pleased with this praise that she included a long quote of almost the entire passage in the introduction to the third edition of Il Metodo (1926).9 In his article Godefroy criticised the rationalism of experimental psychology for its inability to probe the depths of the human psyche. “So-called objective observation” merely grazed the surface, while the Montessori schools were “pregnant with a new psychology”. Montessori’s more profound observational method, which demanded “emotional sensitivity” from the enquirer, made it possible to establish “a deep and intense contact with the real psychic life of the child”. It was primarily on this account that the Montessori method was important, as it paved the way for “that wonderful science of the future: psychogenesis”. By means of direct “participation in the processes of the child’s soul” this science in the making would be able to describe the very emergence of the psychic faculties. Conducting observations of children at this high level required complete dedication and intuition on the part of the psychologist. Godefroy did not hesitate to describe this as an initiation process that transformed the psychologist into a kind of spiritual guru—a “psychognosticus” able to penetrate “into the consciousness of others” and take part in their “life experiences”.10 Godefroy also referred to the Dutch philosopher Gerardus Heymans’ cultural criticism, which explained the origin and nature of “the great soul needs of our time”. Heymans—a professor at the University of Groningen—had in his lecture “The Future Age of Psychology” (1910) mentioned how increasing alienation and decreasing joie de vivre followed in the wake of modernisation. This process of cultural dissolution was further aggravated by an educational system that increased the amount of information to be absorbed. The result was superficial general knowledge and a “shallowness of the soul”. According to Godefroy the Montessori method could counteract fragmentation. Montessori children were “better equipped inwardly”, as they had honed their ability to concentrate and thereby acquired self-discipline and confidence. One sign of the benefits of the Montessori method was the “silent joy” found

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in the classroom. You could almost smell it, like a “delicate odour”, surrounding these industrious children.11 The renowned neuropathologist James Crichton-Browne—who had served as the first president of the Eugenics Education Society in 1908–1909—paid homage to Montessori in The Call of Education. On the basis of new scientific experiments, Crichton-Browne drew the conclusion that sensory training served not only the individual but also future generations. Through conditioning experiments on several generations of mice, the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov had succeeded in drastically shortening learning times, so that the fifth generation was much faster than the first generation at associating the ringing of a bell with food. Pavlov’s experiment challenged the Weismann hypothesis, according to which it was impossible for environmental factors to affect germ plasm. Sensory training was thus able to improve the human race. Montessori and all her followers could be proud in their certainty that they were working for the future enhancement of humankind.12 The Call of Education also offered information on the movement’s development worldwide. There were reports on how the Montessori method was received in the Soviet Union, Ireland and Bulgaria. It was naturally mentioned that Montessori had been made an honorary doctor of Durham University in 1923. The journal also reflected the principal themes of the 1923 and 1925 London courses. “A precise apparatus also implies a ‘precise teacher’”, Montessori explained during the London course in 1923, and she recommended that the teachers practise with the materials just as the children did, so as to better understand their formative function. The scientistic Claremont pointed out in The Call of Education that “the pedagogist of the future”, through “personal and continued contact with human material”, was to acquire an “extensive and minute knowledge of technical detail” amounting to almost surgical precision.13 Mario Montessori made his debut as editor of a new reader’s column in the penultimate issue. He called on the movement’s foot soldiers— teachers and nurses—to open their hearts and submit personal anecdotes of delightful children’s accomplishments or to write about any problems they might be struggling with. Were there difficulties in applying the method in the daily activities? Some teachers had even tried to modify

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the method instead of asking for help. Mario explained that all letters from readers were read by the dottoressa, and that the correspondents could ask to remain anonymous on publication.14 Mario mentioned no names, but he may have had a certain person in mind when he wrote the above. Cornelia Philippi-Siewertsz van Reesema, whose unorthodox Montessori teacher training institute in the Hague unreservedly mixed different methods, was later to be expelled from the Dutch Montessori society at Mario’s request. According to Mario’s witty remarks in an article entitled “Filippiche” (1931), she had begun the school day by serving an “aperitif ” consisting of a travesty of the Montessori method, after which the afternoon was dedicated to other methods, such as the one developed by Decroly. Acting as Montessori’s “bulldog” in the 1930s, Mario developed a polemical style. Instead of responding to Philippi’s criticism, he dismissed her as a “pirate” who distorted the Montessori method beyond recognition.15 In a string of articles published in Pour l’Ère Nouvelle in 1926, Philippi had opposed the “Montessori dictatorship”, which demanded blind belief in her method and banned all didactic materials that were not part of the Montessori apparatus. Just like the liberal faction within the British Montessori movement, Philippi endorsed methodological pluralism. People were far too obsessed with the apparatus at the expense of freedom. Philippi’s critical account revealed how much Montessori had borrowed from Séguin and Bourneville. As a trained paedologist Philippi had conducted systematic observations of children in Montessori classes, but despite repeated attempts she had not been able to identify the polarisation phenomenon described by Montessori. Philippi still believed that the Montessori apparatus could offer valuable training, provided you acknowledged the large amount of teacher control that was necessary to get the children working. In fact, she said, Montessori had reconnected to the traditional drilling within special education—a situation made clear by her increasingly detailed instructions on how to use the materials. According to Philippi “the exactness required in the handling of the materials was presented as a principle” on the London and Amsterdam teacher training courses. She also believed that Montessori could have chosen a different path—one that was more in line with the freedom principle—and continued to experiment with new materials. Instead, she

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transformed her method into a mechanical training programme that promoted “certain habits and a certain skill” in the children’s handling of the materials.16

5.2 New Children in a New World As the precision requirement was reinforced on the training courses, the culture-critical tendencies of Montessorism became more pronounced. This was not a contradiction as such, these two aspects of Montessori’s pedagogy in fact being closely related. Montessori had from the very beginning combined methodological perfectionism with idealistic visions. However, it is still possible to discern a turning point in the early 1920s when her writings became more essayistic. The psychopedagogical doctrine of Montessorism came to the fore during the phase that began with Das Kind in der Familie (1923) and culminated in The Secret of Childhood (1936). In both these essay collections Montessori developed the conceptual framework of her educational theory rather than presenting new experiments. Work on producing new material continued, however. As mentioned earlier, development of methods for higher school grades was pursued throughout the interwar period within the Dutch context. Montessori was also to refine the religious applications of the method in books such as La vita in Cristo: anno liturgico (1931), The Mass Explained to Children (1932) and the mathematical applications presented in Psico Aritmetica and Psico Geometrica (1934). But most of Montessori’s output in the 1920s and 1930s is better described as contributions to the cultural debate. In her capacity as leader of an advancing movement, Montessori was to hone her message on lecture tours, at conferences and through her own journals. The opening article in The Call of Education (1924)—entitled “La Chiamata”—will here serve as an example of this cultural criticism. Reference will also be made to two lectures published in 1923, in which Montessori introduced her method as the solution to the most pressing problems of the time. The lecture “Grundlinien meiner Erziehungslehre” was given at the University of Berlin on 27 October 1922, and

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“Allgemeines über meine Methode”—first given in Brussels in October 1922 and then in Vienna in March 1923—was published as a chapter in Das Kind in der Familie.17 In “La Chiamata” Montessori addresses all those who are hoping for radical change. They should support the Montessori movement, which is not restricted to schools. Like many other social movements it aims for a “reconstruction of society”, but only the Montessori movement is capable of working directly at the level of the soul. The underlying problem, in Montessori’s opinion, is psychosocial. With its “vital forces” and “creative energies” blocked, humankind has stagnated and ended up out of step with the social environment. An objectified world created by “mechanical intelligence” has taken over. Montessori compares modern civilisation to a coral reef that expands in every direction, constantly adding new imposing branches that are beautiful to behold. But the producer of this magnificent edifice is, like coral polyps, an insignificant creature that has become a “prisoner of its own labour”. It is this discrepancy between creator and creation that Montessori questions. Deep down she remains a technology optimist, even during her most culture-critical phase. “Modern man” has become so obsessed with his culture building that he has “sacrificed his own development”. This can now be remedied by means of a revolutionary educational method that will make man the master of the situation. A “new child” has come to the fore in Montessori schools, where the obstacles to spiritual development have been removed. In the Berlin lecture she highlights how the “peaceful revolution” of the Montessori method has created a “a new world: a children’s world”, a world in which these “new people” can grow. In a similar vein she proposes in the lecture entitled “Allgemeines über meine Methode” that the adaptation of the child’s school environment is “about this, creating a new world: a children’s world”.18 As early as during the London course in 1921 Montessori had claimed that the precondition for the liberation of the child was the creation of “a better world than that which commonly existed around him”. Why, then, should a completely separate child’s world be preferred to better integration into society? How is it that in her struggle for the social rights of the child Montessori did not join forces with educational reformers such as Dewey and Kerschensteiner, who promoted more civic-minded schools?

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When in the Berlin lecture Montessori describes the child as a “social being” with “specific rights”, she also states that the most important right is the child’s access to its own place. Children need a world of their own where they can develop freely. In this respect Montessori follows Rousseau and Key. A pedagogical method in the service of social adaptation can never recognise the specific nature of the child—its radical otherness.19 In the Berlin lecture Montessori questions the mimicry of traditional upbringing whereby the aim was to mould the child into “the image of the adult”. Encouragement of imitative behaviour has blocked the powerful ability to create something of one’s own—a function that is pregnant with the new man. The child’s soul is “delicate” and must be protected from intrusive adults. In L’Autoeducazione Montessori introduced the concept of the “psychical embryo”, and in the Berlin lecture she offers a slight variation: “The child is like an embryo of the human soul”, in which “the pure essence of the human soul” resides. School exists primarily as an institution for the protection of the child, not just as a place for instruction. Similar criticism of traditional socialisation methods is presented in “Allgemeines über meine Methode”. In the past everything used to revolve around the future life of the child—childhood did not really count. Not appreciated in terms of their true nature, children were expected to adapt “to a form of social life that is not the child’s natural life and which cannot be theirs until they are adults”.20 As the unique nature of the child precluded instant absorption into society, it was relegated to a prison-like educational institution where all attempts at self-defence were suppressed. Worst of all was that the child’s inadequate reactions to the adults’ massive oppression—“screaming, tears, moods, shyness, disobedience, lying, selfishness, destructiveness”— were perceived not as desperate calls for help, symptoms of “moral starvation”, but as the true nature of the child. “The human in the child remained hidden.”21 In line with the strict division between normal and abnormal, healthy and unhealthy typical of the psychiatric degeneration paradigm, Montessori painted a mostly black-and-white picture in her early publications whereby the “old” defective child was compared with the “new” perfect child. This picture becomes a little more nuanced during her culture-­critical phase. By means of a kind of double exposure in which

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she combines psychiatric with more psychodynamic explanations, Montessori claims in “La Chiamata” that childish defects are “manifestations of defence or expressions of spiritual decadence”. Without being aware of it, the child possesses an “excellent defence mechanism”, which is activated in threatening situations. Defects like shyness and fits of rage then become “natural and normal” reactions. According to Montessori, these defensive instincts protect the deeper-lying spiritual life force. If circumstances are too unfavourable, these dynamic forces of the soul remain dormant “throughout life”. Although clearly influenced by psychodynamic theories, Montessori deviates from Freudian psychoanalysis by making moral value judgements when referring to the unconscious defence mechanisms. Nor does Montessori share Sigmund Freud’s ideas about the unconscious as being purely motivated by instincts. The deepest formative forces of the soul are instead thought of as being independent of superficial instincts. That which is buried in the depth of the soul and can be stimulated by a life-affirming pedagogy is all that is “beautiful and magnificent” in humans—our higher “divine” potential.22 How, then, should this brave new children’s world be organised to bring out the good in them? What makes Montessori schools superior to other forms of school? It is emphasised in the Berlin lecture that everything is dependent on the prepared environment. Offering a “life place” where children can interact directly with both household objects and didactic materials without intermediaries is unique to Montessori schools. In this new school, where objects play the principal part, the “teacher has withdrawn and climbed down from his desk”. The once omnipotent teacher has been dethroned and assigned a more modest position: “When the child is the master who has everything around him at his disposal, the teacher must become the child’s servant.”23 In an almost poetic passage in “Allgemeines über meine Methode”, Montessori describes the strong bond between child and environment in the Casa dei bambini. It is almost as if the objects speak to the children: From all these objects a voice must come forth, calling to the child: “Come, touch me, use me!”—“Can you see? I am the colourful dust cloth wiping dust away from the tables!”—“And I am the little broom. Pick me up in

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your little hands and sweep!”—“Come dear hands, plunge into the water and grab hold of the soap!”24

5.3 Psychopedagogical Perspectives During the 1970s’ Montessori revival, Anna Freud remembered the enthusiasm with which the new Montessori method was received in Europe between the wars. Montessori was a prominent figure to social workers, child psychologists and psychoanalysts in “the bitter struggle for social progress”, and there was a strong interest in her method, which made the child a “master in his own house”.25 The psychoanalytic movement that Anna Freud was part of was contemporary with the Montessori movement, and in some respects it developed along similar lines. Both movements were led by charismatic founders with medical training who had abandoned academia in order to invest in their own methodological inventions. They had won international fame through support by the press and lecture tours in the United States—Sigmund Freud went there in 1908 and Montessori in 1913. During the culture-critical 1920s both psychopedagogical and psychoanalytical perspectives entered the public debate. Another common denominator was the peripheral support groups, which were not always orthodox. Just as the Montessori movement was but a part of a wider current of educational reform, alongside psychoanalysis there was a multitude of psychodynamic systems and therapies. According to the historian Henri Ellenberger, psychology in all its different guises was “developing rapidly and invading all fields of life in what came to be called the psychological revolution”.26 Preschool pedagogy was one area that was beginning to be psychologised. In Vienna, capital of psychoanalysis, contacts were made between members of the Austrian Montessori society and the psychoanalytical organisation. In 1931 the Montessori pioneer Lili Roubiczek—who had attended the 1921 London course and opened a Haus der Kinder in Vienna in 1922—became a member of the Psychoanalytic Association.27 Remarkably, it is rarely mentioned that the essay collection Das Kind in der Familie (1923) appeared in this context. Research into Montessori’s

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child psychology has mainly focused on The Secret of Childhood (1936). Francesco De Bartolomeis (1961), for example, believed that the turning point in Montessori’s development occurred in the 1930s when she attempted to develop a “psychoanalysis without libido”. According to Giovanni Maria Bertin (1975), in her work published in the 1930s and 1940s, Montessori had absorbed some Freudian concepts, but unlike Freud she had not developed a strictly scientific theory for the child’s psyche. It amounted to a “child rhetoric”, which came to underpin her pedagogical method.28 It is certainly possible to discern a sequence of phases in Montessori’s published work. The positivist publications dating from the beginning of the century differ considerably from the works on cosmic education written during her years in India in the early 1940s. De Bartolomeis and other commentators have noted this dualism of her early and late works. However, they do not offer a coherent explanation of the way Montessori’s ideas gradually changed and how the transition from the positivist to the theosophical pole of thought came about. This dualist interpretation obscures the important middle phase in Montessori’s literary output, when with her movement and a steady stream of contributions to the wider cultural debate she tried to influence public opinion. This phase lasted almost the entire interwar period. The Secret of Childhood was the culmination of this culture-critical phase, which ended abruptly in exile. If in her late works Montessori appeared more like an esoteric guru than a public intellectual, it was probably not solely on account of the theosophical influence. The cultural isolation during her war exile may also have played a part. Her final, theosophy-oriented work did not reach a wider audience outside India until the New Age wave in the 1970s. A couple of essays that clearly signpost a turn towards psychodynamic perspectives are included in the first edition of Das Kind in der Familie (1923). One, with the same title as the book, deals with family conflicts, the other with birth trauma. In what follows the former will be referred to as “Das Kind” to avoid confusion with the book. “Das Neugeborene” will be read alongside Montessori’s article “Dr Montessori’s Study of Very Little Children”, published in The Call of Education (1924). In spring 1923 Montessori gave a lecture on parent and child interaction at the recently opened Haus der Kinder. Just like the very first Casa

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dei bambini, Haus der Kinder formed part of a wider social-reform project. It could be argued, in this context, that Montessori had now resumed a role similar to the one she had in the San Lorenzo slum district where she had supported working-class parents in bringing up their children. The advice given in “Das Kind”, however, did not refer to the difficult living conditions of working-class families. Middle-class parents would have felt more at home, especially when it came to the anecdotes that illustrate typical conflicts within the family. In one of them the mother is having a telephone conversation, in another the father is a Protestant clergyman and in a third there is a girl whose doll is almost her own size. Montessori’s aim was to highlight psychological issues, not material ones. The general argument focuses on the seemingly trivial mistakes that parents make in good faith. Repeated misunderstandings widen the generational gap until it all becomes a “real battle between parents and children”. Note that the conflict scenario described only involves the youngest children. It is this original nursery conflict that Montessori wants to address, as it causes so much unnecessary suffering.29 What, then, makes families such a hotbed of conflict? Is it simply the imbalance of power between adults and children? Montessori does emphasise that parents “towards their helpless children possess exceptional power and authority” and that “many parents demand that their children obey them unconditionally”. She seems to describe the nursery in terms of a Darwinist jungle when she claims that “the strongest” of course wins this battle. But what Montessori presents in “Das Kind” is not a social-Darwinist power-play analysis. Nor does the age-related conflict conform to the class-struggle matrix, since parents in general want what is best for their children, and are keen to own their love. Montessori, who in her youth had been an active feminist, attributes a special dynamic to family relationships—one whereby oppression has been shrouded in “a cloak of love”.30 Parents’ love for their children is unfortunately no guarantee for genuine understanding. Inability to interpret the child’s psychological reactions and needs is a major cause of conflict: “We stifle children’s natural instincts and then provoke such a desperate flood of emotions” until tears flow. Society, too, puts pressure on parents. Parenting is an onerous task.

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Montessori quotes the adage that the wellbeing of the fatherland rests in the mother’s lap.31 As a result the lies and masks typical of social intercourse surreptitiously sneak into family relationships. Montessori’s power analysis primarily focuses on the deep-rooted double standards within traditional education. The imitative education aimed at moulding children into copies of their parents forces parents to be perfect role models—an almost impossible task. Parents who are able to openly admit their shortcomings amongst themselves must put on a show in front of their children, to give them the impression of perfection in words and deeds. It is a performance children will sooner or later see through. Not only is the parental authority challenged when the mask is dropped. They also risk losing the child’s confidence. A case in point is the mother who inculcates into her daughter the shame of lying and is then overheard uttering a white lie in a social situation. Another example is a vicar who preaches love of the poor, then becomes upset when his daughter hugs a dirty beggar girl on their way back from church. “This discrepancy between our demands on the child and our own shortcomings in living up to these demands places us in a false position in relation to our children, resulting in endless conflict,” explains Montessori.32 If children “adapt to their parents’ false attitude, psychological tension will follow, which sometimes leads to genuine disease”. An exaggerated desire to adjust to the situation may even lead to moral ambiguity and susceptibility to every kind of negative influence. It is not by imitating others that you become a better person, it is through your own efforts. In her attack on traditional moral education Montessori does not go so far as to question the idea of perfection. The child’s liberation, she emphasises in “Das Kind”, does not imply a dismissal of social mores, only a new interpretation of how they should be implemented in education. This new interpretation moves the focus from the parents to the children. As long as everything revolves around parental authority not much attention is paid to the child’s behaviour. Children’s natural need for activity and expressions of independence are misinterpreted as provocations and met with disapproval, while passive behaviour is encouraged.33 When the new education is introduced in the family, not only will a new child be born but “above all new fathers and mothers” who are more

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attentive to the child’s psychological needs. These parents understand that the infant possesses a soul in need of nourishment. They will not hide behind a wall of irreproachability but are prepared to confess their mistakes. Above all, they will follow the three principles that Montessori proposes in the form of guidelines in “Das Kind”. The first concerns the child’s behaviour. Behaviour that can be rationally explained should always be respected. It is thus possible to disregard restless rowdiness that comes from pent-up energy or moods. A rule of thumb is that childish actions based on reason are so silent and discreet that they easily escape notice. You need to learn to read these manifestations of childish intelligence. The developing soul speaks a language you must learn to decode through patient observation. An example of a rational action is when a 6-month-old child experiments by grasping an object and then letting go of it so it falls to the ground. It is an exercise it can repeat many times if the object is returned.34 The second principle sets boundaries for parents’ eagerness to help. Children should not be served. It is customary to see the first tottering steps and the first words as symbolic milestones of childish development, but other manifestations of independence are to be encouraged too. For example, you do not always need to hold the toddler’s hand for fear that it will trip and fall—it may suffice to mention that it should be careful. Letting a 1-year-old child eat unaided may be a messy business, but if you let them get on with it they will soon learn how to eat properly.35 Montessori’s third principle invites caution. Children are quite sensitive to external influences, and rough treatment may hurt them. Some parents have refrained from comforting their crying child out of misguided pedagogic zeal, believing that crying is a power tool—a manipulative ruse. But small children do not conceal their true intentions. If they cry it is usually because they are in pain or tired. The child needs inner calm and equilibrium to build up its inner life, but its peace of mind is disturbed when adults brusquely interfere. Sad children suffer and need to be comforted, but there is no need to overdo it—a few kind words are generally enough.36 The psychosexual dimension is absent in Montessori’s description of conflicts within the family, both in Das Kind in der Familie and in later publications. Montessori’s idea of the child’s psyche and the relationship

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between parents and children is in this respect closer to Adler’s individual psychology than Freud’s psychoanalysis. In an article published in 1932, the Adlerian Erwin Krauss drew attention to the many similarities between Adler’s and Montessori’s educational theories. Krauss pointed out that they were both physicians with a background in clinical pedagogy. They had both propagated wider educational reforms that strengthened the child’s autonomy and capacity for work. In his opinion Adlerians and Montessorians should therefore be able to work together.37 Alfred Adler, who had been part of Freud’s inner circle during the pioneering years of psychoanalysis, soon turned against his mentor’s ideas about the libido. Like Freud, Adler assumed that neurotic complexes were caused by childhood experiences, but he thought that the need for self-assertion was a more important drive than erotic impulses. Adler’s individual psychology focused on the inferiority complex rather than the Oedipus complex. Many factors other than the relationship between parents and children could give rise to an inferiority complex: physical weakness and ill health certainly, but also social status, sibling rivalry and excessively authoritarian child-rearing methods. Like Montessori, Adler emphasised the child’s dependent position in relation to adults as a source of frustration. The fact that its parents were bigger and stronger reinforced the child’s sense of inadequacy, but it also led to compensatory strategies. According to Adler, the desire to overcome feelings of inferiority and aim for greater perfection was shared by most people. However, imaginary solutions are typical of the neurotic, who tends to live in an as-if world made up of compensatory fantasies instead of taking action and confronting problems in the real world. Adlerian therapy aimed at dismantling neurotics’ self-deceptions and boosting their coping mechanisms.38 When Montessori gave a lecture at Haus der Kinder in 1923, she can hardly have escaped hearing of Adler, who was a rising star. Adler’s therapeutic project for children attending schools in Vienna was highly acclaimed, and at some of these schools he had set up preschool classes that were clearly inspired by individual psychology. Adler was an important figure in the social-democratic adult-education project of 1920s’ Vienna. Adler’s individual psychology was also beginning to be noticed internationally, and in 1923 the Internationale Zeitschrift für

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Individualpsychologie was launched. The following year Adler was appointed to a chair at the Pedagogical Institute of the City of Vienna, and in 1930 he was made an honorary citizen.39 It is not known whether Montessori ever met Adler, but we do know that she published one of his articles, “The Dangers of Isolation”, in The Call of Education (1924). Somewhat in line with the Montessori method, the article stressed the importance of encouraging self-reliance. Neurotic maladjustment could have many causes, according to Adler. Not only firmly disciplined children but also over-protected ones were weakened in their life struggle. The article described an indirect power strategy whereby instead of controlling itself the child attempted to control the person in charge of its early education, usually the mother or nanny. The spoilt child demanded constant attention, and this only undermined trust in its own ability and reinforced feelings of inferiority. The only way to break out of the vicious circle was by extending the child’s social circle, for example by letting them attend preschool. By interacting with their peers, children would develop trust in the group as a whole and in their ability to assert themselves.40 Excessively close ties to its parents could thus be avoided by introducing the child into the child community. Social training was seen as a precondition for developing a strong sense of self. Montessori was of a different opinion. To develop real autonomy it was necessary to start at the other end, with the self. It was not just about boosting autonomy in relation to the parents—the children also needed a certain amount of independence in relation to the other children in the group. That was what Montessori’s criticism of Froebelian pedagogics was based on: the fact that these socialisation methods encouraged herd behaviour at the expense of personal identity. Another psychological problem confronted in Montessori’s Vienna lectures concerned the very first encounter with the world—the first act of the life drama. If “Das Kind” described the conflictual relationship between parents and children, “Das Neugeborene” dealt with the underlying, even more fundamental nature–culture conflict. Montessori had previously reflected on how newborn babies were received by criticising traditions such as swaddling and wet nurses. “Das Neugeborene” focused on the moment of birth—the transition from foetus to infant. Montessori

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emphasised how overwhelming and frightening this transition must be from the point of view of the child.41 Speculation about the experiences of infants followed in the wake of psychoanalysis. The psychoanalyst Otto Rank, with his birth trauma theory, was the most radical voice. Das Trauma der Geburt und seine Bedeutung für die Psychoanalyse (1924) differed from the path that orthodox Freudianism had taken. Rank wanted to derive all neurotic anxiety from this first trauma, rather than from later conflicts such as the Oedipus complex. According to Rank, the child’s psychosexual desires were caused by their longing to return to the womb. Although Rank may have heard of Montessori’s Vienna lectures, he was not necessarily influenced by her. Rank had mentioned the birth trauma as early as 1909 in his study of ancient hero myths. Nor should it be assumed that Montessori was influenced by Rank. Rank’s early publications were generally known only among members of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, and Montessori did not read German. Rank became known to a wider audience only after his tour of the United States in 1924. It is more likely that Montessori was moving in this direction because of her medical background.42 Why has the suffering of the newborn been neglected for so long, Montessori asks in “Das Neugeborene”. While various efforts have been made to ease the mother’s pain during childbirth, no one has given a thought to the pains of the child. Montessori describes childbirth not in terms of a trauma for the child but as a life crisis—“the most difficult moment” a human being has to endure. Should not civilisation, this protective device that we have created to facilitate adaptation to the environment, not also endeavour to ensure the wellbeing of the newborn baby? There appears to be a gap in the cultural edifice that has allowed “the first page in the book of life” to remain blank.43 Can a sharper contrast than that between the peace inside the womb and the labours of childbirth be imagined? The foetus has all its life been embedded in a shock-absorbing, temperate fluid, shut off from every disturbing sensation. In an instant the ties to the mother are cut and the situation changes. It must leave its first home and breathe the air of life. Birth involves a dramatic change: “With eyes that have never seen light, with ears that so far have been protected from all manner of sound, it now enters the world of adults.”44

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Not only is the change of environment dramatic. The labour of birth is enormously taxing for the child’s body. We can hardly imagine how exhausted the newborn baby must be after having squeezed out of the womb. Had an adult been forced to crawl through such a narrow passage, every bone would surely have been displaced. How, then, is the little pilgrim received on its arrival in a foreign land? Through a “violent act” this newcomer, in need of the most gentle treatment, is delivered to adults with “soulless hands” who energetically rub its tender skin, dress it and put it to bed.45 The parents are certainly ecstatic about this gift from the gods. The proud father can hardly wait, so he forces the baby’s eyelids open to meet his gaze. But there is never an encounter—neither he nor anyone else pays attention to the suffering human being inside the newborn child. The doctor makes a hasty examination to ensure that the child is viable, as if to say: “You live and are healthy, now make sure you get along as best you can!”46 Montessori criticises this attitude, which reduces birth to a mere natural phenomenon. Not acknowledging the humanity of the newborn child is as bad as refusing to alleviate the pains of the sick and dying, and is a crime against the fundamental principle of civilisation, which dictates that you should try to relieve human suffering at all costs. Man as a cultural being has developed a second nature and has thereby risen above nature’s control. It should thus be obvious that a newborn baby is more than just part of nature. Yet more attention seems to be given to the mattress in the cot than to the newborn baby lying on it. This fear that the child will injure or trouble the adults, so eloquently suggested by the mattress cover in the cot, is a recurring theme throughout childhood.47 At the London course that same year Montessori emphasised the importance of studying the psychological life of the infant. On 14 April 1923 the TES reported that in her opening speech Montessori had claimed that her method originated in the spirit of the child. Montessori had won followers worldwide, but only those “who had come in contact with the child-soul” were her true collaborators. The course would not offer any “high transcendentalism”. However, via the child you gained access to a “world without fine discourses, filled with simple and

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apparently trifling actions”—a world in which the most profound truths about life were revealed.48 In a second article, entitled “Intelligence of the Newborn” (21 April 1923), the TES gave a more comprehensive account of Montessori’s new field of research. According to the author, Montessori claimed that “the vast majority of babies” failed to develop fully because of incorrect treatment. The inability to understand the inner life of infants was due to a narrow definition of intelligence as being similar to language skills and logic capabilities—an approach amplified by the way the infant was described in medical literature as “an automaton, scarcely possessed of consciousness”. Although a baby cannot manifest its intelligence in the same way as a toddler, it is whilst the baby is still “in the cradle that the first great campaigns in conquest of the surrounding world are waged”. If it were possible to correctly decode the very first sensorimotor displays of intelligence, such as grasping and focusing, it would also be possible to support the child’s psychological development. Montessori shared an anecdote with her students about an 8-month-old baby who smelled pictures of flowers and kissed pictures of babies. Her nanny thought she was stimulating the little girl when she gave her all kinds of motifs to smell or kiss indiscriminately, but she only planted confusion in the child’s mind. Through her intervention she severed the threads in a nascent web of thoughts. Joy was the companion of spontaneous displays of intelligence, explained Montessori. The gaze was less bright in infants, whose desire for knowledge was constantly misunderstood and disregarded, and they tended to sleep more than they needed to—“a sleep of the spirit”.49 The next lecture—“Dr Montessori’s Study of Very Little Children”— was published in The Call of Education (1924). In this lecture Montessori expanded on her ideas about manifestations of early intelligence. Even 1- to 2-year-olds, who had not yet developed sophisticated language skills, showed a capacity for observation, association and memory. The need for expression preceded language acquisition. Children tried to make themselves understood with the help of the few words they had acquired so far, and by using gestures. Most of these child observations were conducted when the child was looking at picture books together with an adult. Adults tended to misunderstand the child’s comments or dismiss them as being nonsensical. For example, a 2-year-old commented

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on a picture of Jesus teaching children with the cryptical utterance “sleep”. No attention was paid to this utterance at first, but as the child grew more agitated it was noted that Jesus’s eyes appeared to be closed, because in the picture he was looking down at the children. Another example Montessori mentioned related to motor responses. A child danced and jumped around after having looked at a picture showing people who were dancing in the background. Children often focused on a small detail in the picture, rather than on the main motif.50 The “rhythmical” character of these early manifestations of intelligence was of great interest. Provided the environment around the child was well organised, with each thing in its proper place, constructive cycles of activity would successively drive mental development forward. “Let us leave him free to complete his cycle of activity, to follow the rhythm of his inner life,” Montessori exclaimed, stressing how important it was to meet the child’s communicative needs. “His realisation of our effort to comprehend him, really helps the development of his inner life.”51 By describing the rhythmic element of the child’s mental development, Montessori took the first steps towards the psychological theory that is primarily associated with her name. One formulation in particular pointed towards her theory of sensitive periods, first presented at the London course in 1925: By giving him milk at the right period, we help him to develop teeth in the next period. And just as the mother who nourishes the child on milk, does not worry about his coming to have teeth and to eat like an adult, so the teacher need not trouble herself about the future: but only serve these tendencies which undergo transformations at the proper time.52

5.4 Sensitive Periods: Schuyten and Montessori Developmental psychology, which gained ground in the wake of evolutionary theory, aimed to distinguish the stages of the child’s mental evolution through systematic observations. The purpose was twofold: to determine the impact of heredity on normal development and to

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establish educational guidelines on the basis of these findings. Earlier periodisations based on traditional beliefs or philosophical speculations could no longer be accepted. Although this new field of research did include a multitude of often contradictory theoretical perspectives, there was consensus on the benefits of the experimental method. Among the pioneers were the German William Stern, the American Arnold Gesell and the Swiss Jean Piaget. Stern, whose work was not solely in the field of developmental psychology, was head of the Berlin Institute for Applied Psychology from 1907 and the Hamburg Psychological Laboratory from 1916. In 1911 Gesell founded the Yale Psycho-Clinic, later renamed the Yale Clinic of Child Development. Piaget’s research into the psychogenesis of cognitive capacities began in the 1920s at the Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Geneva.53 Apart from establishing time schedules for when various skills and personality traits would appear, they wanted to find out how the different stages were connected—the overall pattern of development. Gesell postulated a structure-function principle for the maturation process, and focused on variations in rhythm and pace. Stern, like the Freudians, emphasised the critical phases of personal development. The concept of critical periods—sometimes referred to as sensitive periods—was given a more precise definition within biology and ethology, the study of animal behaviour. Within these disciplines these concepts denoted the interaction between hereditary predispositions and environmental stimuli that could only take place during the early stage of an organism’s life cycle and that had an impact on continued development. Konrad Lorenz’s experiment on geese in the 1940s, which showed a critical period of attachment to the mother, is well known. During the days immediately after hatching, the goslings were predisposed to attach themselves to and follow the first moving body they encountered. Once established, this imprint was irreversible. In the 1950s John Bowlby and other child psychologists explored whether there was a similar critical period of attachment between human babies and their mother.54 Critical periods in the development of lower-level organisms such as plants and insects had been observed within genetic research at the very beginning of the twentieth century. The term “sensitive period” was coined by the Dutch plant physiologist Hugo de Vries, who in his

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Mutationstheorie (1901–1903) included several such cases. One example was the Porthesia butterfly. When hatched, the larvae, propelled by a temporary sensitivity to light, move towards the end of the branch, where the most tender leaves are found. Later, when larger and able to digest the thicker leaves nearer the trunk, they lose their sensitivity to light. Ordinary bees, too, experience a sensitive period as larvae. Depending on the food they have access to they develop into either workers or queens. Within de Vries’s mutation theory these examples showed the importance of hereditary traits to an organism’s behaviour. Evolution was not just a question of external influences, environmental adaptation or natural selection. Internal factors were also involved. De Vries proposed an alternative explanation of how new species appear on the basis of the Mendelian laws of inheritance. De Vries assumed that rather than there being a gradual process of Darwinian selection, sudden changes in the genetic make­up could open up new pathways for development and thereby speed up the evolutionary process. Which of these comparatively rare forms of mutation would prove to be viable enough to become a new species was ultimately determined through environmental selection.55 According to an item published in The Call of Education in 1925, Montessori introduced a new theme, involving sensitive periods, to her students at the London course that same year. In the article “Periodi sensitivi” 2 years later she claimed that phenomena of the kind described by de Vries could also be seen in child development. In language acquisition, for example, there was a sensitive period during the first years of life. A pedagogy that took sensitive periods into account was able to achieve astonishing results. One notable example was the writing explosion that occurred in Montessori schools. In an article with a similar heading published in 1932, Montessori pointed out that sensitive periods not only affected sensory development but also involved more deeply seated dispositions, and that there was a succession of “centres of interest” that contributed to the development of personality. One chapter in The Secret of Childhood (1936) was dedicated to sensitive periods.56 Sensitive periods clearly filled a gap in Montessori’s educational theory. The polarisation phenomenon, which she had so far only been able to describe, was thereby given a more plausible biological explanation. Montessori had in earlier publications stated that her set of didactic

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materials seemed to be in line with age-related developmental needs, but she had not been able to offer a reason why. However, if the hypothesis of sensitive periods was accepted, the pieces fell into place. In her article “I Periodi sensitivi” (1932) it could now be established that the “child reacts with enthusiasm, with active interest, to everything that corresponds to its sensitive period”.57 Why had Montessori not used this concept earlier, as it so efficiently confirmed the central tenet of her method? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t heard of de Vries until the 1920s. In 1910 she had compared de Vries’s mutation theory with Darwin’s theory of descent in her Antropologia Pedagogica. In The Montessori Method she discussed her biological-liberty concept with reference to de Vries. Montessori argued that, according to de Vries’s theory of evolution, “environment is undoubtedly a secondary factor in the phenomena of life: it can modify it in that it can help or hinder, but it can never create.” She added that “the less fixed and strong this individual life may be” the greater the influence of the environment. However, no mention was made of de Vries’s concept of sensitive periods.58 A possible explanation may be that Montessori had understood the pedagogical implications of de Vries’s theory of sensitive periods when she wrote her first book but did not reveal this theoretical pre-­ understanding for methodological reasons. Montessori had emphasised the complete objectivity of the Casa dei bambini experiment, which guaranteed its scientific rigour. “One of the characteristics of experimental sciences is to proceed to the making of an experiment without preconceptions of any sort as to the final result of the experiment itself.” According to this inductive scientific approach, theories could only be a result of observations of facts and repeated experiments—the final stage of the research process.59 However, if this was the case, one might wonder why de Vries’s sensitive periods were not incorporated into the child-psychology theory briefly outlined in L’Autoeducazione in 1916? Why was it another decade before Montessori introduced this fundamental concept, which came to play such an important role in her psychopedagogical doctrine? A more plausible explanation is that it was not until her collaboration with the Dutch researchers—de Vries’s compatriots—that she became fully aware of this aspect of de Vries’s theory and how well it matched her own

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method. Just because she had referred to de Vries, Montessori was not necessarily acquainted with every aspect of the mutation theory. The histologist Aemilius Bernardus Droogleever Fortuyn was one of the Dutch researchers who collaborated with Montessori. In the article “Periodi sensitivi” (1927) Montessori described Drooglever Fortuyn as one of her movement’s foremost “propagators and followers”.60 In an article published in 1924 Droogleever Fortuyn had described the fundamental features of de Vries’s theory of sensitive periods and how the concept was later adopted by biologists including Hans Driesch and Valentin Haecker. He argued that the concept should also be relevant for pedagogical purposes. “Although I cannot find in Montessori’s works a clear exposition of the idea of sensitive periods”, wrote Droogleever Fortuyn, Montessori had still, indirectly and in line with her biological outlook, taken the phenomenon into account. She had placed the writing exercises in the sensitive period for fine motor skills, and had linked exercises to sensitive periods for religious instruction. The Montessori method, says Droogleever Fortuyn, is no fad, as it relies on the very foundation of life, but it can of course be expanded on. Research into sensitive periods is still in its infancy, and there is yet more to discover. Perhaps there are also sensitive periods during adolescence?61 In the mid-1920s Montessori articulated her concept of sensitive periods more clearly. She was now to introduce this psychopedagogical term as her very own invention, although it had been discussed in pedagogical circles before Montessori added it to her conceptual vocabulary. For example, the heading of a lecture given at the first (and only) international paedological congress in Brussels in 1911 was “La notion biologique de la ‘période sensible’, appliquée en pédagogie”. The speaker was the Belgian educationalist Médard Carolus Schuyten (1866–1948), a prominent figure within the paedological movement who around World War I wanted to formulate a scientific pedagogical theory through interdisciplinary collaboration. Many well-known figures joined the movement, including Alfred Binet, Cyril Burt, Édouard Claparède, Ovide Decroly and Georg Kerschensteiner. Montessori had in 1911 been accepted as a member of the paedological network committee for the arrangement of future conferences. It is not clear whether she also participated in the 1911 congress, but a reference in L’Autoeducazione to another lecture

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delivered at the congress shows that she had access to the congress publications. She made no reference to Schuyten’s contribution.62 As shown by Marc Depaepe, Schuyten combined a positivist passion for measurements with wild speculations on the influence of solar energy on vital life functions. Schuyten was a dreamer of sorts who after the war left all his public offices to devote his time to religious brooding on the imminent end of the world. His son’s death on the battlefield had deprived him of all hopes of a brighter future. The paedological movement that had begun so promisingly also came to a halt after the war. Not so much on account of the break in international collaboration within the scientific community, but mostly for strictly scientific reasons. Scientific development moved towards increasing specialisation instead of interdisciplinary syntheses. In the scientific fields that had been included in the paedological network—paediatrics, anthropometry, psychology and pedagogy—there had not been any success in agreeing on a common methodology or achieving a necessary consensus on children and their education that would have made a unified paedological science possible. Developmental psychology instead won the greatest influence as an overall paradigm.63 Montessori’s method was clearly rooted in the paedological programme. In several of her early contributions to the debate on learning disabilities, she placed her work firmly within the paedological movement. In her capacity as a physician specialising in neuropsychiatric medicine and anthropology, she was more than qualified in the core paedological disciplines. This link between Schuyten and Montessori has not, however, attracted any attention. Regardless of whether Montessori had heard of Schuyten’s lecture, it may be interesting to compare their respective perspectives on sensitive periods and the pedagogical approach they claimed followed from de Vries’s discovery.64 Schuyten began his congress lecture with a summary of experiments on plants and insects that Flemish researchers had conducted after de Vries. These experiments clearly indicated the existence of sensitive periods. For a limited period during the initial organ-formation process, it seemed as if organisms were malleable at the cellular level. If environmental conditions radically changed, deviations from the expected development could occur. Schuyten found it highly probable that these

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modifications would be transmitted to the next generation. In his view, what applied to lower-level organisms also applied to higher-level ones. To Schuyten, sensitive periods were the result of a general law of biological development common to all living beings, from the most basic protozoans to the higher-level mammals, including human beings.65 Schuyten and Montessori shared the conviction that the discovery of sensitive periods will revolutionise pedagogy, but in all other matters their viewpoints were as different as night and day. While Montessori focuses on the inner-directedness of the process—the genetic origin of sensitive periods—Schuyten cultivates a more Lamarckian environmental perspective that is at odds with the Mendelian focus on hereditary traits. And while Montessori proposes a method based on non-­ intervention that gives the child a chance to develop at its own pace through auto-education, Schuyten advocates “pedagogical treatment” planned in advance “with a high degree of certainty” that would direct the child “towards its rightful path”. During the sensitive periods, when the child is most easily influenced, the teacher can gain control over its entire future development. The educational task is redefined in Schuyten’s Lamarckian-Spencerian vision. It is no longer restricted to cultivating innate predispositions; it involves a more radical conditioning.66 In order for such conditioning to be successfully applied, education must begin during the prenatal phase when the germ plasm becomes differentiated and organs are formed: muscles, bones, brain etc. Although hereditary factors control the direction of the process, environmental factors can have an impact on the vital force of the child’s organs. For this reason, action has to be taken as early as possible, as the child’s energy capital can no longer be increased after birth—only be made more or less profitable. Schuyten compares it to the way metals are formed—an analogy that suggests an almost alchemical dream of creating perfect human material. This silver we find in nature remains silver for ever, says Schuyten, “with its latent chemical energy capital irrevocably fixed”. But if the “formative circumstances at the moment of genesis had been different, the silver could have been gold”.67 Schuyten distinguishes between primary and secondary sensitive periods. The first, which occurs during the foetal stage, is considered the more important. According to Schuyten it takes place between the eighth

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and fifteenth weeks of gestation, when the foetus is highly receptive to outside influences that either strengthen or weaken the formation of its organs. In the future, scientists will most certainly be confirming the popular belief that strong emotional impressions during the third month of pregnancy may be transmitted from mother to foetus and affect its health. The prenatal education envisaged by Schuyten can thus only be achieved indirectly via the mother. During the primary sensitive period the mother should occupy herself with “suitable mental exercises in order to allow the fruit of her womb to benefit”. The child will thereby be better mentally prepared at birth.68 At this point in his argument Schuyten wonders whether it would be possible to “manufacture artists, authors, scientists”—any kind of man one could possibly want—with this method. That would hardly be the case, but not because it would be an infringement of the child’s right to choose its own life and career, nor out of respect for the parents’ wishes. The educationalist’s power over the child’s future is only limited by hereditary factors—the talents and dispositions the child has inherited from its parents. It is therefore necessary to evaluate the mother and father in order to determine the nature of these dispositions. In accordance with his pre-Mendelian approach, Schuyten appears to presume that the gene pool only contains characteristics that are manifested in the parents. He seems to have entirely missed the Mendelian distinction between latent and manifest characteristics, as well as between dominant and recessive genetic material.69 If an examination of the parents, for example, shows that the mother is artistic, it may be pertinent to let her indulge in aesthetic practices during the third month of pregnancy, provided that the father’s characteristics do not neutralise those of the mother. The child’s artistic education can thereby be prepared in advance and greatly facilitated. There is, however, one exception to this rule. If either parent possesses an extraordinary talent, it is not advisable to steer the child in that direction. Should the father be a mathematical genius, he has probably drained the mathematical talent pool without having given the child its fair share. Regardless of how many mathematical problems the mother has solved during pregnancy, the child will still be born with no aptitude for the subject. The latter example shows how Schuyten compares genetic inheritance with

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inherited economic fortune. Parents can, after all, spend all their money without leaving anything to their children.70 Schuyten’s account of secondary sensitive periods during childhood is less detailed. Unlike Montessori, he does not seem to assign a great deal of importance to the preschool stage and the acquisition of basic skills. He only mentions sensitive periods during school age. Schoolteachers are well aware of how some pupils cultivate a special interest or an activity of their own choice. Some of these phases are of a more collective nature, for example the “warrior phase” among boys, inspired by history lessons and adventure stories. Secondary sensitive periods in gifted children can be highly individual, as when the child suddenly cultivates a deep fascination for a single topic, be it a school subject such as geography or a more unusual one such as graphology. The subject is not always useful, nor does it necessarily match the child’s talents, but a skilled teacher can make use of these periods of enthusiasm to channel the child’s energies in the most productive direction.71 This comparison clearly shows that Montessori’s vision of a pedagogy based on sensitive periods has little in common with that of Schuyten. Even though they both base their theories on de Vries’s concept of sensitive periods, they arrive at distinctly different conclusions. While Montessori perceived sensitive periods as being impulses originating from within, as the realisation of an innate potential, Schuyten instead accentuated outside control and susceptibility to environmental conditioning. While Schuyten only addressed the teacher and wanted to increase teacher control in order to encompass both the foetal stage and the child’s entire future life, Montessori advocated the child’s independence—its freedom to realise its own potential without too much teacher control. Perhaps Montessori’s more emancipatory approach was a result of her better insight into Mendelian genetics, for if the child’s genetic make­up—its gene pool—encompasses many more inherited abilities than those displayed in the parents, what would be the point of moulding the child in their image? Nor did Montessori share Schuyten’s materialism— his reductive view of the child’s mental capacities as simply an effect of organic energy. Despite her biologism, Montessori firmly believed in the spirituality of the child’s life force—the “psychical embryo” in which the pure essence of the human soul resided.

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Notes 1. Maria Montessori, “La chiamata”, The Call of Education, Psychopedagogical Journal, International Organ of the Montessori Movement (1:1, 1924) 3. 2. Kevin J.  Brehony, “A New Education for a New Era: Creating International Fellowship through Conferences 1921–1938”, Paedagogica Historica (40:5–6, 2004) 733–755. 3. “The Montessori Movement in Holland”, The Call of Education (1:2, 1924) 157–161, Hélène Leenders, “Die Rezeption der Montessori-­ Pädagogik in den Niederlanden”, Das Kind (23:1, 1998) 18–31, Günter Schulz-Benesch, Der Streit um Montessori: Kritische Nachforschung zum Werk eine katholischen Pädagogin von Weltruf, mit einer internationalen Montessori-Bibliographie (Freiburg: Herder, 1961) 214–215. Rita Kramer, Maria Montessori: A Biography (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978) 251–252, 267–270. 4. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 268, 291–293, Gertrud Nordlund, Maria Montessori och hennes verk, 1: Montessoriuppfostran (Stockholm: Svensk läraretidnings förlag, 1959), 124, Anna Maria Maccheroni, A True Romance: Maria Montessori as I Knew Her (Edinburgh: The Darien Press, 1947) 71. There is almost no research on The Call of Education in the Montessori literature. 5. “The Montessori Movement in Holland”, The Call of Education (1:2, 1924) 160–161, Maccheroni, A True Romance, 71–72. 6. This investigation of The Call of Education is based on issues in the Opera Nazionale Montessori archive in Rome, where no. 1:3, 1:4, 1924 were missing as well as 2:4, 1925. 7. Gésa Révèsz, “Introductory Note”, The Call of Education, (1:1, 1924) 31–35. 8. Gésa Révèsz, “Progressive Education. A quarterly review of the newer tendencies in Education”, The Call of Education (2:1, 1925) 71–73. 9. Joffrey Godefroy, “Perspectives”, The Call of Education (1:1, 1924) 24–25, Maria Montessori, “Introduzione alla III Edizione”, Il Metodo, Edizione Critica, (Rome: Opera Nazionale Montessori, 2000) 64–66. 10. Godefroy, “Perspectives” (1924) 26. 11. Godefroy, “Perspectives” (1924) 28–31. 12. James Crichton-Browne, “From the Introductory address given by Sir James Crichton-Browne, JP, MD, LLD, at the Montessori Conference

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Wembley Exhibition on 9:th May 1924”, The Call of Education (1:2, 1924) 162–166. 13. “Dr Montessori- Hon. Doct. Litt.”, The Call of Education (1:1, 1924) 73–74, Nadia Labriola, “Relazione Russa”, The Call of Education (2:1, 1925) 57–64, Claude A. Claremont, “Why is the Montessori method a Science?”, The Call of Education (1:1, 1924) 36–41. Maria Montessori, “Praise and Blame”, TES (19/5, 1923) 234. 14. L’Editore, “Ai lettori”, The Call of Education (2:3, 1925) 153–156. 15. Mario M. Montessori, “Filippiche”, Introduzione a Mario M. Montessori, Augusto Scocchera, (ed.) (Rome; Opera Nazionale Montessori, 1998) 32–36. 16. Cornelia Philippi S. van Reesema, “Les précurseurs de Mme Montessori”, Pour l’Ere nouvelle, revue internationale d’éducation nouvelle (5:18, 1926) 82–85, Philippi S. van Reesema, “Les précurseurs (…) 2”, Pour l’Ere nouvelle (5:22,1926)119–126, Philippi S. van Reesema, “Les précurseurs (…) 3”, Pour l’Ere nouvelle (5:23,1926) 171–175. 17. The edition of Das Kind in der Familie that I refer to in this chapter was published in 1954 and only includes the original six articles from 1923. Another five psycho-pedagogical essays were added to the1936 edition of Il bambino in famiglia. 18. Maria Montessori, “La chiamata” (1924) 3–7, Maria Montessori, “Grundlinien meiner Erziehungsmethode”, Die Selbsterziehung des Kindes, Franz Hilker (ed.) (Berlin: C A Schwetschke & Sohn, 1923) 12, Maria Montessori, “Allgemeines über meine Methode”, Das Kind in der Familie und andere vorträge (1923) (Stuttgart: Klett, 1954) 49. 19. Maria Montessori, “Grundlinien” (1923) 9. 20. Montessori, “Grundlinien” (1923) 8, Montessori, “Allgemeines”, (1954) 45. 21. Montessori, “Allgemeines”, (1954) 47. 22. Montessori, “La chiamata” (1924) 5. 23. Montessori, “Grundlinien” (1923) 11–12. 24. Montessori, “Allgemeines” (1954) 51. 25. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 7–8. 26. Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (London: Basic Books, 1970) 843. 27. Kramer, Maria Montessori 285–291, 300–301. For the Austrian Montessori movement’s connections with the psychoanalytical movement see Günther Bittner, “Maria Montessori und das Unbewusste”,

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Montessori-­Pädagogik und die Erziehungsprobleme der Gegenwart, Birgitta Fuchs, Waltraud Harth-Peter (ed.), (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1989) 48–64, Günther Bittner, Volker Frölich, “Maria Montessori und die psychoanalyse”, Kinder sind Anderes; Maria Montessoris Bild vom Kinde auf dem Prüfstand, Waltraud Harth-Peter (ed.) (Würzburg: Ergon, 1996) 103–127. 28. Francesco De Bartolomeis, Maria Montessori e la pedagogia scientifica (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1961) 105–115, Giovanni M. Bertin, Il fanciullo montessoriano e l’educazione infantile, (Rome: Armando, 1975) 11–19, 53–55, 61–67, 73. 29. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 288, Maria Montessori, “Das Kind in der Familie”, Das Kind in der Familie und andere Vorträge (1923) (Stuttgart: Klett, 1954) 17–44. 30. Montessori, “Das Kind in der Familie”, 17, 21, 23, 26. 31. Montessori, “Das Kind in der Familie”, 17–18, 23–26, 35. 32. Montessori, “Das Kind in der Familie”, 17–22. 33. Montessori, “Das Kind in der Familie”, 23, 25–27. 34. Montessori, “Das Kind in der Familie”, 17, 30–34. 35. Montessori, “Das Kind in der Familie”, 36–39. 36. Montessori, “Das Kind in der Familie”, 39–42. 37. Erwin Krauss, “La psicologia individuale di Alfredo Adler e la dottrina Montessori”, Montessori: Rivista bimestrale dell’Opera Montessori (1:1, 1932) 13–20. 38. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious, 571–585, 604–617, 631. 39. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious, 588–591, 619–623. 40. Alfred Adler, “The dangers of isolation”, The Call of Education (1:2, 1924) 128–134. 41. Maria Montessori, “Das Neugeborene”, Das Kind in der Familie und andere Vorträge, 11–16. 42. For information about Otto Rank, see for example E. James Lieberman, Acts of Will: The Life and Work of Otto Rank (New York: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985), see also Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious, 515–517, 696, 844–845, Benjamin B.  Wolman, Contemporary Theories and Systems in Psychology (New York: Harper, 1960) 319–325, Peter Gay, Freud (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1990) 491–506. 43. Montessori, “Das Neugeborene”, 11, 12. 44. Montessori, “Das Neugeborene”, 12. 45. Montessori, “Das Neugeborene”, 12, 13, 15.

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46. Montessori, “Das Neugeborene”, 13–14. 47. Montessori, “Das Neugeborene”, 11, 14–16. 48. “Dr Montessori in England: Training Course Opened”, TES (14/4, 1923) 178. 49. “Intelligence of the Newborn”, TES (21/4, 1923) 185. 50. Maria Montessori, “Dr Montessori’s Study of Very Little Children”, The Call of Education (1:1, 1924) 48–54. 51. Montessori, “Dr Montessori’s Study of Very Little Children”, 53. 52. Montessori, “Dr Montessori’s Study of Very Little Children”, 54. 53. Roger Smith, The Fontana History of the Human Sciences, (London: Fontana Press, 1997) 594, 624, 833, Wolman, Contemporary Theories and Systems in Psychology, 417. See also Harold Baumann, “On the Historical Background of the Montessori-Piaget Relations”, Communications. Association Montessori Internationale (2–3:1999) 6–20, Harold Baumann, Hundert Jahre Montessori-Pädagogik 1907–2007. Eine Chronik der Montessori-Pädagogik in der Schweiz (Bern: Haupt Verlag, 2007) 203–215. 54. Peter K.  Smith, Helen Cowie, Mark Blades, Understanding Children’s Development (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 1998) . 44–47, Nicky Hayes, Foundations of Psychology. An Introductory Text (London: Routledge, 1995) 683–686, 867–869, Wolman, Contemporary Theories and Systems in Psychology, 240, Mary A. Zender, Bryce F. Zender, “Vygotsky’s View About the Age Periodization of Child Development”, The Process of Child Development, Peter Neubauer (ed.) (New York: New American Library, 1976) 303–319. 55. P. J. Bowler, Evolution. The History of An Idea, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) 261–264, Tord Silverbark, Darwinismens Historia: idéer och diskussioner, 1859 till 2000-talet (Lund: Sekel Bokförlag/Isell & Jinert, 2010) 230–233, Aemilius Bernardus Drooglever Fortuyn, “Sensitive Periods”, The Call of Education (1:2, 1924) 104–106. 56. D. H. Cornish, “Bilingualism and sensitive periods, from a phonetician’s point of view”, The Call of Education, (2:3, 1925) 176–181, Maria Montessori, “Periodi sensitivi”, L’idea Montessori. Organo dell’Opera Nazionale Montessori (1:2–3, 1927) 12–13, Maria Montessori, “I periodi sensitivi”, Montessori: Rivista bimestrale dell’Opera Montessori (1:3, 1932)151–153, Maria Montessori, Il segreto dell’infanzia (1938) (Milan: Garzanti, 1999) 51–66. 57. Montessori, “I periodi sensitivi”, 1932, 152.

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58. Maria Montessori, Antropologia Pedagogica (Milan: Vallardi, 1910) 36–40, Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method: Scientific Pedagogy as Applied to Child Education in the Children’s Houses: With Additions and Revisions by the Author (New York: Stokes, 1912) 105–106. 59. Montessori, The Montessori Method, (1912) 29. 60. Drooglever Fortuyn, “Sensitive Periods”, 1924, 104–112. 61. Drooglever Fortuyn, “Sensitive Periods”, 109. 62. Marc Depaepe, Zum Wohl des Kindes? Pädologie, pädagogische Psychologie und experimentelle Pädagogik in Europa und den USA, 1890–1914 (Weinheim: Leuven University Press, 1993) 84–89, 121–127, Montessori, L’Autoeducazione, (1992) 309. 63. Depaepe, Zum wohl des Kindes? 86–87, 164–166, 340–344, 358–371, Marc Depaepe, “The Pedologist Médard Carolus Schuyten: An Insane Positivist or Just a Starry-eyed Idealist?”, Paedagogica Historica. International Journal of the History of Education (34:1, 1998), 209–229. 64. See for example Maria Montessori, “L’Antropologia pedagogica: conferenza tenuta agli studenti di filosofia nell’Università di Roma”, Vita dell infanzia (46:8, 1997) 8–15. 65. Médard C.  Schuyten, “La Notion biologique de la ‘Période sensible, appliquée en Pédagogie”, I:er Congrès international de pédologie tenu à Bruxelles, du 12 au 18 août 1911, sous le haut patronage de S M Albert I, Roi des Belges, Vol II, Rapports, Josefa Ioteyko, (ed.) (Brussels: Ed. Librairie Misch et Thron, 1912) 530–533. 66. Schuyten, “La Notion biologique de la ‘Période sensible’”, 532, 536. 67. Schuyten, “La Notion biologique de la ‘Période sensible’”, 532–533. 68. Schuyten, “La Notion biologique de la ‘Période sensible’”, 534. 69. Schuyten, “La Notion biologique de la ‘Période sensible’”, 534. 70. Schuyten, “La Notion biologique de la ‘Période sensible’”, 534. 71. Schuyten, “La Notion biologique de la ‘Période sensible’”, 535.

6 Politicisation of Italian Montessorism

6.1 Previous Research into the Montessori/ Mussolini Cooperation In summer 1946, following a long exile in India during World War II, Montessori and her son Mario could again set foot on European soil. They only stayed for a year, as important business called Montessori back to India. A course was held in London in autumn 1946, and in May 1947, Montessori was invited by the new government to visit Italy. In July the same year Mario married Ada Pierson, a Dutch member of the AMI, who had looked after his children during the war. Afterwards, Montessori and Mario travelled to India in the company of Ada and Mario’s youngest daughter, the now 17-year-old Renilde. Montessori returned to Europe for good in summer 1949.1 Naturally, Montessori’s first visit to her native Italy after having been declared persona non grata by Mussolini’s government did not go unnoticed. The Christian Democrat Maria Jervolino gave a welcome speech in parliament on 3 May 1947, congratulating Montessori on her work in education and on being a champion for peace. Jervolino also highlighted the paradoxical fact that the fascists had imagined they could use Montessori’s method for their own ends, even though this method

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promoted the free development of the individual in complete contrast to fascist ideology. When asked in an interview in 1947 why she had been forced to leave Italy in 1934, Montessori cited ideological differences: “They abolished my schools because they were based on an international idea, and I refused to teach war.” She did emphasise, however, that she was not interested in party politics and did not wish to be branded a “furious anti-fascist”. Freedom was her lodestar.2 By the time Montessori arrived back in Italy, Opera Nazionale Montessori had been reinstituted as the Italian Montessori Society, with Jervolino as chair. The society was instrumental in a campaign that put pressure on the government to grant Montessori a state pension by petitioning the Ministry of Education in autumn 1946. The minister of education, Guido Gonella, supported the proposal, but it was turned down by the Ministry of Finance owing to the financial situation. An interesting memorandum detailing Montessori’s life and work was attached to Gonella’s response to the petition on 25 November 1946, in which the controversy concerning the fascist regime was mentioned: The fascist regime offered protection to Montessori schools as far as they were deemed useful in affirming Italy’s prestige, but abolished them as soon as the Nazi government in Germany began their suppression of the Montessori movement.3

According to this memorandum the fascists’ change of policy regarding the Montessori movement was due to their tendency to be guided by Nazi Germany. Gonella’s response to the petition also highlighted that Opera Nazionale Montessori, founded in 1924, “was initially favoured by the previous regime”, but was later dismissed “along the lines of what took place in Germany”.4 The Germans were thus indirectly blamed for Montessori’s expatriation, which might seem reasonable, as Montessori schools and societies were banned in both countries when Italy first formed an alliance with Germany in 1936. These documents did not, however, reveal whether there were also other, internal, reasons for Montessori’s exile. Montessori had in fact withdrawn her membership of the Italian Montessori Society back in January 1933, and the previous year she had moved the base of

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the International Montessori Association, AMI, from Rome to Berlin. This suggests that cooperation with the fascist government had become problematic before the Nazis came to power in Germany.5 Montessori’s return to Europe was celebrated in style with the international Montessori congress held on 22–29 August 1949 at the fashionable resort of San Remo on the Italian Riviera. In his speech the minister of education, Gonella, referred to the congress’s theme: “Man’s Formation for World Reconstruction”. Who was better suited to work for the establishment of good relations between all peoples than Montessori, who constantly travelled the world to disseminate her message? Montessori had that year been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the governments of Italy, India and United Kingdom, and this added to the congress’s prestige.6 In her article “Democrazia integrale o del metodo Montessori”, published a month before the conference, Evelina Tarroni declared that the world was facing a momentous choice between never-ending war and dictatorship or Montessori’s revolutionary method—“An education reconstructed on an entirely new foundation”. It was to contribute to the “creation of a better humanity” and, at long last, end the war between adults and children—the source of all other conflicts since time immemorial.7 Such praise of Montessori as a redeemer of humankind did not impress the literary critic Umberto Biscottini. In an article entitled “Superuomo su ricetta” (1949), he drew attention to the similarities between Montessori’s new man and Nietzsche’s Übermensch. The Montessori method was marketed as a panacea for all the ills of civilisation—a method for producing perfect human beings. Unfortunately there was no mention of the remedy’s ingredients and exact dosage. If Montessori did have access to the recipe for making a superman, the result would already have manifested itself, as her schools had been operative for almost half a century. During the recent congress in San Remo much had been said about the reconstruction of humankind, when it was in fact the Montessori “phenomenon” that needed to be reconstructed, according to Biscottini. This phenomenon included blind faith in the goodness of the child as well as exaggerated claims about the method’s scientific validity. All that

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was to be found under the thin veneer of scientific methodology was the simple notion of the liberated child; this idea of freedom was the key to the Montessori method. Liberating children from parental control would lead to mass production of better people. Evidently, this idea of freedom was not a concession to the current political situation, as Montessori had promoted it throughout her career and even for a while believed it to be compatible with fascism. Her collaboration with the fascist regime revolved around the establishment of a Montessori teacher training college. It all ended in a muddle, there is no doubt about it, but this had more to do with her career than any political or pedagogical motivations. Biscottini had heard a rumour that the collaboration had only been abandoned after advanced negotiations ending with the Ministry of Finance refusing to pay for the post Montessori had aspired to—a post at the Ministry of Education as general inspector of a teacher training programme.8 So far Montessori had been portrayed only as a noble-minded victim of the fascist regime—one of many brave free thinkers who had been forced into exile. Although Biscottini’s provocative contribution to the debate did not carry enough weight to tarnish this image, it could potentially damage the Montessori movement by being reiterated in gossip columns and by word of mouth. As a former editor of the journal Civiltà fascista, Biscottini probably wanted to lighten his own burden of guilt by suggesting that Montessori, too, had compromised her position by collaborating with the regime. The Montessori movement made no attempt to respond to such accusations. They preferred to bury the problem instead of conducting a thorough investigation into what had taken place during the decade when Opera Nazionale Montessori had been backed by the fascist regime. It was not only the Montessori movement that wanted to eradicate the past and move on. After the war Italy as a nation suffered from post-traumatic stress. It was not unusual, even among cultural figures such as Benedetto Croce, to dismiss the Mussolini era as an unfortunate parenthesis in the country’s otherwise distinguished past.9 Although there was a reluctance to deal with past events, there was also a desire to rediscover Montessori’s essays from this period. For example, the period between 1961 and 1964 saw publication in the Opera Nazionale Montessori journal Vita dell’Infanzia of a string of articles by

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Montessori that had been published between 1927 and 1929 in L’Idea Montessori, the first Montessori journal in Italy. Giacomo Santucci was hoping that these articles would contribute both to the historiography of the Italian Montessori movement and to research into Montessori’s writings. He also emphasised the “exceptional” importance of the 1926 Montessori teacher training course in Milan to the development of the movement. This course was exceptional in comparison with other teacher training courses offered at the time of Giovanni Gentile’s school reform, as it was not restricted to learned lectures. There was room for experiment and exchange of knowledge and experience. Moreover, it inspired life-­ long commitment to Montessori’s ideas in the participants—a commitment in which they did not falter when these ideas were challenged and everything seemed to be “conspiring against them”. Santucci added that he referred to “the period when Montessori was far away from our country”. The article was accompanied by a reproduction of the cover image for the second issue of L’Idea Montessori, on which Montessori’s portrait was flanked by decorative pictures of highly focused Montessori children using the didactic materials. At the top was a map of the world on which the name of the journal was printed—an illustration of how the Montessori idea had won worldwide appeal.10 Santucci’s initiative was not appreciated by Grazia Honegger Fresco, an important figure within the Italian Montessori movement. In an open letter to Vita dell’Infanzia’s editors, she pointed out the problem of publishing a cover from 1927 with a caption that revealed that that year’s vice presidents of Opera Nazionale Montessori, Pietro Fedele and Luigi Federzoni, had been fascists, and that Mussolini himself was honorary president. Leaving such a caption uncommented would lead to misunderstandings, and would entail a risk of sentiments hostile to the Montessori movement, which were still common in Italy: We all know that notwithstanding all the excellent work that is being done by the present Opera, the method is still met with suspicion as many judge it without having visited or assessed the most well-functioning schools judiciously, or because others consider it the domain of certain currents.11

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Before publication of this type of material, the readership should have been clearly informed that until the 1930s fascism wore a mask that concealed its true face. Once the dictatorship had been unmasked and had abolished citizens’ rights, the ideas of the Montessori movement were banned too. Vita dell’Infanzia should instead have used material from the Opera Nazionale Montessori archive, which more explicitly showed the pressure Montessori’s disciples were under in that difficult period.12 The Montessori movement was barely mentioned when research into the history of Italian fascism took off in the 1960s. If it was mentioned at all, as in Renzo De Felice’s biography of Mussolini, it was only as part of a freedom-loving, liberal cultural movement that refused to “bow” to fascism. One exception, however, was an article from 1971 by the educational historian Tina Tomasi. While conducting research into the combination of idealism and fascism in Italian educational policy during the 1920s, Tomasi discovered Montessori’s involvement in Gentile’s school reform. In the light of this she found reason to question the universal emancipation that the Montessori movement was advocating. According to Tomasi, Montessori’s concept of liberty lacked the stability that a more clearly defined theoretical or ideological framework could have supplied. It was all so vague that Montessori even allowed herself to accept “support and honours” from the fascist regime. Was it not strange that an educationalist who was so resolute about liberating children from the oppression of adults was not concerned about their insertion into a totalitarian society? Tomasi also wondered how Montessori’s ideas of freedom tallied with her praise of the fascist youth organisation Balilla in a lecture she gave in 1934. In this lecture Montessori described fascism as “a new force that sets the world in motion” and mentioned the importance of “a mobilisation of children”.13 The footnotes to Tomasi’s brief article included some facts about the support Opera Nazionale Montessori had enjoyed in the form of sponsored journals, teacher training and congresses. Like Biscottini, Tomasi claimed that the break with the fascists in 1934 was not primarily caused by “specific ideological reasons” but by disagreements regarding the organisation of the Montessori teacher training college in Rome.14 While Tomasi initiated research into Montessori’s association with the fascist regime, it was with Rita Kramer’s biography of Montessori (1976)

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that the door to this field of research was opened wide. Kramer wanted to come to terms with the hagiography surrounding Montessori and present a more nuanced picture. She was primarily interested in the media’s launch of Montessori as a celebrity. She also focused on Montessori’s charismatic personality and the almost symbiotic relationship with her son, Mario, and her closest followers. Although the biography was somewhat lacking in depth when it came to the presentation of Montessori’s publications, Kramer was able to offer a vivid picture of Montessori as an influential cultural figure in interwar Europe. Her study also showed that this influence reached its climax in Mussolini’s Italy.15 Kramer had been given access to the secret domain of the international Montessori movement—the AMI archive in Amsterdam, which no outsider had yet been admitted to. She found press cuttings there that allowed her to reconstruct in broad terms how the Montessori movement had developed and the role it played in the public debate. In doing so, she revealed the full breadth of Montessori’s cooperation with the fascist regime. This was not appreciated by the AMI, whose archive has since been closed to nearly all researchers. Kramer was able to show how both Mario Montessori and the Italian Montessori committee—with its contacts in high society and the royal family—wrote to Mussolini in 1923–1924, asking him to support the Montessori method. The minister of education, Gentile, was forthcoming as he thought it possible to include the method for preschools as part of his major educational reform. Mussolini had requested information from Italian consulates across the world that had confirmed the Montessori method’s spread and international reputation. The Italian Montessori Society was conferred a charter of incorporation by royal decree that came into force in August 1924. The committee now changed its name to Opera Nazionale Montessori, ONM.  From 1926 onwards it was led by Gentile. Mussolini was appointed as honorary president of the organisation that same year, and Montessori was appointed as an honorary member of the fascist party. Through government subsidies ONM was able to offer several national and international teacher training courses between 1926 and 1931. Manufacture of materials and Montessori journals was subsidised, and many new Montessori preschools were opened. The crowning glory was the establishment of the state Montessori teacher training college in

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Rome, Regia Scuola di Metodo Montessori, in 1928. The Rome Montessori congress in 1934 marked the end of Montessori’s cooperation with the fascists.16 Kramer speculated on why Montessori fell for the “Faustian temptation” and accepted favours from the fascist regime. She suspected that it was simply a banal combination of promoting her own career and political naivety. Montessori believed that in Mussolini she had finally found the patron she had been seeking, someone who could ensure the consolidation of the movement and its continued spread. There may have been a degree of revanchism as the Montessori method had not achieved the same success in Italy as abroad. It could now triumph and be introduced in every school in the country. Montessori clearly misjudged the political situation. She appears to have developed a form of tunnel vision that prevented her from perceiving what fascism was all about, and from realising it was an ideology that went against her belief in peace and freedom. When journalists asked her about her political affiliation she invariably replied that the children’s cause was above party politics and transcended national borders. She believed that the universalism of her method meant it could be applied in every context.17 Nor was it easy to predict the direction fascism would take. The British took a positive interest in the new Italy throughout the 1920s. In the beginning many people welcomed Mussolini’s regime as a bastion against communism and socialism. It acquired a touch of respectability through support from the royal family, business and industry, the cultural elite and the Catholic Church. Although Italy had become a dictatorship in 1926 it would be another 10 years before the country became belligerent, beginning with the genocide in Abyssinia in 1935 and the alliance with Nazi Germany against the Spanish republic in 1936. Racial laws were not introduced until 1938, following pressure from the Germans.18 For Mussolini it was of course a major boost that a famous and revered cultural figure such as Montessori could lend the regime prestige in the eyes of the world. A method of education that could easily instil discipline at an early age was of great interest to the fascists. The relationship between Montessori and Mussolini was a marriage of convenience of sorts, with both parties using the other and managing to overlook their differences of opinion. Owing to her limited access to source material,

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Kramer, who did not visit any Italian archives, was not able to explain what led to the break in 1934. She conjectured that the increasing fascistisation of Italian schools—where boys wore the Balilla uniform and gave the fascist salute in the classroom—offered Montessori a reason to withdraw from the collaboration. “Why Montessori drew the line at this particular decision is not clear. After all, she had closed her eyes to so much else.”19 Kramer’s disclosures were initially met with complete silence from the Montessori movement. Augusto Scocchera, editor of ONM’s journal Vita dell’Infanzia, was the first to break the silence in his Montessori biography (1990), in which he offered a more sophisticated version of the standard narrative about Montessori being persecuted by the fascists. Without referring to Kramer he questioned Tomasi’s hypothesis about an increasing cultural conservatism in Montessori’s publications during the interwar period. According to Scocchera Montessori never abandoned her radical feminist and scientific principles. However, it was not always easy to make oneself understood, especially not in Italy between the wars. Although Montessori had been officially elevated to a front-line figure with a view to improving the regime’s image abroad, a fierce debate played out on the pages of Italian educational journals, degenerating into a hate campaign against Montessori. The leading players within the educational establishment—Catholics and idealist philosophers—did not much appreciate Montessori’s roots in the French Enlightenment tradition. The driving force behind this campaign, which pitted the un-Italian Montessori method against the genuinely Italian Agazzi method, was Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, who was responsible for the primary and preschool sectors in Gentile’s educational reform programme.20 Reading between the lines in the introduction to the new edition of Il Metodo, published in connection with the first regime-sponsored Montessori teacher training course in Milan in 1926, Scocchera sensed that Montessori was concerned about the shift in public opinion in Italy. Rather than emphasising the method’s Italian roots, Montessori had dwelt on its global distribution. In her opening speech she also mentioned that the struggle for a new educational method had lasted “many decades”, indicating that it was independent of the fascist regime. Through this form of subtle exegesis Scocchera sought to challenge the

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image of Montessori as a collaborator, even going so far as to turn her into a regime critic. For Montessori 1926 was thus a year of “trials” rather than “exaltation”. However, Scocchera was unable to explain why the break did not take place before 1934 if Montessori had recognised the incompatibility between fascism and her own set of values as early as in 1926.21 Scocchera delivered a more convincing argument in his analysis of articles in which Montessori clearly refuted reactionary and fascist opinions on child-rearing. In an article published in 1992 Scocchera discussed her response to the Divini illius magistri encyclical. In the wake of the Lateran Treaty of 1929 the Pope had advocated a return to more authoritarian education by referring to original sin. Montessori pointed out that the Old Testament’s attitude to flogging had been replaced by the New Testament’s message of love. In his Montessori biography Scocchera also commented on Montessori’s appeal for peace education, L’Education et la paix (1932), which was published in Italian translation in Rivista Pedagogica in 1933. As to the lecture she delivered to the Rome congress in 1934—at which tribute was paid to Opera Balilla—Scocchera suggested Montessori’s text may have been misrepresented in the form of redactions made by the ONM journal. By resigning from ONM in 1933 Montessori had lost control of its publications. In an anthology of letters and articles written by Montessori’s son Mario, published by Schocchera in 1998 on the centenary of his birth, he presented the following hypothesis: Notwithstanding the prestigious, but illusory, patronage of Benito Mussolini, the unchallenged leader of the nation, hostile forces—cultural and political—are on the move, which, apart from earlier and more recently expressed pedagogical critique, now questioned the method’s Italianity in their attempt to turn it into a foreign quantity, extolling nefarious historical and ideological categories that brought the country closer to dangerous expressions of nationalistic fanaticism. In brief, between 1928 and 1932, Maria and Mario were prophets in their own homeland, unheard and troublesome, forced to witness the fatal destruction of their creation.22

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Around the year 2000 three researchers independently published studies that highlighted the problematic association between Montessori and Mussolini, as Kramer had done. The Dutch historian Marjan Schwegman, who specialises in women’s history, dedicated some 15 pages to the fascist era in a biography that focused more on Montessori the celebrity than on her writings. Schwegman was especially interested in the confrontation between Montessori and Mussolini as leaders of movements—“two authorities striving for autocracy”—but the context was only vaguely suggested. Giuliana Marazzi’s study Maria Montessori e il fascismo, the most significant findings of which were summarised in the article “Montessori e Mussolini: la collaborazione e la rottura” (2000), presented a more exhaustive survey of Italian archive material that could add to Kramer’s conclusions. It revealed that conflicts regarding Montessori’s influence on the Montessori teacher training college in Rome had contributed to the break. Marazzi’s most important finding was a file on Montessori covering the period 1932 to 1938, found in the archive of the Polizia Politica, the fascist secret police. However, Marazzi was more interested in offering an overall picture of the collaboration—how it started, developed and ended—than in making an in-depth study of this fascinating source material. It was clear from these spy reports that Montessori was suspected of engaging in antifascist double-dealing.23 More detail was added to the picture drawn by Kramer with the publication of the Dutch researcher Hélène Leenders’ dissertation in 1999. The German translation, entitled Der Fall Montessori (2001), must on account of its extensive use of sources be considered an important contribution to the scholarly debate on Montessori’s dealings with the fascist regime. As the German title suggests, Leenders adopted an ideology-­ critical perspective. Kramer, Schwegman and Marazzi had evaluated the fascist interlude in the light of Montessori’s entire life story. The biographical narrative tended towards an interpretation that presented the alliance as a regrettable mistake in an otherwise impeccable career—an aberration from the straight course that Montessori always followed in her long struggle for the emancipation of the child. Leenders took a different approach. She did not share the above-mentioned researchers’ positive view of Montessori, and did not consider political naivety or careerism to be mitigating circumstances. Just because the association

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with the fascist regime had been businesslike, there was no reason why it should lead to mutual misunderstandings whereby both parties talked at cross-purposes, or why it should prevent a genuine exchange of ideas.24 Leenders wanted to explore the underlying preconditions for the collaboration, that is, the adaptations and concessions Montessori had been forced to agree to in order to earn the regime’s protection. She was able to confirm previous researchers’ suspicions about Montessori’s proactive role. By making use of her personal contact networks, lobbying and frequent correspondence with leading fascists, Montessori had done her utmost to promote her movement. Through a combination of flattery, appeals and demands she pressurised the regime into increasing their investment in the Montessori method. As early as in 1931 she wrote to the president of ONM—the fascist Emilio Bodrero—threatening to withdraw from the collaboration and offering her services to other nations if the regime did not oblige. Leenders showed by means of several amusing examples how Montessori also sought to make the most of the cooperation in financial terms, for instance when she asked the regime for free rail and airline tickets for her many journeys to and from Italy. Montessori lived in Spain, and between 1926 and 1934, she led teacher training courses in the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany and France, and held congresses in Denmark, France and the Netherlands. She seems to have been a tough negotiator, although she did not always get what she wanted. For example, she considered it to be the regime’s responsibility, not hers, to subsidise the 1000-lire course fee for Italian participants at the international teacher training courses in Rome in 1930 and 1931. The regime disagreed, and consequently these courses were mostly attended by foreigners. Nor did Montessori succeed in gaining support for an enhanced status that would have allowed Italian teachers with only the Montessori diploma to teach on the same terms as state-certified schoolteachers. While Montessori was hoping to expand her educational empire to higher school levels, the regime insisted that the Montessori method was best suited to teaching at preschool and primary-school levels.25 One advantage of Leenders’ study was her inclusion of actors other than Montessori, her son Mario and Mussolini. By studying the Montessori journal L’Idea Montessori 1927–1929, she was able to discern a degree of fascistisation within the ONM. Montessori’s contributions to

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the journal were, however, psychopedagogical and entirely apolitical. Nor could Leenders establish that Montessori—in the 1926 edition of Il Metodo—made any revisions of her doctrine that could be construed as being fascist. What she did do was to omit a great number of passages and formulations that were too closely associated with her positivist and radically social-liberal past, including the opening speech for the second Casa dei bambini in 1907. Montessori’s attempts at adapting to the regime thus appear to have been more strategical than ideological.26 Although Leenders carried out thorough archival research, she missed the items that Marazzi had found and that Schwegman, via Marazzi, had also commented on: the secret police file on Montessori. Had Leenders been able to access this source material she would probably have softened her judgement about Montessori as a pragmatic opportunist ready to sell her method to the highest bidder. According to Leenders the Montessori method was simply a neutral technological device, free of any theoretical or ideological superstructure. Leenders thereby reduced Montessorism to the didactic teaching materials. Anything beyond this that Montessori had thought and expressed about the nature of the child, society and science was dismissed as empty words, or “pure rhetoric”, as Leenders put it. Leenders went so far as to conclude that “Montessori has nothing to say about what the children must learn, only how.” Because of the formal nature of the Montessori method—the fact that it did not offer an articulated programme for the education of children—it was, according to Leenders, more easily spread, as it was possible to combine it with every brand of cultural, religious and ideological doctrine. Fascism, like any other world view, could fill the void. Based on this interpretation, Leenders believed she could prove that Montessori, despite her apolitical stance, had indirectly allowed the fascists to appropriate her method. “As her Metodo was in fact just a method and did not contain any form of curriculum theory”, it could “by integrating a set of fascist ideas, easily be connected to the fascist curriculum”.27 In order to make her interpretation more plausible Leenders had to exaggerate Montessori’s pragmatic qualities at the expense of her idealistic tendencies. For example, she dismissed Montessori’s increasingly speculative and culture-critical theories during the interwar period as nothing other than a strategic ruse with the purpose of better adapting the method

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to a cultural climate that had turned from methodological positivism to speculative idealism. Rather than assuming that Montessori’s ideas, like those of many of her contemporaries, had moved in this culture-critical direction, Leenders drew the Machiavellian conclusion that she had acquired idealistic jargon to gain access to the cultural elite. However, Leenders’ attempt at portraying Montessori as a power player devoid of ideals clashed with the 1932 peace appeal. Leenders had to admit that for Montessori publication of such a lecture in Mussolini’s Italy was “incompatible with the imperialistic and military fascism of the 1930s”.28 What Leenders did not really grasp was Montessori’s strong desire to change the world for the better, which informed her adoption of an end-­ justifies-­the-means strategy. The fact that she engaged in pragmatic negotiations and lobbying did not automatically make her an opportunist lacking higher goals. Her life’s work depended on support from rich and powerful people. To further her cause she had turned to capitalists such as the newspaper magnate McClure; she had even been granted the blessing of Pope Benedict XV in 1918. Her dealings with Mussolini followed the same pattern. As Leenders points out, however, it was remarkable that Montessori agreed to publish her articles in ONM journals alongside authors who subscribed to the fascist credo. Nor did she oppose the introduction of “fascist culture” in the curriculum at the Scuola di Metodo Montessori in Rome, only reacting strongly when fascists’ interference threatened the purity of her method. It is not obvious, however, that this was a sign of an altogether instrumental, method-fetishist stance on her part. She may, as Scocchera suggests, have disregarded the fascist orchestration of her educational programme in the belief that her own message would be heard and received despite this false presentation.29 Another possibility that has been largely ignored in the discussions about Montessori and fascism is that she may have understood certain aspects of the anything but unambiguous fascist discourse as being compatible with her own cultural criticism. As many scholars of fascism have noted, it was difficult in the 1920s to separate fascism from the liberal right-wing and conservative currents with which it associated itself. Before the fascist regime had finally consolidated its power, it borrowed ideas from nationalists, clericalists, futurists and, above all, from a prestigious right-wing Hegelian idealism with Giovanni Gentile at the helm.

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Without a cultural policy of their own the fascists initially adopted Gentile’s idealism as the officially sanctioned state philosophy. Like Montessori, Gentile was given a national platform through his alliance with Mussolini. Appointed minister of education after the fascists came to power in 1922, Gentile redefined his right-wing liberalism as a fundamentally fascist ideology in an open letter to Mussolini dated 31 May 1923: Liberalism, as I perceive it, and as the honourable men of the Right that governed Italy during the Risorgimento perceived it, the liberalism that supports freedom as prescribed in law within the strong state and the state as an ethical reality is therefore today in Italy represented not by the liberals, who are more or less openly opposed to you, but by yourself.30

Gentile was occasionally Mussolini’s speechwriter, and was one of the first to formulate the fascist doctrine of the state as an all-encompassing “total” reality. The historian Gabriele Turi points out in his biography of Gentile that a recurring theme in Gentile’s speeches and writings concerned the need to ethically “restore” the state by restoring the school system and the family. Kramer assumed that Montessori initially “may have believed herself to be working for Gentile and not for Mussolini”. Gentile’s philosophy was an important incentive for a new pedagogic approach. As early as in 1914 Gentile had presented his seminal Sommario di pedagogia come scienza filosofica, in which pedagogy and philosophy were combined to form a unified doctrine of spiritual development. Like Montessori, Gentile advocated the free agency of the child. There were also similarities between his actualistic view of the process of becoming human and the spiritualist tenets of Montessori’s cultural critique. Naturally there were also differences, not least in the view of the teacher. The greatest difference lay in the fundamental worldview. Gentile’s radical monism opposed the rather conventional concept of reality that Montessori embraced—a dualist realism with clear demarcations between mind and body, spirit and matter.31 Leenders focused on the “fundamental incompatibility” in this ontological respect between idealistic pedagogy and Montessorism, and thus failed to take a closer look at the idealists’ reception of Montessori beyond

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the criticism delivered by Lombardo Radice. Leenders assumed that Lombardo Radice’s negative stance was typical of the Gentile school in general. She also believed she could set the idealists’ negative reception of the Montessori method against the fascists’ more positive reception. When the Gentile faction’s political influence diminished towards the end of the 1920s, Leenders noted, contrary to her main thesis, a growing interest on the part of the fascists in normative themes associated with the Montessori method. This was in terms not only of the formal acquisition of skills but also of “theory-immanent” themes such as wholesomeness, work ethics and self-discipline. According to Leenders fascists like Pietro Fedele—minister of education 1925–1928—wanted to reinterpret self-­ discipline as a question of “self-fascistisation”.32 Although the how and when of the problematic Montessori/Mussolini alliance has been duly described, the why still remains to be explored. What was at stake for both parties to this alliance, for Montessori and her disciples in the Italian Montessori Society and for the fascist politicians and functionaries involved in this cooperation? How was it at all possible to win government support for a highly individualistic pedagogy that proclaimed the liberation of the child after the establishment of dictatorship in 1926, and why did the initial enthusiasm gradually change to mutual distrust? The aim of the following investigation is to reconstruct the various stages of the Italian Montessori reception between 1918 and 1934 by means of a close reading of source material, highlighting the importance of Montessori’s culture-critical message as well as contextual factors. I will begin by presenting the ideologically charged Italian debate concerning Montessori that was conducted in the Italian educational press in the years preceding the fascist takeover. The following two chapters deal with the fascist staging of Opera Nazionale Montessori during the period when the regime’s interest in the Montessori method reached its peak. In order to clarify Montessori’s intentions and the debate within the movement, Italian Montessori journals published from 1927 onwards, as well as lectures from the Italian Montessori courses 1926–1931, have been examined. In the final chapter the circumstances that led to Montessori’s exile in 1934 and the dismantling of Opera Nazionale Montessori conclude the account.

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6.2 Montessori Pro et Contra It was not only to promote her own career that Montessori moved from Rome to Barcelona after having visited California. Italy had joined the war in May 1915, and Mario risked being drafted if they returned to Italy. Their absence did little to support their cause at home. There were isolated support groups, but no vibrant movement. Socialist Montessori supporters who were members of Umanitaria in Milan had little in common with the aristocrats on the board of the Comitato Nazionale Montessori—the Montessori committee formed in Rome in 1913. The response from school professionals had not been as benevolent at home as abroad. The criticism of the Montessori method voiced by the educator Guido Della Valle in 1911 in conjunction with an evaluation of different preschool methods in Milan and Brescia was particularly venomous. In 1919 Italy’s first female university teacher of pedagogy, Gilda Chiari Allegretti, reflected on the anti-Montessori attitude among Italian teachers and educators, and how it differed from the enthusiastic reception Montessori had received in other countries. She had visited the teaching-­ materials fair in Milan in 1915, where Juan Palau Vera, who had just translated Il Metodo into Catalan, demonstrated the didactic materials. Some teachers, who refused to recognise Montessori’s importance, tried to convert Palau Vera to their own point of view, and the discussions became increasingly heated. In the end the Catalan educator lost his temper. The sceptics were rebuked with the crushing statement: “Had it not been for the Montessori method, no one in Spain would have heard of Italy.”33 The Montessori method was thus more popular abroad than in its country of origin. It was almost as if its worldwide appeal made it foreign and suspect. It was something the Montessori committee in Rome, led by Senator Pietro Bertolini, wanted to remedy. The former colonial minister took every opportunity to lobby for the method in parliament. In his article “Palingenesi pedagogica” (1915), he emphasised the importance of instituting a state-run Montessori institute forthwith:

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with staff and adequate financial means, free of the trouble of bureaucratic pedantry, at a safe distance from the malevolence of those who have gained elevated positions through official pedagogical methods.34

However, the investment in the Montessori method was modest. Italy was a poor country, and the war had taken a toll on government finances. What the Montessori committee did achieve was an extension of experiments involving municipal Montessori preschool classes in Rome, initiated under Mayor Ernesto Nathan, to also encompass primary-school level. After the publication of L’Autoeducazione in 1916, the Montessori method was tested at two municipal elementary schools: XX Settembre in Via Novara and Adelaide Cairoli in Via Trionfale. Some concessions to the way traditional schools operated were necessary. There were no mixed age groups, for example. The allocation of funds was severely reduced and did not allow for a full set of didactic materials. Introductory courses for teachers were cursory. A similar initiative involving municipal Montessori classes was started in Naples in 1918, where a new Montessori society, Società degli Amici del metodo Montessori, was established that same year.35 In a 1918 issue of Rivista Pedagogica, the professor of pedagogy Carlo Zanzi warned of the increasingly “intense and persistent propaganda” for the Montessori method. Montessorism was on the offensive, backed up by society heavyweights, and before you knew it this pedagogy would be imposed from above on preschools and schools. The Ministry of Education had already shown their interest by investing in experimental classes in the capital’s schools. Zanzi was director of the primary schools in Alessandria, where he also taught didactics at the teacher training college. His political affiliation was to the left, he was a socialist member of the city council, and in 1921 he was elected member of parliament.36 Zanzi claimed that children in Montessori preschools were only “free to do what Montessori decided them to do”. The goldfish locked inside their bowls at Montessori’s Casa dei bambini were “a nice freedom symbol!”.37 In Zanzi’s eyes Montessori education was a luxury available to the privileged upper classes. Through far-fetched examples he attempted to expose Montessori as being monstrously complacent. Her vanity showed no bounds, and she would not drop the titles, even with infants. He tried

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to prove this by referring to the 1916 Montessori teacher training course in Milan, at which letters from children at the Casa dei bambini, politely addressing Montessori as dottoressa, were exhibited. Zanzi’s article expressed an irritation that many teachers could feel when their methods were dismissed by promoters of the new pedagogy as being obsolete. Montessori, this freelancer without connections in the educational establishment, should refrain from interfering in matters she knew nothing about.38 According to Zanzi the two innovations that Montessori presented in Il Metodo—the sensory exercises and the reading and writing exercises— were incompatible with the principles of natural education. Healthy infants’ perceptions are sharp enough, and artificial exercises only bore them. Zanzi’s critique resulted in a defence of the status quo. He claimed Montessori had only wanted to bring the school curriculum down to preschool level, and could not see what good it would do. What was the point of teaching 4-year-olds writing and arithmetic? Was it to get ahead, so you could introduce more advanced subjects in primary school and a technical exam at the age of 11?39 A response arrived 6 months later from a sharp-witted Montessori teacher. After having endured 7 years of tedious school routines, Vincenzina Battistelli had agreed to try the Montessori method. Recruited to participate in educational trials conducted by the City of Rome, she tested the Montessori method on first-graders at the XX Settembre primary school in 1917–1918. Battistelli had graduated from teacher training college in Rome in 1908, after which she went on to study the history of education, as she had a keen interest in the relationship between school, society and cultural development. Battistelli was therefore not a blank slate when she found her way to Montessori—she was a schoolteacher who had intellectual interests and was open to new influences.40 According to Battistelli, Zanzi’s failure to appreciate the method he so vehemently opposed was due to his complete inability to understand its purpose. While reading Montessori’s book he had become obsessed with minor features such as goldfish bowls. The spirit of freedom that characterised the new method passed him by. Other educators had spoken widely of freedom, but Montessori had been able to put the theory into practice. When children can move freely and fetch the materials they

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choose to work with, the coercion and hard work that Zanzi mistakenly associated with learning disappear.41 As Zanzi had failed to understand the fundamental principles of regulated freedom and prepared environments, he completely misjudged Montessori’s innovations. The effects of the sensory exercises were not only physiological but also character-building. Battistelli’s argument on this point shows that she had understood Montessori’s cultural criticism and shared her fear that civilisation was at a critical stage. The child’s spontaneous repetition of sensory exercises indicated a profound need for inner serenity and peace of mind—a psychological need that had become more acute over the last few decades as a result of rapid civilisational change. An increasing number of people, including children, had become overwrought by the onslaught of unprocessed impressions.42 What Montessori had discovered concerning the right age for writing exercises was as simple as it was brilliant. By disregarding the social, culture-­bearing function of writing and focusing on hand movements she was able to develop her purely mechanical method. If Zanzi had read L’Autoeducazione he would have realised that putting back the training of these skills is not about speeding up schooling through intensified cultivation but about making school easier, so children can more readily assimilate existing knowledge.43 Critics like Zanzi were unfortunately able to refer to the 1914 programme for Italian preschools. Battistelli calls the programme’s recommendations of the Agazzi method the “original sin” that put the Montessori method at a disadvantage in the preschool debate in Italy. She developed her reasoning in two articles published in 1919. The programme had dismissed all training in reading and writing, as well as all other formal training in preschools, on the premise that because oral culture preceded written culture preschool children should only listen to stories before they were introduced to the art of writing at school. Battistelli also criticised the maternal spirit of the Agazzi method. “Instead of singing the praise of family upbringing” and proclaiming its superiority to public childcare, one must ask oneself to what extent this education should be allowed to monopolise the “first, immensely important, period in the life of a human being”.44

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In these articles Battistelli insisted on drawing attention to the political aspects of education. As preschools were considered a complement to private childcare rather than the initial stage of a school system that falls under the Ministry of Education, problems in school could not be resolved. After the devastating defeat at Caporetto in 1917, the school system’s liability in terms of national security and stability had appeared on the agenda. The weakness of the Italian army and the lack of fighting spirit revealed during this battle had turned everyone’s attention to the school system, demanding change so that in the future it would be able to contribute to the “nation’s physical and moral salvation”. The mission was doomed to fail, according to Battistelli, if the government continued to surrender control of children’s early education—a period in life when behavioural patterns are formed.45 The intertwining of politics and pedagogy that characterised Giovanni Gentile’s philosophy can also be detected in Battistelli’s line of reasoning. She mentions how the school system has become the banner under which every party wants to be victorious and the state increasingly appears as a higher “scholastic conscience”—a “pedagogical state”. Gentile had mentioned the “educational state”, and it is possible that by 1919 Battistelli had already come under his influence. Gentile had been appointed to the chair of history of philosophy at the University of Rome in January 1918, and a circle of dedicated disciples soon formed. In 1923 Mario Casotti, a member of the group, described Battistelli as the first “enlightened” defender of the Montessori method, since she was a “Montessori teacher as well as a disciple of Giovanni Gentile”.46 As the Battistelli example shows, there were attempts at combining Gentilism and Montessorism in early 1920s Italy. Although a complete synthesis could never be achieved, considering the differences between the two doctrines, there was, after all, a common denominator in the concept of auto-education. It was as central to Montessori’s theory as to Gentile’s, and could serve as a link between them. To begin with, the Gentilians were wary of the Montessori phenomenon. In Il Metodo the principle of auto-education was implicit but not clearly formulated. In an article published in 1914, after having been converted to Gentilism Montessori’s former friend the feminist and philosopher Valeria Benetti-­ Brunelli had disassociated herself from the Montessori method’s links to

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empirical evolutionism. Such scientism could perhaps be accepted in the United States, but not in a civilised country like Italy! However, after the publication in 1916 of L’Autoeducazione, with its theory concerning the spiritual forces of the child’s psyche, an increasing interest in the Montessori method could be discerned among Gentile’s supporters. Could she perhaps be recruited to the crusade against positivist pedagogy that the idealists had been fighting since the beginning of the twentieth century?47 In the polarised Italian debate even the title of Montessori’s book, L’Autoeducazione, became associated with the Gentile school. While the opponents to idealist pedagogy—orthodox Catholics and scientific Herbartarian educators—were able to appreciate Montessori’s didactic innovations, they had a received, negative, opinion about auto-­education. Gilda Chiari Allegretti dedicated a chapter to Montessori in her critical study of auto-education theories from Rousseau to Gentile (1919). In true Herbartarian spirit she believed the interaction between teacher and pupil to be the prerequisite for pedagogy. Every attempt at doing away with the teacher–pupil dichotomy and achieving an idealist synthesis of sorts was therefore doomed to fail. Even when, like Montessori, you advocated teacherless learning, the duality remained. The teacher’s authority had only been exchanged for a more rigid authority of the materials, which in the worst case could end in a blind tyranny of objects. The assumption that the same set of materials was equally suitable for all children was testimony to a mechanical view of spiritual development. Chiari Allegretti did, however, give a thumbs-up for the prepared environment, which enabled a more spontaneous way of working and a less authoritarian teacher–pupil relationship.48 The Jesuit Father Mario Barbera saw no reason to soften authority. His review of L’Autoeducazione (1919) opened with a reflection on how the fad for self-propelled automobiles had influenced children’s education to such a degree that people now wanted to upset the natural order whereby children depended on the guidance of adults. Had Montessori also succumbed to this new trend, as the title of her book suggested? Barbera found it necessary to separate Montessori’s theoretical speculations from the method she de facto offered in her schools. In practice the prepared environment with its instructive didactic materials set clear boundaries

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for freedom and autonomy. By adjusting the terminology Barbera attempted to clarify what the Montessori method was really all about. “One needs to correct Montessori via Montessori herself and understand her through herself,” he argued. In other words her theoretical statements had to be interpreted in the light of her applied method and the Catholic doctrine she confessed to. Rather than auto-education, children in Montessori schools are offered maternal guidance, which increases their capacity for independent learning. Nor does the Montessori method really engender trust in children’s innate virtue, as they are constantly monitored. According to Barbera, rather than teaching children in the spirit of liberty the method aims to inculcate discipline and obedience.49 Barbera was not alone in claiming the primacy of practice. It was a recurring theme within the pedagogical debate that the Montessori method carried more weight than the attempts at theoretical reasoning that accompanied it. Like Kilpatrick, Barbera dismissed Montessori’s speculations as amateurish. They differed in their definition of the problem, but regardless of whether they found her ideas too modern or old-­ fashioned, they agreed in their rejection of her theories as insubstantial. The Gentile school also saw Montessori primarily as a practician and less of a theoretician, but they were not willing to reduce her method to a simple didactic technique. In an article published in 1917, Giuseppe Prezzolini—whose journal La Voce supported Croce and Gentile in their anti-positivist cultural struggle—described Montessori education as truly idealistic. The spirit of freedom was its essence; the focus was on the child, not the method. Montessori was thus on the same side as the idealistic educators, despite her positivist background. One should not be deceived by Montessori’s technical jargon. Her predilection for obsolete terminology could be compared to the way “a grandmother holds on to the clothes she wore when she was young, believing that she is still someone she no longer is.” What does it matter if Montessori insists on calling her probing of the childish soul experiments, or that she confuses “love” with “observation”? The practice she has developed on the strength of her female intuition still points in the right direction. “Signorina Montessori” is far better than “professoressa Montessori”, Prezzolini claims. Her Casa dei bambini offer

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exactly the kind of dynamic school environment that the idealistic educators have been looking for.50 The idea of there being two Montessoris—one female and maternal, the other a trained scientist—was not new, but the Italian idealists introduced a variation on this theme. While Kilpatrick and other proponents of scientific pedagogy could question Montessori’s scientific competence by referring to her being a woman, idealists like Prezzolini found that it was precisely her female intuition that had rescued her from the spiritual rigidity of a narrow-minded scientific standpoint. The paternalistic attitude was the same; Montessori had only surmised the truths that the idealists had been able to determine through philosophical deliberation. This hypothesis was convenient, as it was possible to support Montessori education without having to re-evaluate one’s own convictions. By dividing Montessori’s message into a better half and an inferior half, and only accepting the former, it was possible to arrive at a Montessorism that harmonised with the idealist paradigm. Because the idealists downgraded the value of the didactic apparatus that was central to Montessori’s system, their reinterpretation was more radical than Barbera’s Catholic corrections. It fell to Giuseppe Lombardo Radice to take this idea to extremes in his first contribution to the Montessori debate. Lombardo Radice was a prominent preschool and primary-school educator with a more popular profile than his friend and mentor, Gentile. If Gentile looked down on the school world from the ivory tower of speculative philosophy, with his sights set on the very pinnacle of the educational hierarchy, Lombardo Radice’s idealism had instead evolved from his work in the field of teacher training for the lower grades. Lombardo Radice was especially sympathetic to the rural population. Formerly a socialist, he had lost faith in the party on account of their emphasis on industrial workers in the cities and their lack of understanding for the problems of the poor in southern Italy. Another reason was the socialists’ antimilitaristic neutrality at the start of World War I.  Like Gentile, Lombardo Radice found the war to be a national wake-up call after a long period of decline—a moral purge that momentarily united a fragmented Italy along class lines. In peacetime, schooling would achieve national unity—a unity that would still respect

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the diversity of traditions, dialects and popular culture that made up the nation.51 Lombardo Radice’s textbook Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale (1913) gave teachers the confidence to create a more agreeable school environment through simple means. It was a question of learning to improvise instead of trusting ready-made solutions. A committed teacher was eager to develop and not succumb to routine. Rather than referring to the most fashionable educators of the time, Lombardo Radice promoted innovative suggestions from ordinary schoolteachers. The Agazzi sisters and Teresina Bontempi were cited as exemplars in his journal, L’Educazione Nazionale, founded in 1919. Supported by the local school authorities, Bontempi had introduced a variation on the Montessori method in the preschools of the Swiss canton of Ticino. Her journal L’Adula, which propagated the Montessori method, was also an organ for the canton’s Italian-speaking population, promoting a closer relationship with Italian culture. Bontempi had affirmed the concordance between the ideas of Montessori and the Gentile school back in 1914, but without further explanation. Lombardo Radice offered his views on the issue in his article “La Montessori e l’idealismo pedagogico”, published in L’Adula in 1920.52 Lombardo Radice was not interested in joining the anti-Montessorian faction, nor was he prepared to indiscriminately accept Montessori’s ideas as gospel. He had lectured on the Montessori method since the publication of Il Metodo in 1909, and had encountered many people who were working along the same lines, including Leopold Franchetti, Montessori’s first patron. After careful consideration he had decided that Montessori’s views on the freedom of the child, with its emphasis on auto-education, were well within the confines of idealism, as was the creative environment of her Casa dei bambini. Clearly it was a good idea to join this Montessori, who was “related to—yes indeed—Rousseau, Froebel and Tolstoy, but who was above all Italian”.53 The other Montessori—the scientist who believed she had invented the ultimate apparatus to replace teachers—could be ignored. Hopefully Montessori would formulate a more cohesive programme in line with the idealistic reform movement for the emancipation of children that was growing stronger everywhere. Similar ideas were presented at the time

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within the British Montessori Society, which in 1920 had not yet split up. Lombardo Radice had just read Sheila Radice’s enthusiastic interview book The New Children, in which Montessorism was celebrated as a new philosophy of life. According to Sheila Radice this doctrine was related to Bergsonism—Montessori and Bergson being kindred spirits. Lombardo Radice questioned this interpretation. Montessori was steeped in Italian culture, and it was in this context that her method could be further developed. The powerful new movement that had emanated from Gentile’s ideas about auto-education would surely energise the Montessori movement, which was too weighed down by “positivism and worship of false experimentalism”. It was only through Gentile’s ideas, based on auto-­ education, that a desirable revision of the Montessori method could be achieved. Montessori’s embracing of auto-education was something positive, and she would probably soon realise that it did not follow a predetermined path, like a railway track, but really did ensure free and spontaneous progression.54 Lombardo Radice and Prezzolini had argued for a revision of Montessorism that separated good practice—the spirit of freedom as expressed in the Casa dei bambini—from the inferior theory and its scientistic obsession with materials. Montessori was a fully committed idealist, but only in practice. However, was this separation of theory and practice acceptable from a dialectical standpoint? Was not the aim of Gentile’s neo-Hegelian idealism to transcend dualistic thought patterns? Dichotomies were always linked and interdependent. If you took Montessori’s practical programme on board, the theory was part of the bargain and vice versa. The question was whether compromises such as the ones Lombardo Radice advocated were even possible. Lombardo Radice had judged the Montessori method in the light of his long experience of teacher training. The 25-year-old Ugo Spirito, the most talented of Gentile’s philosophy students, delivered a conceptual critique in his article “L’Errore fondamentale del Metodo Montessori” (1921), in which he gave proof of a dialectical aptitude that would later lead to a brilliant career as a constructivist philosopher of science. When Spirito submitted this qualifying piece of writing, he was right at the beginning of his career. Later that year he presented his dissertation on the philosophy of pragmatism and eventually also gained a PhD in law.55

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Spirito wondered about the value of the criticism that had been directed at Montessori. It was true enough that Montessori’s insufficient knowledge of the history of pedagogy had resulted in her exaggerating the value of her own findings, believing they were pioneering—a belief she shared with many of her followers. Apart from that, the complaints were mainly a list of minor details. What should have been further investigated was the core principles, of which the principle of freedom was indisputably crucial. Spirito established that Montessori conformed to a naturalistic tradition according to which liberty is an innate right as nature’s gift to all living beings. From this follows the negative freedom of liberalism—a liberty defined as a lack of impediments and coercion or a lawless freedom. Human liberty is thus ranked as equivalent to that of animals: animals do not legislate; they are driven solely by their impulses in a random way. Against this view, Spirito argues in favour of the positive definition of freedom, with roots in the Kantian-Hegelian tradition according to which liberty is not our starting point but our goal. This liberty is not a given, but must be conquered. Real autonomy does not oppose the law—it incorporates it as a precondition for independent agency.56 Just like true liberty relies on the law, true auto-education relies on the teacher. Spirito now approaches the core of the problem: the categorical mistake that once and for all disqualifies the Montessori method. If auto-­ education is defined as the absence of the educator, as Montessori did, the result is a utopian individual in its natural state—a child that forms itself without the assistance of adults. Just like Chiari Allegretti, Spirito rejects such a scenario as the negation of education. Auto-education in its most positive sense is about the educator actively guiding the child towards greater self-consciousness and autonomy. Spirito does not mention Gentile in his article, but he implicitly refers to Gentile’s theory of education. In his Sommario di pedagogia come scienza filosofica, Gentile had criticised the dualistic view of teacher–pupil interaction as being too rigid. By combining Socratic and Hegelian views on education, he established that the very best upbringing and teaching involve an almost symbiotic synthesis that transcends duality:

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The better the teacher, the less the pupil’s vision differs from the teacher’s, and the fewer are the differences he perceives between himself and the teacher. And if we above could claim that a true schoolteacher is as if alone, even when the class is full of pupils, we can now say that he must, as it were, disappear. The teacher is thus alone with himself; the pupil is alone with himself; together they constitute one and the same soul that knows all the joys of companionship and none of its disadvantages.57

Naturally, Spirito continues, Montessori has not succeeded in relinquishing the positive moment on which all education is based, or her system would never have worked. It would have remained pure fiction, like Rousseau’s Bildungsroman Émile. If Rousseau imagined that nature could be the teacher, Montessori delegated the teaching function to the didactic materials. Like Chiari Allegretti, Spirito perceived this reification of teaching as the greatest problem. On the one hand, these didactic tools are perceived as material objects, but on the other hand, they function as transmitters of ideas—Montessori’s ideas. The teacher thus sneaks in through the back door: The teacher’s heartfelt, living words have been substituted by the cold and colourless ones of the didactic materials through which the one addressing the child is … Montessori: not Montessori in her actual spiritual life as a constantly innovative and perfectionist educator, but Montessori in the form of one of her realised, but rigid, products.58

According to Spirito this analysis is corroborated by Montessori’s Handbook, which had recently been translated into Italian. Spirito quotes Arturo Labriola’s statement in the foreword, which states that the adage “no learning without suffering” had been falsified by the Montessori method. Children in Montessori preschools had learned the alphabet without effort through play. In Spirito’s opinion this shows a narrow view of the learning process, making the child a passive recipient rather than an agent. The educational value of effort is overlooked, and knowledge is assumed to emerge in the child’s mind naturally, of its own accord. Montessori had not understood that knowledge, like freedom, is not a given but must be conquered.59

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Once again Battistelli intervened in Montessori’s defence. The situation was somewhat complicated by the fact that the opponent belonged to the home team, but Battistelli was not deterred. Spirito’s mistake, she reasoned, was to be over-logical by placing too great an emphasis on the importance of the theoretical premises. She readily confessed that the premises were naturalistic and bearers of a “materialist legacy”, but if Spirito had been less focused on the theory, he would soon have noticed “that these premises must be exceeded” when applied in the real-life school situation. From a teacher’s point of view, says Battistelli, all that matters is the applicability of the theories. Montessori’s real achievements are more important than her teachings. If you disregard “all the benefits of practical application, it is not worth the trouble to discuss Montessori’s ideas, at least not for teachers”. Battistelli thus views the teaching community as co-creators of Montessori’s work. Montessori supplied the framework of the prepared environment with its didactic materials, but the teachers have added something of their own when they implement the theories—something that exceeds the non-intervention principle of negative pedagogy.60 In her reply to Spirito in 1921 Battistelli mainly refers to how the Montessori teachers’ task should be understood. By this point she has clearly taken to heart the emotionally engaged, authoritative teacher as defined by the Gentile school, and she tries to combine this concept with Montessori’s message. Firstly she emphasises that the non-intervention principle has nothing to do with morals. Far from being a background figure, the teacher personifies the law when she watches over her pupils in the classroom and decides what is permitted and what is not. If a child wants to make a mess or grab another child’s material, the child “is up against the teacher’s veto, the law”. The Montessori teacher thus actively contributes to upholding discipline, and this discipline is as good a proof as any of the spirit of freedom not being entirely negative.61 However, over and above this setting of boundaries that Montessori insisted on in her publications, Battistelli also seems to suggest that a Montessori teacher has the right to establish a deep and close relationship with her pupils. She mentions the teacher’s “lively personality”—how she offers her pupils an emotional response and “vibrates” with them in “the same spiritual rhythm”. It is also her job to encourage them to perform

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better, which is contrary to what Spirito believed. The children learn the alphabet fast and painlessly with Montessori’s method, which encourages them to learn more on their own. And if the teacher “is not a slave under some literal interpretation” of the pedagogical concept she follows, she endeavours to encourage the children in their desire to exceed their potential.62 In June 1921 a letter from the Comitato Nazionale Montessori (CNM) landed on the table of the minister of education, Benedetto Croce. The government and the Municipality of Rome had appointed commissions tasked with determining whether the experiments with Montessori classes at the XX Settembre and Adelaide Cairoli schools were to be offered continued support. The letter indicated that it was time to invite Montessori to cooperate more closely. Despite limited resources, these schools had over the previous 6 years gradually gained support in Italy and overcome the distrust normally associated with radical innovations. The CNM proposed that an international culture centre for further teacher training in the Montessori method be established, based in these schools, and that the teacher training be incorporated into the plans for a wider school reform.63 The Italian Montessori movement of course relied on the results of these commissions, but the matter could not have been as important to Croce, whose plans for reforms within higher education had been met by fierce opposition in parliament. These were busy days. It was Giolitti’s fifth term as prime minister, and the government had been in a precarious situation since the election on 15 May 1921. The return of the 78-year-old Giolitti to power in 1920 had not led to a way out of the post-war crisis, in either economic or social terms. After the red years 1919–1920, a period of wild strikes and an advancing socialist party, the tables were turned, and by 1921 fascism had become a mass movement in northern Italy. The liberals were at a loss when confronted with the new political situation, and there was a succession of weak governments following Giolitti’s resignation on 27 June 1921.64 The four-man government commission was led by Giovanni Gentile. Inspections of Montessori schools were conducted over the 3 days 18, 20 and 21 June. Their report was submitted to the minister of education on 24 June 1921. A year later, in July 1922, it was also published in

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L’Educazione Nazionale under the heading “Giovanni Gentile e il metodo Montessori”. The report offers an interesting glimpse of how Gentile saw Montessori’s method in the years before their cooperation began. As an official government report, Gentile’s contribution to the Montessori debate was rather formal. Although his arguments were based on the core principles auto-education and individual learning, no reference was made to Montessori’s publications or other educators’ opinions. As stipulated by the commission, the focus was on how these principles were implemented in the relevant schools. Consideration was given to class size, the classroom environment, pupils’ level and general conduct, teachers’ room for manoeuvre and the method’s advantages and disadvantages compared with current practice in schools.65 Apart from determining that the classrooms are well supplied with ingenious didactic materials that the children are free to use as they please, the report has little to say about the apparatus. It is not described in detail, nor is it criticised. Compared with some earlier contributions to the debate, there appears to be greater acceptance of this feature of the Montessori method. The overall discussion instead revolves around the opposition between individual and collective teaching. With its focus on individual pupils, the Montessori method bears similarities with private home tuition. The most severe problems of the current school system— passivity, uniformity, routine and compulsion—are thereby eliminated. By means of “self-control through self-correction, through auto-­ education” the pupils’ mental powers are released. Perhaps a budding sense of dignity is also awakened in these liberated pupils.66 No matter how inflexible collective teaching may seem, with its imposed curriculum that must be learnt by rote, it still offers a common culture disseminated via course books and teaching. The pupils make this cultural content their own through individual effort; some even contribute to its expansion in the future. Should individualisation be taken too far, there is a major risk that the pupils’ mental horizon will become limited to a strictly private, even egocentric, perspective. The report also claims that this type of subjective constriction can be deduced from essays by pupils in the inspected schools. The Montessori method does encourage written rather than oral work, and the commission notes that writing essays on optional subjects is a popular activity. Spelling and grammar are

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perhaps not perfect, but seem to be remedied in the higher grades, and the children certainly write freely and abundantly. As they are free to write down their own thoughts, unrestrained by matrices and set subjects, the report assumes that it would be possible to find out what goes on in the children’s minds through their written work. Contrary to the way child psychologists diagnosed the inner lives of children from play behaviour and drawings, the Gentile commission relied on written work, which, together with general observations, offered a rather one-sided picture of Montessori children as being extremely individualised. Everything they write, the report says, revolves around their own self, taking little account of their friends’ and teachers’ thoughts. These pupils “show no great interest in the external world”, as “their thoughts are nearly always occupied with themselves.”67 The Gentile commission also claims to have observed behaviour that confirms this analysis. Montessori children appear to be quieter and more introspective than other schoolchildren—almost like little students in a lecture hall. They are disciplined, but lack the incentive to exceed their potential, as they are not encouraged to compare themselves with their classmates. In the long term this must lead to stagnation. When left to their own devices the pupils tend to “repeat what they already do well with minimal effort and seemingly maximal reward” instead of having the courage to take on new challenges. Although Montessori schools promote wellbeing, they lack the drama that is normal in regular schools and in life. These severe judgements were somewhat mitigated by the view that after a day at school children would “certainly take an interest in what people around them say and do, in all that life offers”.68 The report was by no means unequivocal. It was emphasised in the conclusion that thanks to the teachers individualisation had been toned down in the actual day-to-day activities. With their previous experience of the ordinary school system, they had modified the Montessori method in accordance with the “objective requirements” that primary schools must live up to. Among other things, reading aloud, traditional dictation and examinations were introduced alongside the Montessori method. It allowed the children to break their mental isolation, so they did not have to spend their school years in silence like “little Trappist monks”. These adaptations of the method were commented on in an appendix to the

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report by Ettore Graziani, a member of the commission. In his capacity as a school inspector he had found the method unsuitable during a visit to these Montessori classes 3 years earlier. However, teaching now seemed to have changed, in terms of representing “a real transformation of the original Montessori method”.69 According to the Gentile commission the most useful aspects of the auto-education that the Montessori method offered had to be harmonised with the incontrovertible demand for social unity and dissemination of Italy’s cultural legacy. Considering that elementary schools did not introduce the teaching of this legacy in earnest until the third grade, and instead focused on basic skills in reading, arithmetic and writing during the first 2 years, the Montessori method seemed most suitable for younger school children. Continued support of the Montessori experiment was therefore recommended in the concluding statement, but only during the first 2 years of elementary school and for preschools.70 It was also stated that the financial aspects had to be considered in the choice of pedagogy. It could not be excluded that individual teaching produced the same results as the normal method, but it required “funds that the official, collective school system does not have access to”. However, continued experiments with the Montessori method for younger school children could be of value in teacher training. The municipal commission—led by Raffaele Resta, who had inspected the Montessori classes in Rome in 1921—was less positive. Resta’s report— “Il Metodo Montessori nella scuola primaria”—published in Rivista Pedagogica the month before Gentile’s report, recommended that the experiment be stopped immediately. Resta, a neo-Kantian, voiced the same concerns as Della Valle and Zanzi by focusing on the mechanical aspects of the didactic apparatus and the extravagant classroom design.71 Many people were disappointed when in September 1922 the Municipality of Rome discontinued the Montessori experiment. The CNM and Gentile protested in vain. The media interpreted it as the authorities rejecting the Montessori method. Nothing could be further from the truth, explained Montessori in the TES. She had ordered the schools to be closed, as there was to be a reorganisation. In April 1922 she had been asked by the minister of education, Antonino Anile, to inspect the schools in Rome to ensure they were up to standard, and she later

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continued her mission by inspecting schools from Milan in the north to Monteleone in the south. Montessori had expressed her dissatisfaction with schools that were led by uncertified Montessori teachers, as they were mixing different methods in their teaching.72 Anile, a professor of anatomy and a member of the Catholic people’s party Partito Popolare Italiani, had attended the 1919 Montessori teacher training course in Naples under Maria Fancello. He intended to extend Montessori’s mandate and start courses in Naples as of spring 1923, but by that time a new government led by Benito Mussolini had come into power.73

Notes 1. Rita Kramer, Maria Montessori: A Biography (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978) 348–355. 2. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 353, Maria Jervolino, “Il saluto dell’Assemblea Costituente Italiana a Maria Montessori”, Maria Montessori, cittadina del mondo, Marziola Pignatari (ed.) (Rome: Comitato italiano dell’OMEP, 1967) 287–289. 3. Guido Gonella. Letter dated 25 November 1946 to Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministeri Ufficio Studi e Legislazione, PCM (1946 2.1.88170, ACS, Roma), Guido Gonella, letter dated 12 April 1947 to the Ministero delle Finanze e del Tesoro  – Ragioneria Generale dello Stato IGOP, PCM (1947, 10.3.11–105562, ACS, Roma), Dehentin, letter 30 June 1947 to the Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, PCM, (1947, 10.3.11–105562, ACS, Roma). 4. Guido Gonella, letter dated 25 November 1946. For information on the two German Montessori societies DMG and VMP up until 1936, see Günter Schulz-Benesch, Der Streit um Montessori: Kritische Nachforschung zum Werk eine katholischen Pädagogin von Weltruf, mit einer internationalen Montessori-Bibliographie (Freiburg: Herder, 1961) 164–166. 5. Mario M. Montessori, “Che cosa è l’AMI”, Vita dell’Infanzia (1:10–11, 1952) 14–15. 6. Franco Tadini, “Maria Montessori a dieci anni dalla morte”, Scuola Materna, fasc. Speciale, (Brescia, 1962) 4.

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7. Evelina Tarroni, “Democrazia integrale o del metodo Montessori”, Idea, settimanale di cultura (24/7, 1949). 8. Umberto Biscottini, “Superuomo su ricetta”, Il Nazionale, settimanale di politica e di cultura (1: 23/10, 1949) 4. 9. The gossip column in Fiera Letteraria (30 October, 1949) mentioned Biscottini’s article. There were probably other articles in the Italian daily newspapers that referred to Montessori’s collaboration. See, for example, Nina Ruffini, “La Maestra degli ’anarchici”, Il Mondo (28/6, 1952) 7. 10. Giacomo Santucci, “Pagine scelte da‘L’Idea Montessori”, Vita dell’Infanzia (10:9, 1961) 9–10. 11. Grazia Honegger Fresco, “Chiarimento”, Vita dell’Infanzia (10/10, 1961) 14. 12. Honegger Fresco, “Chiarimento”, 14. Dictatorship was, however, introduced already in 1926. 13. Renzo De Felice, Mussolini il Duce, I. Gli anni del consenso 1929–1936 (Turin: Einaudi, 1974) 110, Tina Tomasi, “Società e umanità in Maria Montessori”, Scuola e Città (22:1971) 463–470. 14. Tomasi, “Società e umanità in Maria Montessori”, 468. 15. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 9. 16. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 280–283, 300. 17. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 302–305, 311–315, 326–330. 18. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 303, 328. 19. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 327. 20. Augusto Scocchera, Maria Montessori. Quasi un ritratto inedito (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1990) 57–68. 21. Scocchera, Quasi un ritratto inédito, 57, 59,67. See also Francesco di Angelis, Studio su Maria Montessori visto di un Salernitano (Salerno: Grafica Jannone, 1978) 125. Di Angelis claimed that the collaboration could be compared to a “comedy of errors” in which the protagonists misunderstood one another. 22. Scocchera, Quasi un ritratto inédito, 65, 68, Augusto Scocchera, “Due reattivi teologico di Maria Montessori”, Vita dell’infanzia (41:5–6, 1992) 7–10, citation in Augusto Scocchera, “Introduzione”, Introduzione a Mario M. Montessori, Augusto Scocchera (ed.) (Rome: Opera Nazionale Montessori, 1998) 16. 23. Marjan Schwegman, Maria Montessori 1870–1952. Kind ihrer Zeit, Frau von Welt (Darmstadt: Primus, 2000) 169–184, Giuliana Marazzi, Maria Montessori e il fascismo, diss. (Rome: Università degli Studi La Sapienza,

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1998), Giuliana Marazzi, “Montessori e Mussolini: La collaborazione e la rottura”, Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica (13:1, 2000) 177–195. 24. Hélène Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, Die Geschichte einer reformpädagogischen Erziehungskonzeption im italienischen Faschismus (Bad Heilbrunn: Verlag Julius Klinkhardt, 2001). See also the review by Marc Depaepe in Paedagogica Historica (35:2:1999) 425–430. 25. Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, 66–110, 204. 26. Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, 47–56, 177–192. 27. Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, 24, 45, 52, 55, 172–173, 232–233, 235. 28. Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, 48–49, 55, 179–180, 205. 29. Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, 91–92, Scocchera, Quasi un ritratto inédito, 58, 60, 67–68. After Leenders representatives of the Montessori movement have published articles on Montessori and fascism, see for example Clara Tornar, “Maria Montessori e il Fascismo”, Centro di studi Montessoriani, Annuari 2004, (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2004) 107–122, Harold Baumann, “Montessori-Pädagogik und Faschismus  – eine Entgegnung”, Montessori-Pädagogik: aktuelle und internationale Entwicklungen, Reinhard Fischer, Peter Heitkämper (ed.) (Münster: Lit. Verlag, 2005) 122–179, Baumann refers to Leenders and introduces some additional archive material while Tornar only refers to Kramer and not to Leenders, Schwegman or Marazzi. 30. Letter from Gentile to Mussolini dated 31 May 1923 in Gabriele Turi, Giovanni Gentile. Una biografia (Turin: UTET Libreria, 2006) 335. 31. Turi, Giovanni Gentile, 332–333, Kramer Maria Montessori, 329. 32. Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, 111–173. 33. Guido Della Valle, “Le ‘Case dei bambini’ e la ‘Pedagogia Scientifica’ di M.  Montessori”, Rivista Pedagogica (4:1, 1911) 57–80, Sante Bucci, Educazione dell’infanzia e pedagogia sientifica, da Froebel a Montessori (Rome: Bulzoni, 1990) 193–215, Gilda Chiari Allegretti, L’intervento formativo nella vita dello spirito e la pedagogia, Prolegomeno di un corso universitaria, (Bologna: Stab. Poligr. Riuniti, 1919). 34. Pietro Bertolini, “Palingenesi pedagogica: il metodo Montessori”, Nuova Antologia (175:1915) 566–596. 35. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 78, Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, 60–63, “Il movimento Montessori a Napoli”, Vita dell’Infanzia (16:3, 1967) 13–14, “Comitato Nazionale Montessori sotto l’alto patronato di S M la Regina

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Madre”, addressed to Benedetto Croce, June 1921, (ONM archive, Rome) 1–4. 36. Carlo Zanzi, “Le Case dei bambini della Montessori”, Rivista Pedagogica (11:1–2, 1918) 1–27. For information about Zanzi see Giacomo Cives, Maria Montessori pedagogista complessa (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2001) 209–217. 37. Zanzi, “Le Case dei bambini”, 15, 16. 38. Zanzi, “Le Case dei bambini”, 16, Carlo Zanzi, “Le Case dei bambini della Montessori”, Rivista Pedagogica (11:3–4, 1918) 161–162. 39. Zanzi, “Le Case dei bambini della Montessori”, Rivista Pedagogica (11:1–2, 1918) 23–27, Zanzi, “Le Case dei bambini”, Rivista Pedagogica (11:3–4, 1918) 1–21, 157–160, 163–176. 40. Vincenzina Battistelli, Le Case dei Bambini della Montessori: risposta alla critica di Carlo Zanzi (Rome: Maglione e Strini, 1918) 3–4, Vincenzina Battistelli, “Dalla Montessori a Gentile, confessione di una Maestra”, Levana, Rassegna trimestrale di filosofia dell’educazione e di politica scolastica (5:2–3, 1926) 171, Vincenzina Battistelli, “Relazione dell’insegnante Battistelli”, Esperimento del Metodo Montessori, relazioni delle insegnanti, (Rome: Tipografia editrice romana, 1918), 17–24. For more information on Battistelli’s critique of Zanzi see Cives, Maria Montessori pedagogista complessa, 235–237. 41. Battistelli, Le Case dei Bambini della Montessori, 8–9, 19–27. 42. Battistelli, Le Case dei Bambini della Montessori, 38–53. 43. Battistelli, Le Case dei Bambini della Montessori, 59–66. 44. Battistelli, Le Case dei Bambini della Montessori, 74, Vincenzina Battistelli, “Pensiamo agli Asili!”, La  Coltura Popolare (9:2, 1919) 114–116, Vincenzina Battistelli, “Per la sincerità della critica”, La Coltura Popolare (9:5, 1919) 365–372. 45. Battistelli, “Pensiamo agli Asili!”, 114. 46. Battistelli, “Pensiamo agli Asili!”, 114, Mario Casotti, “Il metodo Montessori”, Levana, Rassegna trimestrale di filosofia dell’educazione e di politica scolastica (2:2, 1923) 105–117. See also Eugenio Garin, Cronache di filosofia italiana, 1900–1960, vol. 2 (Rome, Laterza, 1997) 409–410 and Gabriele Turi, Lo Stato educatore. Politica e intellettuali nell’Italia fascista (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2002) 278–281. 47. Valeria Benetti-Brunelli, “Il metodo Montessori in Italia e in America”, Metodi e problemi di educazione infantile (Milan: Dante Alighieri, 1932) 5–14(originally published in La Nostra Rivista 7:1914).

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48. Allegretti, L’intervento formativo, 55–88. 49. Mario Barbera, “Le Case dei Bambini della Montessori e l’autoeducazione”, L’educazione nuova e il metodo Montessori (Milan: Ancora, 1946) 109–166 (Originally published in Civiltà Cattolica, 1919). 50. Giuseppe Prezzolini, “Il metodo Montessori”, Paradossi educativi (Rome: La Voce. Societa anonima Editrice, 1919) 42–58. (Originally published in La Voce. 1917). 51. Dina Bertoni Jovine, La scuola italiana dal 1870 ai giorni nostri (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1958) 148–149, Lamberto Borghi, Educazione e autorità nell’Italia moderna (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1974) 241–244. 52. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, “La Montessori e l’idealismo pedagogico”, Orientamenti pedagogici per la scuola italiana (Turin: Paravia, 1931) 197–206 (Originally published in L’Adula, 1920), Harold Baumann, Hundert Jahre Montessori-Pädagogik  1907–2007. Eine Chronik der Montessori-pädagogik in der Schweiz (Bern: Haupt Verlag, 2007) 25–51. 53. Lombardo Radice, “La Montessori e l’idealismo pedagogico”, 197–203. 54. Lombardo Radice, “La Montessori e l’idealismo pedagogico”, 199–201, 204–206. 55. Ugo Spirito, “L’errore fondamentale del Metodo Montessori”, Rivista Pedagogica (14:1–2, 1921) 34–47, Giustino Broccolini, “Intorno ad un’antica critica antimontessoriana di Ugo Spirito”, I problemi della pedagogia (14:4, 1968) 595–599, Cives, Maria Montessori pedagogista complessa, 206–209. 56. Spirito, “L’errore fondamentale”, 37–38. 57. Spirito, “L’errore fondamentale”, 39–40, Giovanni Gentile, Sommario di pedagogia come scienza filosofica, vol. 1. Sommario di pedagogia generale, 3 ed. (Bari: Laterza, 1923) 173. 58. Spirito, “L’errore fondamentale del Metodo Montessori”, 40–41. 59. Spirito, “L’errore fondamentale del Metodo Montessori”, 42–47. 60. Vincenzina Battistelli, “L’altro aspetto della critica di U.  Spirito al metodo Montessori”, Rivista Pedagogica (14:4–6, 1921) 300–303. 61. Battistelli, “L’altro aspetto della critica di U. Spirito”, 300–301. 62. Battistelli, “L’altro aspetto della critica di U. Spirito”, 301–303, Patrizia Lombardi, “1921: Ugo Spirito e Vincenzina Battistelli di fronte al Metodo Montessori”, Vita dell’Infanzia (45:4, 1996) 10–13, Cives, Maria Montessori pedagogista complessa, 238–242. 63. Comitato Nazionale Montessori sotto l’alto patronato di S M la Regina Madre, letter to Benedetto Croce, June 1921 (ONM Archive, Rome) 1–4.

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64. Rocco Fasano, “Un incontro mancato: Croce, Montessori”, Vita dell’Infanzia (44:3, 1995) 11–14. 65. Giovanni Gentile, “Giovanni Gentile e il metodo Montessori”, Vita dell’Infanzia (16:6–7, 1968) 11–16, (Originally published in L’Educazione Nazionale 6:7, 1922), Giacomo Cives, “Il giudizio sulla Montessori negli anni Venti. Le ispezioni di Resta e Gentile”, Formazione permanente e trasformazioni sociali. Scritti in onore di Rosetta Finazzi Sartor, Francesca Gobbi, Ermengildo Guidolin (ed.) (Padua: Università degli Studi di Padova, 1998) 339–359. 66. Gentile, “Giovanni Gentile e il metodo Montessori”, 14–15. 67. Gentile, “Giovanni Gentile e il metodo Montessori”, 14–16. 68. Gentile, “Giovanni Gentile e il metodo Montessori”, 15. 69. Gentile, “Giovanni Gentile e il metodo Montessori”, 15–16. 70. Gentile, “Giovanni Gentile e il metodo Montessori”, 16. 71. Gentile, “Giovanni Gentile e il metodo Montessori”, 16, Cives, “Il giudizio sulla Montessori negli anni Venti”, 342–347, 353–357. 72. Comitato Nazionale Montessori sotto l’Alto patronato di S M la Regina Madre, letter to r Queen Mother Margherita, 12 February 1923 (ONM archive, Rome) 2, Kramer, Maria Montessori, 279–280, C Bang, “Montessori schools in Italy”, TES (21/10, 1922) 464; “Montessori schools in Rome” TES (4/11, 1922) 483, Antonino Anile, “Montessori schools in Rome”, TES (18/11, 1922) 504; “The Montessori Method in Italy”, TES (23/12, 1922) 560. 73. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 279–280.

7 Opera Nazionale Montessori

7.1 From the Gentile Reform to the 1926 Milan Course Founded in 1919, Mussolini’s fascist movement rapidly grew into a major political force. By 1921 membership had increased to circa 250,000 as the fascists gained ground in northern Italy. They had caught up with the socialists—their main contenders—and were able to launch a brutal offensive on workers’ organisations. The fact that fascist paramilitary groups were left to wreak havoc as an unofficial militia was a result of the liberal elite’s fear of a socialist revolution. Fascism was perceived as a useful instrument for opposing the Socialist Party, which had done exceptionally well in the 1919 election. Another contributory factor was the Giolitti government’s neutral stance on labour-market conflicts. The government was not to interfere in the class struggle and conflicts of interest. Moreover, the fascists enjoyed strong support from local politicians in northern Italy, and there were many fascist sympathisers within the police force and public authorities. However, Mussolini made sure that the militant squadristi did not gain too much influence, as this would have threatened his own position within the movement. He consolidated his position in relation to the squadristi partly by making peace with the socialists in

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August 1921, and partly by registering the fascist movement as a regular political party in November that same year.1 During the turbulent year of 1922 the fascist terror resumed in force. This resumption not only led to the final defeat of the workers’ movement after a short general strike in August but also challenged the government’s monopoly on power and violence. With a toothless government that had lost control of the situation the country was close to collapse. Other liberal party leaders were waiting in the wings. Through private negotiations with Mussolini they had been led to believe that they would be leading a coalition once Luigi Facta’s government had fallen. Instead it was Mussolini who, after a spectacular march on Rome at the end of October 1922, took over as head of government. Whether the “fascist October Revolution” was a coup or a regular change of government has been widely discussed. As many historians have pointed out, the inadequately equipped squadristi would never have defeated the army forces that were defending the capital. The march was a gamble—a histrionic demonstration of force that may very well have ended in devastating defeat for the fascists. However, no real battles had to be fought. In his capacity as commander-in-chief, King Victor Emmanuel III was the one to make the final decision, and Facta was forced to resign when the King at the last minute refused to sign the proclamation on martial law that would have mobilised the army against the squadristi. It is not clear why the King made this decision. He probably overestimated the risk of a drawn-out civil war. In the end Mussolini was able to form a government in accordance with the constitution. The fascist ascension to power was thus a formal change of government, even though it had been forced on the country by means of a coup. The historian Giuliani Procacci describes it as a transfer of power achieved by blackmailing the King and the state with the threat of insurrection.2 As the new leader of a coalition government, Mussolini was to take measures to improve the fascists’ image and consolidate his own position. With promises of social peace after many years of dispute, the fascists now sought to present themselves as a productive right-wing force to be reckoned with. The treasury carried out a review, prompting the sale of state monopolies and cuts within the civil service. The catchphrase “normalisation” also included a reorganisation of the squadristi into a militia,

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steered from the top and easier to control. By merging with the Nationalist Party in February 1923, the Fascist Party gained political prestige, but it was primarily through the passing of the so-called Acerbo Law later that year that the party secured its hold on power. Elections based on proportional representation were no longer held. Instead the party that gained the largest share of votes—over 25 per cent—won two-­thirds of the seats in the chamber of deputies. The image of Mussolini as a strong leader, able to unite and revitalise the nation, was beginning to emerge.3 Victor Emmanuel’s mother, Margherita of Savoy, was the link between the new head of state and the Italian Montessori Society. The queen mother, who unlike her son clearly sympathised with the fascists, had as a philanthropist and patron of the arts supported the Montessori movement since its inception. At an audience in February 1923 the Rome Montessori Committee presented her with a written report in which the movement’s international success was described as a triumph for the nation. According to the Committee there was almost “universal consensus” on the method, except in Italy, where grudging critics and stingy local politicians put up resistance. The Committee hoped that the queen mother would explain to the new head of state how well the “Latin spirit” of this method suited the “programme for the resurrection of the Italian consciousness and faith in the nation” that the government had launched. By establishing a centre for Montessori studies in Rome, Italy would be admired as a leading nation in matters of education.4 The Montessori method was given some recognition in the autumn of 1923, when it was included in Gentile’s school reform. It was considered suitable for preschoolers and the lower grades of primary school, and this was in line with Gentile’s 1921 report. However, the reform mainly focused on higher education. In the wake of the preceding decades’ democratisation process, universities opened up to new groups of students such as teachers and technical institute graduates. The Gentile reform sought to slow down the influx of students by redirecting a majority of the applicants towards vocational education. The only route to entering virtually any university faculty was now via humanities studies at liceo classico secondary schools. The purpose was to reinstate the universities’ former elite status and counteract unemployment among academics, thereby avoiding the social and political unrest that might result

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from an excess of university graduates. The universities were to supply the state with an intellectual elite consisting of civil servants, lawyers, scientists and humanists, while teaching colleges and institutes were to supply other professionals—from teachers and chemists to engineers and architects.5 The Gentile reform was thus more exclusive than expansive. It was launched with the help of the slogan “few but good schools”. Treasury resources were not to be wasted on wide-scale investments. There was, however, some room for private initiatives. With the introduction of a state examination that allowed students to pass from lower to higher secondary-­school levels, the status of the Catholic educational establishment was raised, as it ensured parity between students from private and public schools. It signalled a change of course compared with the earlier, anticlerical, government school policy, whereby Catholic independent schools were kept at arm’s length. Another indication of this change of course was the introduction of obligatory religious instruction in elementary schools. The reason given was that Catholicism was an important part of the national heritage and that it encouraged a symbolic mindset that facilitated the learning of philosophy, which was introduced as a subject in secondary school.6 The reform was pushed through in only 11 months. As Mussolini’s minister of culture, Gentile was given free rein to choose his staff and legislate by decree without having to consult parliament or endure lengthy negotiations with the many school boards. The reform was to be evaluated in spring 1924—after implementation—in the chamber of deputies and the senate. Higher education, from secondary school to university, had been reorganised through two decrees issued on 6 May and 30 September 1923 respectively. It was the turn of preschools and elementary schools on 1 October and 31 December respectively. These two school types were now merged into a single unit: primary school. Through this reform preschools were given a higher status by being moved from the social sector to the education sector, thereby constituting a preliminary stage in the school system. However, despite the reform preschools were still lagging behind. Less than a sixth of the country’s 2.5 million children had access to organised childcare in 1923, and more than half of the approximately 6000 infant schools were run by the Church.7

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While Gentile’s higher-education reform was criticised for being too elitist, the primary school curriculum was more in line with the currents of educational reform at the time. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, who had developed the programme for primary schools, was generous in terms of the scope given to aesthetic subjects that promoted creativity in children as well as that given to folk art and local heritage instruction, which rooted the school in the local community. Teachers were encouraged too freely pick and choose from the many alternative teaching methods that were available. There were plans for government-subsidised teacher training colleges that were to offer further education in new methods—including the Montessori method—for preschool and elementary school teachers.8 In April 1924 the two Italian Montessori societies were reorganised to form a national organisation, Opera Nazionale Montessori, based in Rome. A charter issued by royal decree the same year ensured some government subsidies over and above funds raised by the Opera. The new Montessori Society was confident about the future. The minister of education was guest of honour at a banquet organised by Marquise Maria Maraini Guerrieri Gonzaga on 12 June in celebration of Montessori having been awarded an honorary doctorate at Durham University. In his speech Gentile praised Montessori’s devotion to children’s education and her success in liberating the soul of the child in ways that others could only dream of. Montessori thanked him in writing. She was full of pride, as the person who spoke so highly of her life’s work was “the minister holding Italy’s education in his hands”.9 However, his grip would soon loosen. Not only was the school reform challenged in the chamber of deputies and the senate but it also upset the general public. Tough admission criteria and rigorous knowledge requirements turned the middle classes against Gentile, as they did not want their children’s future careers jeopardised. There was also discontent within the party. The more militant faction complained that the school reform, with its idealist programme, was not fascist enough. By the time Gentile received Montessori’s letter he had already handed in his resignation. He did not completely abandon his hold on the reform, the continued development of which he tried to control as senator, between 1926

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and 1928, and as vice president of the Grand Council of Public Education.10 The direct reason why he stepped down as minister of education was, however, a political scandal that compromised the government. On 12 June 1924, the day of the marquise’s party, it was discovered that Giacomo Matteotti, a socialist member of parliament who had accused the government of electoral fraud and violence during the recent election, had been assassinated. When it soon became clear that the assassins were members of the Fascist Party and that the decision was associated with high-­ranking party members at the Ministry of the Interior, a government crisis was inevitable. On 27 June almost the entire opposition marched out of the chamber of deputies in protest, resulting in a parliamentary deadlock that lasted throughout the autumn. A government reshuffle was essential. On the one hand, compromised ministers and high-ranking party members had to be removed, and on the other hand, ministers who had become unpopular for other reasons, such as Gentile, could now be dismissed. Unlike his friend and partner in collaboration Lombardo Radice, who had stepped down from his post at the Ministry of Education in indignation over the Matteotti’s assassination, Gentile thus did not resign in protest. Mussolini was eventually able to ride out the storm. In a famous speech in parliament on 3 January 1925, he confronted the opposition and quelled the allegations by assuming responsibility for every accusation that could possibly target the Fascist Party. Censorship legislation then put a gag on the press, and a legislative commission led by Gentile was set up in February 1925. While they conducted their work domestic political life was practically at a standstill. The major reorganisation did not take place until late autumn.11 Not only was there a hiatus on a national scale—not much happened within the Montessori Society either. Contrary to the hopes raised by the Gentile reform the last experimental Montessori classes were being phased out. In 1925 an article by Nadia Labriola in the April issue of the Umanitaria journal La Coltura Popolare was a cry for help. All municipal Montessori activities in Rome had been discontinued, and it now seemed to be Naples’s turn. Preschools had closed in the autumn of 1924, and school staff had been cut. The few remaining Montessori teachers had to deal with classes of about seventy pupils. Those who had been diverted to

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regular municipal schools continued to promote the Montessori method in teachers’ journals.12 That same month The Times’s Rome correspondent reported that the Italian head of state had made positive statements about the Montessori method. Mussolini had received reports through his consulates on the method’s enormous impact worldwide. He reportedly claimed that only ignorant people could fail to see the greatness of such a renowned method. However, despite this high-profile attention, ONM’s situation rapidly deteriorated. By the summer of 1925 the Municipality of Naples had terminated the Montessori experiment, to cut spending. The preschool classes alone had cost them 300,000 lire a year.13 At this stage ONM moved their head office to the Umanitaria Society in Milan, where Montessori preschools and schools were still functioning well. Like so many others, Lola Condulmari, director of the Umanitaria Montessori school, wrote to Mussolini. Could the decision to close the Montessori schools in Naples be revoked? Was it not of the utmost importance to support the spread of Montessori schools as widely as possible? She received a reply from the Ministry of Education stating that although the government greatly valued Montessori’s method there was nothing they could do, as these schools were run by local councils, not by the state. Municipal autonomy was an obstacle.14 This obstacle to an omnipotent government would soon be removed. A spate of new legislation in preparation for a gradual introduction of dictatorship was launched in November 1925. The Commission of Eighteen, led by Gentile, had prepared the ground for the Minister of Justice, Alfredo Rocco, who tightened up the Commission’s legislative proposal. Among the most important laws passed during the initial phase—November 1925 to January 1926—were the ones on the sovereignty of the head of state and the government’s right to legislate without consulting parliament. The monarchy was preserved, however. Mussolini’s dictatorship could not function entirely independently, as it was linked to the former bureaucratic elite. The abolition of municipal autonomy was another important part of the reform package. Elected mayors were replaced by prefects appointed by the government. The prefects also controlled the fascist syndicates that had replaced trade unions. The last free trade union congress was held in January 1925, and the right to strike

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was abolished in conjunction with the new dictatorship laws. Government employees, including lawyers, schoolteachers and civil servants, had to swear allegiance to the regime. Freedom of the press and of expression was further curtailed.15 In November 1925 the bond between the Montessori Society and the regime was reinforced. Plans for a Montessori teacher training course subsidised by the government were now drawn up. Montessori, who was to lead it, was in Milan, where she opened a subdivision of the ONM— the Comitato di Milano dell’Opera Nazionale Montessori—responsible for course administration. The course was scheduled to start in February, when an amendment to Gentile’s reform was passed, stating that teachers were to be instructed in three Italian methods: the Montessori, the Agazzi and the Pizzigoni. In Montessori’s first extant letter to Mussolini, dated 20 January 1926, she offers him honorary presidency of the Opera Nazionale Montessori, which he accepts. In her letter she ensures that her character-building method is entirely in line with the regime’s intentions to improve the population’s morale and work towards restoring the “greatness of the immortal homeland”. In a telegram to Gentile dated 9 February 1926, Montessori thanked him for agreeing to lead ONM, adding that she was looking forward to their cooperation. About a week later, during an audience with Mussolini that was widely reported in the press, Montessori was promised continued protection of ONM schools and courses. During her tour of Argentina 6 months later Montessori was interviewed about Mussolini, and she explained that this broadminded man had succeeded in breaking the deadlock her method had suffered in her native Italy. It was reaping success everywhere else, but in Italy there had been no interest whatsoever. Leading educationalists and school authorities “despised my method as a figment of the imagination, they quoted the classics at me, waved Froebel’s ghost before me”. It was something that would have “gone on forever if it were not for Mr Mussolini coming to power.”16 About 170 teachers attended the 6-month Corso magistrale per la diffusione del metodo Montessori, about eighty coming from various districts in northern and eastern Italy and some forty from Milan. In addition to these municipal preschool teachers, there was a group of teachers from an organisation involving some hundred village schools that had been led by

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Alessandro Marcucci since 1919: Scuole per i contadini dell’Agro romano. In his capacity as a school inspector, Marcucci, who had used a Montessori-­ inspired method in village schools, had a dual function. He was to assist Montessori and the Milan committee in all practical matters surrounding the course, and, as a representative of the regime alongside school inspector Riccardo Truffi, he was to “monitor” the course. Some twenty Catholic nuns also attended Montessori’s lessons.17 As it was the very first government-funded Montessori teacher training course, it was named Primo Corso Nazionale Montessori. The premises and demonstration classes were supplied by the Umanitaria Society, which after the death of Augusto Osimo in 1923 was run entirely by fascists. The course was opened with due festivities on 21 February 1926 in the auditorium at Umanitaria. After a short welcome speech by the city commissioner, Professor Giuseppe Gallavresi, and the new chair of Umanitaria, Count Pier Gaetano Venino, Marcucci announced that it was the will of Il Duce that the Montessori method should contribute to the “Italian rebirth”. As Mussolini had once said, two Italian inventors had made a name for themselves abroad: Guglielmo Marconi for inventing the telegraph and Maria Montessori for her method of education.18 The course programme was included in two articles published in 1926 in La Coltura Popolare and The Times respectively, but there was no information as to who was to teach it apart from Montessori. In addition to Montessori’s lectures the course offered general instruction in the physiology and psychology of the child and the history of education, as well as aesthetic, musical and religious subjects, domestic economy, nature studies and civic education—defined as “good manners and behaviour, and love of country”. It appears that Montessori was assisted by Lola Condulmari, Marcionetti Lino and Giuliana Sorge. The latter two also contributed short lectures on theory, which were published after the course in Note sul metodo Montessori (1926). This publication additionally included Montessori’s opening speech and her closing speech at the end of the Milan course, as well as two of her lectures. In the 1990s Scocchera published the many lectures on methodology that Montessori gave at the Milan course in Vita dell’infanza. These typewritten manuscripts were found at the Opera Montessori archive in Rome.19

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In her opening speech, which was also published in La Coltura Popolare in 1926 under the heading “Per la libera personalità del fanciullo”, Montessori placed herself in the broad reform movement that had been working for the emancipation of the child “for decades”. At the same time she disassociated herself from the reforms proposed by Claparède and others within the pedagogical reform movement NEF concerning a more playful, less knowledge-heavy school. Montessori insisted that she had never cooperated with or befriended these school reformers: “My method has nothing to do with all that.” The NEF had misinterpreted the liberation of the child as a liberation from a genuine search for knowledge. Moreover, they wanted to alleviate the authoritarian rigidity directed at children, but without really dealing with the power structures that complicated child-adult interaction. While the NEF criticised the Old Testament attitude to traditional educational methods, which was reliant on corporal punishment, Montessori wanted to go one step further, in the spirit of the Gospel of St Matthew: “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Teachers in particular should change and be “converted” to a more modest attitude if the school reform was to have any effect at all. Self-­ aggrandising teachers who believe they can “build the soul of the child” and inculcate “character, intelligence, virtue” into their pupils have got it all wrong.20 The introduction to the new edition of Il Metodo that was published in connection with the Milan course in 1926 reiterated the same theme. Montessori emphasised that the teacher must serve the “creative forces” within the child’s soul instead of trying to play God. However, as a “collaborator” in the divine creation, the teacher could achieve significant results. When towards the end of her course Montessori gave a speech listing the results that can be expected from her method, there no longer seemed to be any limit to what the teacher could achieve. A life-affirming upbringing contributes to the development of intelligence, character and the emotions to such a degree that one can talk about “precociousness” or even “prodigies”.21 In the new introduction to Il Metodo Montessori compares the divine element of the child’s soul to a treasure that she happened on by chance, like Aladdin. When she first tried out her sensory method on the children

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at her Casa dei bambini she only thought she had discovered a way of exploring the unknown territory of the child’s mind. She had not expected to find this “hidden treasure” in the depth of the child’s soul. The analogy was slightly modified in the course lecture “Il 6 gennaio 1907”, which outlines the genesis of the Montessori method. At the start of the experiment, in accordance with the standard educational-cultivation metaphor Montessori had seen herself as a farmer sowing seeds in fertile soil. But the experiment resulted in a harvest of “gold instead of wheat”, and Montessori realised that she was more like Aladdin, who without even trying finds the “miraculous key” to a hidden treasure. Montessori’s conviction that she had made a pioneering discovery—that she had, as it were, discovered the child—is pertinently expressed through this Aladdin analogy.22 To an educator the sensory materials are therefore key to the inner sanctum of the child’s soul—its treasury. However, a key works in two ways: you can use it to get in as well as to get out. If the materials offer a way for the educator to discover the real nature of the child, then in the hands of the child they will broaden its understanding of the surrounding world. In other words the materials are “a key that opens up the world”. This was the claim presented in “I materiali e l’educazione della mente”— one of the Milan lectures published by Scocchera, who had also formulated the title. In this lecture Montessori attempts to clarify the exact relationship between the materials and the children’s capacity for learning. According to Montessori small children had for too long been taught by means of words and explanations, as if their modus of thought was as verbal as that of adults. Children’s capacity to learn had thus been underrated, as they had not been approached at the sensorimotor level, where most of their learning and understanding of the world takes place.23 Information gathered via the senses brings about motor responses, and the sensory materials interact with the child at this sensorimotor level. Contrary to the strictly stimuli-response model typical of behaviourist psychology, Montessori in no way denies the existence of a more profound level of the child’s mind. In her lecture she describes sensorimotor activity as peripheral in relation to the cerebral processes associated with the self. “Mental inner work” is certainly performed, as “undoubtedly they reason with themselves”, but the educator must not interfere in this

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process—it is the child’s “own secret and this is what we first of all must respect”. In her lecture Montessori emphasises the importance of adopting a professional approach that does not threaten the child’s integrity. The teacher only participates in the learning process at the peripheral level: “We must not turn directly against that which is hidden, but towards that which is manifested to us in the periphery.”24 Montessori had previously described the principles for the production of materials as “constructed upon a basis of exactitude”. She had also explained how the materials contributed to reinforcing psychological development from the sensory-perception level to the stage at which the child was ready to move on from the sensory to the rational level. Now, 10 years later, Montessori expanded her ideas on the materials’ psychological effect. Apart from illustrating the properties of objects such as colour and form, the precisely graded Montessori materials help the child to accurately identify the relationship between objects. Partly quantitatively in terms of number and size, partly qualitatively in terms of relationships between similarity and difference. The materials thereby offer a basis for the child’s comprehension of nature and mathematics as well as its aesthetic sensibilities. Naturally, if they really put their mind to it children can independently figure out some of the properties of things and their differences and relationships, but it would be a great deal more “tiresome and not very interesting” compared with the “clear and simple understanding” that is achieved when children use the precise materials.25 In “I materiali e l’educazione della mente”, Montessori also explains the premise on which her sensory-training programme relies when she claims that it is a universally acknowledged truth that “people are more intelligent when they are better able to make sensory distinctions.” Motor intelligence has not been sufficiently observed, however: “Precise movements are also part of the formation of intelligence.” The adjustment of the child’s movement patterns—the many exercises in the art of walking, sitting and standing—is therefore not motivated solely by discipline or aesthetics. A step on the child’s road to perfection, these exercises promote a degree of self-control that, according to Montessori, is a fundamental precondition for rationality. It is therefore of the utmost importance for the teacher to have achieved the most “meticulous and rigorous preciseness” in everything she does, Montessori explains in the

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course lecture “La maestra e l’ambiente organizzato”. The teacher is, after all, the “hyphen” between the children and the didactic materials. She must set a good example, not in order to be imitated but so as to “initiate” the children as they embark on the road to perfection. For example, when the teacher demonstrates the perfect way of pouring water from a bottle into a glass without spilling a drop or the neck of the bottle touching the rim of the glass, it is as if she is demonstrating an exciting experiment that engages the child’s mind: To pour water from the bottle into the glass would not be as interesting as pouring it in a certain manner. This is what adds value to these exercises, they invigorate the child’s mind more profoundly than the colours, which engage the senses, while this appeals to their intelligence, to volition, to the ability to achieve perfection in the child’s soul.26

Montessori’s views on experimental child psychology are explained in greater depth in the lecture “Batteri, insetti, bambini. La mia psicologia sperimentale”. Since publishing Il Metodo in 1909 Montessori had criticised the tendency to test and measure children’s capabilities while disregarding the prescriptive, normative dimension that is so important in education. Nevertheless, she did share the test psychologists’ scientific approach and their trust in unbiased observation of subjects in a prepared environment. Montessori now attempted to define how her own approach differed from the one in vogue among psychologists.27 There are in fact two experimental observation methods, both based on laboratory research. The purpose of the first is to answer a clearly defined question, for example whether a single-cell organism is sensitive to light or what mechanical reactions to stimuli a decapitated frog shows. In terms of child psychology these experiments have led to a confusing array of detailed studies, and no reliable overall picture. However, scientific observations can also be conducted in a more open manner that seeks to achieve a more profound understanding. In these cases one only needs to supply the optimal conditions for the organism studied and observe it closely in order to determine its characteristics and behaviour. The observation could be about animals in their natural environment,

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determining how a bacterial culture develops in a nutrient solution or children moving freely in a Montessori classroom.28 What Montessori failed to discuss was the effect her didactic materials might have in terms of evoking and amplifying the child’s reactions. One important purpose of the concentration exercises is to contribute to a “unification of the personality”. The sensory exercises are ultimately meant to consolidate the self and stability of character. One can hardly avoid noticing the circularity of her reasoning: that education only aids the natural developmental process on the one hand, and on the other that this process needs to be controlled through various artificial means in order to steer it in the desired direction.29 When in her lecture “Batteri, insetti, bambini” Montessori paints a picture of the happy, self-confident child she places it in relation to the less perfect child. Only if the “personality has been synthesised” has the “individual been saved”. A child that has not succeeded in realising its divine potential and has not been given the requisite pedagogical stimulation to allow its spiritual gold to shine is forced to go through life “like that poor headless frog that is no longer a living being”. The black and white picture painted here, with its dramatic contrast between saved and lost, living and dead, is not only informed by religion but can also be traced back to the degeneration paradigm that Montessori embraced during her formative phase. With the transfer of materials and methods of special education to the preschool context, this dualistic mindset also followed, albeit slightly redefined. It was no longer about the contrast between a perfect and a flawed genetic makeup—whether you were to be a winner or loser in the struggle of life was no longer predestined but was a question of upbringing.30 In the light of this it is interesting to note that the degeneration concept, which Montessori abandoned with her shift from biological determinism to biological freedom, is reiterated in another Milan lecture. She never used the term to describe defects in normal children in Il Metodo or her later publications, but in these lectures, which were not intended for publication, she was perhaps less particular about the way she expressed herself. In the lecture entitled “L’organizzazione dell’ambiente-scuola e la sua funzione psichica”, Montessori reflects on children’s sensitivity to their environment—a sensitivity so acute that the objects around them

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almost acquire a life and voice of their own. A misplaced vase can cause insecurity, and should it break, the child despairs, as if the vase had died and the water escaping from it were its blood. In the prepared environment the teacher does not need to raise her voice, as the children are listening to the siren calls and instructions emanating from the objects themselves. “See how lovely we are, come and get us,” call the dust cloths. But before entering this well-organised world, before scholarisation, children have unfortunately accumulated certain defects. They have suffered and been misunderstood, even in the most loving families. When they begin preschool at the age of three they have therefore already “lived a long time and have already degenerated”. Although this is not a question of inherited personality traits, it is still remarkable that Montessori allows herself to describe 3-year-olds by using the negative, stigmatising concept of degeneration. It is also remarkable that in her lecture she associates enhanced receptivity to harmful influences with the sensitive periods. This undoubtedly lends an added dimension to her psychopedagogical key concept.31 The degeneration paradigm was associated with a wider debate on how to counteract the deterioration of the human race and the decline of civilisation. In the lecture “I materiali e l’educazione della mente”, Montessori claims that her method produces “children of a more developed species”, especially in terms of mathematical proficiency. In her opening speech for the course Montessori describes childhood as a “time when everything is possible”. Children are bearers of a potential for improvement that adults have lost, and the promise of an “improvement of humankind, our mental equilibrium, the people’s greatness and peace” resides in the soul of the child. The “new children” of the Montessori method are living proof, their capacity for work, altruism and discipline exceeding all expectations. Farsighted politicians have come to realise the importance of childhood, and to see that the “future salvation” of mankind relies on this new educational method. In Montessori’s concluding speech the universal hope for an improvement of mankind was given a more patriotic setting. The course initiated the construction of a “monument”, “to our homeland and to humanity”—a monument whose building blocks were “the living stones that are the souls of children”. Montessori urged the participants to contribute to the greatness of the

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people and the nation—the Italian nation, which “when it awakes surpasses all other”.32 The 10,000 lire that Mussolini saw fit to donate to ONM in June 1926 is proof of the regime’s appreciation of the Milan course. Montessori expressed her gratitude in her closing speech: “We have been supported and encouraged by the generosity of the government authorities.” True to her fondness for analogies, she described the protection that the Milan course had enjoyed as a question of parental care, whereby the government was the father and the Milan committee the mother: “We almost felt like little children with a mother and father who took care of everything and protected us.”33 In an article building on the research of Kramer and Schwegman, Luisa Lama wonders whether it was a coincidence that the fascist regime’s support for the Montessori method took off in 1926, the year the Opera Nazionale Balilla was founded. Fascist family policy had been introduced the previous year with the formation of ONMI, Opera Nazionale per la Maternità ed Infanza. By offering scout camps, summer camps and other leisure activities, Balilla reached almost every child and young person in the country. According to Lama, Montessori may have chosen to cooperate with the fascist regime because she was impressed by this conscious investment in the education of the new generation without having understood the element of indoctrination: Fascism’s attention to the problems of childhood may have deceived Montessori, making her believe that she could contribute to the realisation of the epoch-making turn towards an age that someone had defined as “the century of the child”.34

There is strong evidence for this hypothesis, not least in Montessori’s own statements. Even after she had left Italy for exile she sometimes referred to fascist child and family policy as an important reason for Mussolini’s success. Kramer quotes a lecture that Montessori gave in London a few months before the outbreak of war in 1939. According to Montessori the advance of totalitarian states was due not only to their armaments but also to their understanding of “the power of childhood”: “When these states arm, they do so not from the age of eighteen but from

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the age of four.” Free nations should take heed, she said. Not, of course, by bringing children up to wage wars; what was needed was “a moral rearmament” from an early age.35 One could also look at Lama’s argument from a different angle. What motivated the fascist regime to cooperate with Montessori other than the fact that she was an international celebrity? What impact could Montessori’s message about new people in a new world have had on the regime’s switch towards a policy in favour of children? Montessori should not, of course, be blamed for the militarism, the hero-worshipping cult surrounding Il Duce or the collectivist conditioning that it resulted in. However, is it not possible to imagine that her ideas about a reborn people through early, normalising education were a source of inspiration for the regime? Montessori had described her preschools as the “first laboratories of the human sciences”, in which new humans were being created. In 1925, according to De Felice, Mussolini imagined how politics would change if social classes could be generated in a laboratory: “I am sometimes attracted by the idea of laboratory generations, to in this way create a class of warriors that are always ready to die, a class of inventors … a class of judges, a class of great industrial leaders.”36 In his biography of Mussolini, De Felice wonders about the motives behind the change of course towards a demographic policy and the ambitious investment in educating the new generation by founding Balilla. De Felice assumed it was disappointment over the inadequate fascistisation of the Italian people that made Mussolini place his hope in future generations: “Mussolini moved the field for the implementation of his policy from the present to the future: as he had been unable to profoundly influence the Italians of today, he had set his sight on the Italians of tomorrow, on the new generations.” As De Felice noted, Mussolini had won the favour of the masses more on account of his personal prestige and charisma than because of the ideology he represented. Dissatisfaction with the incompetence of previous governments was another contributory factor. Having installed a dictatorship, Mussolini wanted to consolidate the regime’s grip on the country’s citizens by means of an educational plan that in de Felice’s view was as ambitious as it was “simplistic”—the aim being to do so by:

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transforming the Italian people, creating new generations, more numerous, physically stronger and morally “fascist” … In the end, this was the great trump card on which Mussolini staked nearly everything he was hoping for with a conviction, a commitment, a fanaticism that bordered on the absurd, in thinking, in alleging that he could change not only the Italians’ way of life and their way of thinking, but even their character.37

De Felice, who did not know about the alliance between Mussolini and Montessori, wondered where Mussolini had got the idea for such an “unnatural and, above all, culturally naive” education plan. He thought it may have had something to do with the influence of Le Bon’s and Sorel’s theories of impressionable masses in combination with Gentile’s vision of the educational mission of the ethical state. However, the mass psychologists had not developed any theories of child psychology—they rather perceived the masses as big children—and Gentile was primarily interested in the education of the elite.38 Nor did Leenders—who revealed the extent of Montessori’s cooperation with the fascist regime—wonder whether Mussolini may have been inspired by Montessori when he embarked on a policy in favour of children and families in 1925–1927. In Leenders’s opinion this policy was already in place, and it was Montessori who conveniently adjusted her method to it. However, Leenders found an important document in the archives that showed a direct link between Montessori and the fascist minister of education, Pietro Fedele, around the time of the Milan course. In August 1926 Fedele sent Mussolini a memorandum concerning the Montessori method that mentioned not only the usual arguments in favour of Montessori’s international renown and prestige but also her ideas about improving mankind through the introduction of more efficient control of the younger generation. The intermediary between Montessori and Fedele was the minister of education’s representative at the Milan course, Alessandro Marcucci, who had run Montessori-inspired schools for many years.39 According to Fedele the Montessori method was widely superior to earlier disciplinary methods, which only restricted the freedom of the child and forced them into passive obedience. Superficial drill and coercion could lead to rebellion. Montessori did not advocate freedom for

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freedom’s sake, social utility being her principal objective. What was special about the Montessori method was that it encouraged satisfaction in learning and self-confidence—fertile soil for patriotic feelings—but not a love “of the Platonic kind, obediently declared” but from “real pride, and consequently a passionate sense of feeling Italian”. What else could fascism ask for? Discipline allows everyone to feel part of a greater whole, continues Fedele, giving them a sublime feeling of unity personified by the great leader. To achieve this one needs well-trained teachers who with their knowledge of child development can work towards the “moral, religious and patriotic goals that shape the lives of our people”.40 The Montessori debate intensified in the wake of the Milan course. In March 1927 the editors of Coltura popolare found it remarkable that a method that had been “officially recognized, sanctioned” by the state was still disputed by pedagogues. The now regime-friendly Umanitaria journal dismissed the critique concerning a “staging” of Montessori and her movement as being largely irrelevant. Leaders of major movements were served by “myth and a ritual” that boosted the faith of their followers. This could lead to somewhat exaggerated, cult-like expressions, but it united the members in their conviction that they were “serving a great cause” in working together for the “renewal of humankind”. There should be no doubt that the Montessori method was part of the national cultural heritage, but it should not be forgotten that the method had achieved great triumphs in countries with a strong “positivist-democratic spirit”. It was obviously disputed whether the positivist or the idealist tendency was most relevant to the Montessori method. The authors behind the article favoured the idea that the “mechanisation” and formalism criticised by the method’s adversaries had more to do with misrepresentations by “too zealous and not very clever followers” than with Montessori herself.41 La Coltura Popolare briefly mentioned the pedagogues involved in this debate. The foremost debaters, Battistelli and Lombardo Radice, had expressed doubts about the way the Montessori movement had developed. In a string of articles published during the summer of 1926, they explained why they had cut all ties with the Montessori Society, of which they had formerly been members. For Battistelli this was a complete U-turn, as she had previously been one of the movement’s most ardent supporters. As late as in April 1925 she had propagated the Montessori

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method in professional journals, but with the article “Dalla Montessori a Gentile, confessione di una maestra”, published in June 1926, she changed sides.42 Battistelli did not wish to deny the great debt she owed Montessori, who had saved her from the obsolete teaching methods of a pedagogy that was hostile to life. But she had never been able to accept Montessori’s view of the teacher as simply an accessory to the didactic materials. In this respect she was more sympathetic to the Gentile school’s view of teacher-­ pupil interaction. Battistelli had for a long time tried to combine the two approaches, but a closer study of Montessori’s and Gentile’s publications opened her eyes to the futility of the endeavour. Not only did Montessori belittle the teacher’s role, but her ideas on the chaotic beginnings of the child’s spiritual life hardly showed much trust in the formative powers of the child’s psyche. Montessori’s blind faith in the didactic apparatus made her fine words on auto-education sound hollow. Making the educational process entirely dependent on a set of teaching aids was tantamount to denying the child spiritual freedom. Battistelli, who had thereby approached Ugo Spirito’s position, now realised that her teaching methods over so many years had been “Gentilian in fact” and only “Montessorian” by name.43 It was not only the reading of Montessori’s publications that might have contributed to this revelation. Battistelli’s change of opinion at that moment may have had something to do with Montessori’s appearance on the scene. When Montessori returned to Italy in connection with the Milan course she took action against teachers practising a combination of methods in her name. Montessori’s correspondence with the school inspector Marcucci reveals that she turned to the minister of education, Fedele, concerning a teacher in Rome, Angela Santoliquido, who had taught the Montessori method to teachers without Montessori’s consent. The fact that Santoliquido had ingratiated herself with the manufacturer of the patented Montessori material for the Italian market, from whom she had ordered a similar set of materials for her non-certified courses, was no less upsetting. The Swiss educator Adolphe Ferrière, one of the leaders of NEF, was touring Italy in spring 1926—a trip he recounted in a book published the following year. In Rome he had visited Santoliquido’s school—in his opinion an excellent establishment, although it had not

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won Montessori’s approval. Ferrière briefly met Montessori in Milan, and got the impression of a rather lonely person whom everyone was acquainted with but only a few people knew well.44 It is possible that Battistelli had also fallen out of favour by spring 1926, either following a direct confrontation with Montessori or indirectly via the Milan committee. Be that as it may, in her article Battistelli was clearly dissatisfied with the running of the Montessori movement, which left so little space for the initiative of resourceful teachers. In an article published in December 1926 Battistelli claimed that Montessori’s school reform would never succeed as long as it continued to oppose committed teachers.45 Lombardo Radice was even more dissatisfied with developments within the Montessori movement. In the July issue of his own journal, Educazione Nazionale, he published his letter of resignation from the Montessori Society, addressed to its president, Giovanni Gentile. Following the assassination of Matteotti in 1924 Lombardo Radice resigned from his post at the Ministry of Education but remained a member of the Montessori movement in the belief that Montessori’s return to Italy would prove to be a turning point and result in a more pronounced idealistic Montessorism. In “A proposito del metodo Montessori”, an article published in the same July issue but probably written before his resignation, Lombardo Radice still expressed his support for Montessori. It was not her fault that narrow-minded followers had transformed the movement into an intolerant monastic order that practised strange rituals and excommunicated dissidents. But their leader, wrote Lombardo Radice, “is the least Montessorian of them all”. Now that she was back in Italy there was hope that “Montessori would be liberated from Montessorism”! The best Montessorians were not the orthodox ones, after all, but free spirits like “Battistelli, Boschetti-Alberti, Povegliano-­ Lorenzotti, who went their own way”. The arguments were summarised in the motto: “Montessori, yes; but without Montessorism”.46 What prompted Lombardo Radice to lose faith in Montessori? Why was he so disappointed that he not only announced his break with ONM in 1926 but repeatedly reiterated his criticism of Montessori over the coming years? By his own account the new edition of Il Metodo that was published in 1926 had opened his eyes. Instead of updating the work to

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harmonise with an idealist agenda, Montessori had refined the mechanical elements of her method. Lombardo Radice also thought it immoral that Montessori no longer referred to others who had been helpful to her during the initial phase of the movement, including Baroness Franchetti. The entire inaugural speech at the opening of the second Casa dei bambini in 1907 was omitted. It was as if Montessori had wanted to erase the historical context that had made her venture possible, and no longer wished to acknowledge those who had supported her. She did not even mention Gentile, despite his having accepted the presidency of the Italian Montessori Society. The fossilisation within the Montessori movement could not be blamed solely on Montessori’s followers. Montessori bore the burden of responsibility. Lombardo Radice feared that Montessori’s “tendency to dogmatise her method” would be further entrenched owing to her “new and official” position of authority.47 As Leenders points out, it seems rather odd for Lombardo Radice to have changed his opinion of the Montessori method solely on these grounds. The didactic programme was after all nearly identical in both editions. As to the fundamental principles and exercises, Lombardo Radice was only able to detect minor changes, such as the removal of optional drawing exercises. In Leenders’s opinion Lombardo Radice had been critical of the Montessori method right from the start, and all his talk about the two Montessoris was just a façade. However, Leenders failed to come up with an explanation as to why he should have held back his critique for so long if he did not think the method could develop in a more positive direction. Why would Lombardo Radice have supported the Montessori method in the first place if he found it inadequate to begin with? If one interprets Lombardo Radice’s contributions to the debate solely on the basis of exegesis, the focus on peripheral contextual factors rather than doctrine is puzzling. Associate Professor of Education Emilia Formiggini Santamaria hit the nail on the head when in 1927 she pointed out that Lombardo Radice only managed to show “how Montessori gradually tried to forget how much she had allowed herself to be inspired by others, which is not pretty, but only of historical interest to pedagogy”. Formiggini Santamaria also found it remarkable that Lombardo Radice had waited so long before realising the obvious fact that the empirically motivated Montessori had little in common with the

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idealistic school. “What L.R. discovers today could easily have been discovered 20 years ago,” she said, and pointed out that a little self-­ examination was appropriate. It was indeed “idealism’s fault if it in Montessori’s theories wished to find something that was not there”.48 Considering that the staging of Montessori as a figurehead of the fascist regime took off in connection with the Milan course in 1926, and that Lombardo Radice had distanced himself from the regime after the assassination of Matteotti, his one-man campaign against Montessorism appears in a different light. Was it perhaps Montessori’s collaboration and her acceptance of the regime’s support that motivated Lombardo Radice to scrutinise her publications? His focus on Montessori’s collaborators at the beginning of her career would in that case be a reminder of how the Montessori method grew out of a socioliberal, rather than a fascist, context. Lombardo Radice could not of course openly accuse Montessori of her alliance with Mussolini’s regime, as this would have been taking things too far, but by discrediting Montessorism and advocating a “critical Montessorism” he may have engaged in covert criticism of the regime.49

7.2  L’Idea Montessori 1927–1929 Between 1927 and 1934 the government-supported Montessori journals were the main platforms for the dissemination of Montessorism in Italy. It was not only Montessori and her closest allies who expressed their opinions in these journals but also representatives of the Italian school authorities. The media landscape in which the Montessori journals emerged had seen some major changes due to the introduction of dictatorship in 1926. Italy was now a one-party state in which all political parties except the Fascist Party were banned. A secret police force had been set up, as well as a special court of law for crimes against the state; criticism of the regime could no longer be published.50 The ONM journals offer inside information on the presentation of Montessori’s message as disseminated in Mussolini’s Italy, in addition to a more multifaceted view of the various discussions held within the Italian section of the Montessori movement. This highly interesting source

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material has not left any significant mark in the field of Montessori research. Educational historian Giacomo Cives lamented this oversight in 1998, arguing that a study of the Montessori journals was likely to reveal tensions within Italian Montessorism at the time.51 Some 20 issues of the monthly L’Idea Montessori, organo dell’Opera Nazionale Montessori, the very first Italian Montessori journal, came out between May 1927 and August 1929. The circulation seems to have been limited. It can be surmised from an appeal in the September 1928 issue that finances were strained, as the editors complained of difficulties encountered over the past year, encouraging subscribers to renew their subscriptions. Apart from propagating Montessori’s ideas and disseminating information about the Montessori movement’s international development, L’Idea Montessori’s main objective was to support the didactic experiment that the Ministry of Education had initiated in 1926. Trials were to be conducted in preschools and the first three grades of primary school over a period of 3 years, followed by an evaluation of the pupils’ success in passing the entrance exams to higher primary-school levels. The experiment had begun with the Milan course in 1926, and L’Idea Montessori saw the light of day in connection with the second, regime-sponsored, Milan course in 1927. According to L’Idea Montessori 340 participants had attended the two courses. This core group of Montessori pioneers was the journal’s primary target group. Most of the articles seem to have been aimed at boosting the sense of solidarity and identity among this group of Montessori school and preschool teachers, who were tasked with implementing the Montessori method nationwide.52 Montessori contributed about a dozen articles to L’Idea Montessori— most of them new—as well as an excerpt from I bambini viventi nella chiesa (1922) and three short items consisting of only a few lines. Half of her articles dealt with central aspects of her method such as the prepared environment, the writing exercises and children’s activity curves. Claremont, Maccheroni, Sorge and other Montessorians also contributed to the methodological discussion. Psychopedagogical and spiritual perspectives were closely intertwined in the cultural criticism expressed in L’Idea Montessori. “Let us liberate the child’s soul” was the proud motto that graced the cover of the November 1927 issue. Such liberation, continued Montessori, would “as if by magic”

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expel all the evils of “repression”. In a revised version of the lecture “Das Neugeborene” from 1923, published in the December 1927 issue, Montessori added a Messianic, poetic meditation on the newborn child, whose first cry echoed Christ’s lament: “Why have you forsaken me?” The frame of reference did not only express a Christian perspective. The September 1928 issue quoted the Chinese Taoist Lao-Tse: “Higher than the love of your neighbour is the love of the man far away, who has yet to come.” This is how Montessori interpreted these Nietzschean-sounding words of wisdom: This idea corresponds with the morale that is a consequence of our concept of the child: we must not only act in relation to those who are close to us, but to those who are yet to be born, who do not yet exist, and who therefore are more remote than the stars of the universe, and yet we form them preparing the environment in which they will live.53

Montessori’s 1927 courses in London and Berlin were mentioned in L’Idea Montessori. According to Madeleine Gueritte, who attended the London course, Montessori had encountered significant opposition as “the very first who dared to deprive adults” of their principal role in their children’s education. “This is no doubt the reason why so many adults have not forgiven her.” Mario Montessori recounts how during the Berlin course Montessori spoke about children and adults as two separate social classes with completely different needs and tasks. There can be no harmony between them for as long as children are denied the right to follow their own path and are forced to follow the lead of adults. You can never be truly grown up unless you have been allowed the full experience of being a child. In her article “L’Educazione e il bambino”, published in L’Idea Montessori in 1927, Montessori remembers how her method was initially described as the Montessori method or the new education method. In time more and more people have come to understand that it should be “the new children”, as the focus is no longer on the educator but on the children who are emancipated through auto-education.54 In L’Autoeducazione (1916) Montessori had compared children to a discriminated social class, and explained their oppression as being the result of an obsolete mindset and social mores that lingered in families

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and schools. Her analysis of power structures had become more exhaustive in Das Kind in der Familie (1923). The imitative pedagogy that sought to shape children into mirror images of their parents was psychologically linked to adults’ need to project themselves as infallible role models, resulting in lies and pretence. Towards the end of the 1920s, when Montessori was publishing works on bringing up children in the Catholic faith, her analysis of power structures became noticeably more pious, and the concept of sin was given explanatory value. However, Montessori did not abandon the premise forming the basis of the entire educational reform tradition going back to Comenius and Rousseau: the rejection of original sin. Throughout her life she was convinced that respect for the divine energies in the child’s soul would be able to redeem a humanity that had gone astray. The child is good by nature, but this original virtue is easily corrupted. The concept of sin that Montessori presents in some of her contributions to L’Idea Montessori primarily relates not to children but to adults. In the articles “Il Maestro” (1927) and “L’Adulto educatore” (1929), the medieval idea of the seven mortal sins—the antithesis of the Christian virtues—is updated. Montessori explains in “Il Maestro” that external factors usually contribute to control of such character defects. Pride is checked when others do not share one’s self-image, lust is controlled by the constraints of propriety, sloth is overcome on the premise that you need to earn a living, and so forth. Sometimes, however, the mortal sins are hidden under a cloak of respectability—something that becomes especially clear when it comes to bringing up children. A tyranny of bullying had developed over the centuries, as children were unable to defend themselves against the transgressions of adults. Children looked up to the adults—they “adapted themselves to everything, believed everything, forgave everything”. Wrath and pride were often given free rein under this regime, with its demands for categorical submission and the adults’ smug conviction of being the child’s omnipotent creators. “In the society of adults, the tyrant was considered to be ordained by God. But to the child, the adult represents God himself.” The first thing a Montessori teacher needs to do is therefore to rid herself of “the pride and wrath complex”.55 This line of reasoning is further developed in “L’Adulto educatore”. Montessori rejected an oversimplistic interpretation of her emancipation

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message, as if it were only about dispensing with the adult so that the child can develop in peace. Her strong endorsement of auto-education is ultimately the result of her respect for the particular nature of the child. Children and adults are fundamentally different, and they consequently have different callings. Both have a job to do: the adult’s work is productive and contributes to social progress, while the child must work on its inner, mental development. In society resources are fought for through competition, but also through cooperation. The child is unable to participate in building society; therefore, it has a lower status. As a result it is a stranger and is not included in the adult world, as if the child represented “a kind of future, something that will come into being, but does not yet exist.”56 This competitive mentality has its material reasons, but there are also psychological factors—“something that resides in the soul”. People are not content with bare essentials, but want more. This state of mind gives rise not only to greed and gluttony but also to the sins associated with relationships—lust, envy, sloth and pride being linked to this inability to control one’s desires. In the very first sentence of the lecture Montessori indicates that her educational programme is not based on “a very optimistic idea about the capabilities of the human soul”. There is no doubt that the deviations that define the mortal sins “stem from the human heart”. A child that does not participate in competitive work does not show these symptoms. “We see no mortal sins in the child,” says Montessori, but we can assume that the “seeds” of these character faults are innate in their soul, but unrevealed—a trait that does not develop until childhood has passed.57 It is as if Montessori used this complex line of reasoning to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis—two one-sided doctrines associated with sin. She shuns the Augustine view of sin as an inherited trait that emerges during a child’s first year of life, but she is no more sympathetic to the Pelagian definition of sin as simply a question of evil deeds. The child is not only a product of society but also bears hereditary characteristics, some of which may develop in the wrong direction. The definition of sin that Montessori suggests is a kind of third way between trust in the goodness of the child and belief in its corruption—the conviction that

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childhood is a latent phase during which these defects, with the right methods, can be minimised or even eradicated. Montessori emphasised the paradoxical fact that “those who have these vices are concerned about children that do not have them.” When adults refuse to acknowledge their own shortcomings it is as if they instead attribute every kind of evil to children. People believe themselves to be without blame in their actions involving children, and this belief is reinforced, as children always tend to take the blame, no matter how innocent they are. Not only have adults been able to exercise unjust wrath through punishment but they also corrupt children’s morals, for example, when good behaviour is rewarded with sweets. Children take advantage of this in their “lust for material things and by coveting the property of others”. When children are encouraged to compete in school, envy, too, is stimulated in the name of education.58 Compassion, the unselfish love of man, is advocated as a counterpoise to the mortal sins. This theme is somewhat elaborated on in the article “La Carità ammalata di peste” (1928). When charity has been tainted it is revealed through insults and abusive language. On the other hand, a patient and compassionate disposition able to overlook the faults of others is a sign of health. For are we not prepared to go along with such ideas, at least when they are relevant to us? When it comes to children, says Montessori, it seems we use a very different yardstick: “How to raise children without judging them, scold them, and sometimes even beat them?” we ask. But should not Christian charity be the same for all, she continues, emphasising the absurdity of limiting the message of love to only “one part of humankind”.59 In the same issue Montessori’s article is mentioned by Father Antonio Bianchessi, who in his capacity as school inspector in the district of Pavia was instrumental in the school experiments that were initiated in connection with the Milan course. He mentions that Montessori’s profound reflection on charity is especially apt, since Easter has just begun. In the article “Letizia ed energia nella educazione Montessoriana”, published in the September 1928 issue, Bianchessi praises childish innocence, as it recognises neither a difference between the sexes nor one of social class. Only gradually does one become aware of these distinctions. All children come together in play and joy; Montessori’s great achievement was in

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replacing the rough games played in streets and fields with the educational games in the Casa dei bambini, where a “genuine regime of freedom” promotes “physical and moral vigour”. He is convinced that the Montessori method will surely increase the “inner energies of the human species hundredfold”.60 In his article “La bontà e la serenità nel metodo Montessori” (1929), Bianchessi suggests that Montessori’s views on children are similar to the ones Augustine expresses in his Confessions. They have both criticised excessively severe methods of child-rearing. They also agree on the sanctity of life and the child as a gift from God, and they share the same view on play as the child’s proper element and unalienable right: “Play is the life of the little one, it is his refuge, his school for the future.” Bianchessi consequently interprets the Casa dei bambini exercises as educational games—“rational pleasures” that make learning joyful. Nor does Bianchessi have a problem with the Augustinian concept of original sin. Like spring flowers in a pasture, which will fade and lose their beautiful colours, sin will appear in a child’s life “sooner or later”. The age of innocence is short; for Augustine it was stealing pears in his youth that made him fall from grace. Bianchessi does not mention Augustine’s speculations on the crying of babes in arms as an early manifestation of sinfulness, possibly because this would be too great a contrast to Montessori’s stance.61 In conjunction with the Aporti centennial in 1927, the Ministry of Education issued a circular urging the speakers to include the latest trends in Italian infant pedagogy in their commemorative speeches—more precisely the Agazzi sisters’ Scuola materna and Montessori’s Casa dei bambini. Just one of these lectures was printed in L’Idea Montessori, and only in the form of a summary of the passage referring to the Montessori method. At Bergamo Polytechnic, Giulio Moretti had in December 1927 compared Montessori to an ingenious inventor who had constructed a “technically impeccable product”—a result of “Italian industry”, which had boldly crossed the oceans like an aircraft.62 Not all speakers were as ecstatic. Some took the opportunity to reiterate their criticism of the Montessori method. As early as in December 1926 Rosa Agazzi’s contribution to the centenary of the Aporti infant schools was published in Lombardo Radice’s journal L’Educazione

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nazionale. Looking back on the history of her own method, she emphasised the important influence of her mentor Professor Pietro Pasquali, and how they together sought to develop the new infant schools, thereby further developing the activity-centred approach of Aporti’s and Froebel’s programmes. She also mentioned Pasquali’s scepticism regarding the Montessori method. On the one hand, owing to her obsession with written exercises and individual work, Montessori had neglected oral skills. On the other hand, Montessori’s eagerness to do away with old practices had created a situation in which she needed to borrow right, left and centre to construct something new. In this article Agazzi even accused her rival of intellectual property theft. Montessori had plagiarised the practical-­life exercises of the Agazzi method, including cleaning, laying the table, dressing etc.—a method developed in collaboration with Pasquali before the turn of the century: How can the Dottoressa present as a fact that no one before her had ever thought of implementing the system for a productive life that she drew up, when that system was in fact born at Mompiano at the end of 1894? Pasquali is dead. But his work lives on!”63

It was in connection with the Aporti centennial that Lombardo Radice’s campaign against Montessorism shifted in favour of Agazzi’s approach. In a brief afterword to Agazzi’s 1926 article Lombardo Radice supported the Agazzi method as being the only truly Italian infant pedagogy. The lifeblood of the Montessori method—its Italian core, as it were—was “pure Agazzism”. In an article entitled “Agazzi e Montessori” (1928) this message was frenetically hammered home. The supreme priority of the Agazzi method was printed in block letters: […] Montessorism, AS TO ITS CELEBRATION AND PRACTICE OF THE “ACTIVE” METHOD, CAN BE CONSIDERED AN AFFIRMATION OF THE PURELY ITALIAN AGAZZI METHOD, WHICH PRECEDES THIS METHOD BY MANY YEARS.64

Lombardo Radice’s increasingly desperate tone may have been a reaction to information he had been given about what took place during

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Montessori’s second audience with Mussolini in March 1927. In a letter addressed to Gentile he described the conversation as it was relayed to him. Montessori had named Lombardo Radice as her foremost adversary in Italy. Mussolini allegedly replied: “Do you imagine that Lombardo Radice only fights you? He is my enemy too.” It is clear from a footnote to the article about Agazzi and Montessori that Lombardo Radice thought that Montessori’s fervent supporters vilified him, and that instead of conducting an objective debate they were trying to silence him by falsely accusing him of anti-patriotism. According to these rumour-mongers his criticism of Montessori was tantamount to discrediting the honour of the Italian nation.65 Although Montessori never publicly replied to Lombardo Radice’s polemics, we know from her private notes how she perceived the dispute. In a handwritten document discovered in the archives of the Italian Montessori movement, Montessori discusses “why L’Idea Montessori had not responded to the attacks from Prof. Lombardo Radice”. The simple answer, according to Montessori, was that the members of the Montessori movement had better things to do than waste their time on meaningless disputes. Moreover, one cannot talk about a real dispute when only one side is fighting. That is to say Lombardo Radice and Montessori are not adversaries in the traditional sense. So why does he insist on continuing these attacks when no-one fights back? It might be a question of gender, but not in the way gender disputes are normally conducted. In this case it is not the woman who nags hysterically while the man continues to work in silence.66 The roles are also reversed in terms of professional rivalry. People in high places are often harassed by those who wish to take over their position and further their own careers. Montessori describes Lombardo Radice as a “person with a well-paid occupation, social status, an important professorship and bestowed with power in excess”. She describes herself as someone who “has no gainful employment, has never been offered anything by her country and who has therefore chosen exile, although her work shines in all the world as one of the most beautiful, purest Italian achievements of our time”. It is interesting to see how in these private musings Montessori clings to her earlier self-image as someone misunderstood and opposed in her native Italy, despite being backed up

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by the regime. Maybe she found the support insufficient? In a letter to Marcucci dated 6 February 1926 Montessori mentioned that her organisation had not received the promised annual government subsidy of 20,000 lire for 1924–1925. At the end of term a few months later she received a monetary gift of 10,000 lire from Mussolini, but not the promised subsidy.67 Montessori may also have overestimated her adversary’s influential position. She appears to have assumed that Lombardo Radice was still as powerful in 1927 as he had been in 1924, when he was the minister of education’s right-hand man. However, the only opinion-forming channel he had access to after having stepped down in 1924 was his own journal, L’Educazione nazionale, until it was banned in 1933. On the other hand, Lombardo Radice exerted some influence within the preschool teaching community and its organisations in his capacity as a teacher trainer in Rome.68 Montessori dismissed the accusation of plagiarism as absurd. Why should Montessori, a respected pioneer of scientific pedagogy, have to take her inspiration from the Agazzi sisters? “Montessori”, she writes in the third person, “aimed for something very high—she had set her mind on fighting for the great cause of science, the solution of which was found in schools, but not for the sake of competing with teachers or to plagiarise infant schoolteachers.” Anyway, the practical exercises offered by the Agazzi method—teaching children to blow their nose or button each other’s aprons—were hardly exceptional enough to motivate Montessori to abandon her university career and dedicate her life to the cause of children.69 It is possible to date this document to within a year. It was probably written not before May 1927, as L’Idea Montessori is mentioned, but before September 1928, as L’Idea Montessori made a statement that month by publishing a response by Giuliana Sorge to Lombardo Radice’s critique. The young Sorge was a new star within the Italian Montessori movement. She had assisted Montessori during the Milan course in 1926, and followed her to Argentina, where she remained during spring 1927 to establish the first Casa dei bambini there. She was again at Montessori’s side during the London course in 1927. Sorge was actively involved in

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the new Montessori journal. The response to Lombardo Radice was her fifth contribution.70 Solidarity through love of humanity, argued Sorge, had been the through line in Montessori’s life’s achievement ever since her work with degenerates in her youth. With Montessori, didactics had been elevated to pure science and a tool for the improvement of society. The fact that reactionary forces still refuse to accept these new educational methods, regardless of the outstanding results, is of course distressing—a “fatal chronological mistake”. But it was even more surprising that people who had so warmly recommended the new ideas opposed them once they were implemented! The fact that Sorge’s criticism targeted Lombardo Radice is clear from her ironic comments about educationalists who waste time commenting on formulations in the “various editions of a book”. He is also indirectly singled out when Sorge complains of teachers who reject Montessori’s precise apparatus and instead introduces the “uncertain”, the “unfinished” and even “emptiness” as norms in Italian schools.71 Lombardo Radice had made fun of orthodox followers who failed to understand the essence of Montessori’s writings, while Sorge questioned an excessively superficial exegesis that missed the deeper spiritual dimension of Montessori’s message. Simply analysing the terminology as if the wording were the main thing would get you nowhere. “The spirit speaks in a new way,” although the words are the same, and those who are receptive to new ideas will obey the call. Fortunately Mussolini’s government appeared to have little interest in “empty”, unspecified pedagogy.72 In a follow-up article published in 1928 Sorge clarifies her opinion of the Montessori method as a suitable “educational organ for the fascist regime”. She emphasises how an understanding of freedom, similar to that of the Montessori method, had come to the attention of the general public via the new government. Earlier utopian, unsystematic notions had been abandoned in favour of a “balanced and disciplined freedom”. Is it not an act of providence, exclaims Sorge, that at the same time as the most “perfect form of government” is established a matching educational method appears “based on the general principles of the Regime”? The new school created by the Montessori method was to the old school system and its empty rhetoric what the new regime was to the previous,

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liberal, governments. The kind of people “the Regime desires” can be formed in Montessori schools. Not people of big words but “people of few words and a great capacity for action,” as Il Duce so poignantly expressed it.73 Among the contributors to L’Idea Montessori who openly declared pro-­ fascist sympathies, Sorge was in a class of her own, as she was one of Montessori’s closest and most trusted co-workers. As early as in the December 1927 issue, Sorge had mentioned that Mussolini and Montessori were both determined to change society in fundamental ways. Just as Mussolini had saved the situation now, Montessori wanted to ensure progressive development of society in the future by means of her method.74 To begin with, only a few editorials and news items in L’Idea Montessori referred to the social context of Italian fascism. For example, it was mentioned in the March 1928 issue that Mussolini’s brother Arnaldo had visited Umanitaria’s Casa dei bambini in Milan, and in the next issue that Il Duce himself had visited a municipal school in the same city—Scuola all’aperto Umberto di Savoia—that had Montessori classes. In the September 1927 issue it was mentioned that Montessori’s trusted companion Bang had been decorated for his work spreading knowledge about the Italian method abroad. In the May/August 1928 issue it was reported that Pietro Fedele had been succeeded by Giuseppe Belluzzo as minister of education.75 The May/August issue signalled a change of course towards more explicit propaganda. The main article set the new tone “In difesa della nostra razza”, referring to a speech Mussolini had given in May of the previous year (1927), when he proclaimed the regime’s new population policy. The anonymous author—“An amateur pedagogue”—quoted Mussolini on how the “fate of the Nation” depended on its “demographic power”. The article advocated the Montessori method and childcare courses for expectant mothers as important elements of the regime’s hygienistic programme for promoting public health.76 By the time this article was published the teacher training college that the Montessori Society had anticipated for so long had at last been established. The minister of education, Fedele, had been instrumental in the government decision that was passed by royal decree on 5 February 1928. The inauguration of Regia Scuola di Metodo Montessori on 21 April that

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same year was followed by autumn preparations for the official opening of the school in January 1929. In these favourable circumstances the ONM drafted a plan for how the Montessori teacher training programme could be expanded. A memorandum arguing in favour of a Montessori university as part of the regime’s investment in public health was sent to the government in June 1928.77 The author of the memorandum, Doctor Luigi Veratti—a physician at the above-mentioned Scuola all’aperto in Milan—had during Mussolini’s visit to the school mentioned the idea of a more ambitious investment in the Montessori method from a public health standpoint, and he had been asked to submit this idea in writing. In a letter dated 26 May 1928 Montessori informed Mussolini that she was to meet with Veratti to discuss these plans. She was infinitely grateful for the “personal protection” Mussolini had granted her life’s work. She did not, after all, have many years left, but with the support of Mussolini—“a protection that eliminates the obstacles”—there was hope that her plans would come to fruition and benefit children worldwide.78 After the Milan course the number of Italian schools specialising in the Montessori method increased from around 100 to some 170, according to Veratti. An important step forward had also been taken with the establishment of a 3-year Montessori teacher training programme in Rome. The Montessori method had more to offer, however. The Montessori Society in Vienna, for example, had just launched an experiment involving rational baby care for newborns, and the method had been expanded to encompass upper-secondary level in the Netherlands. What was currently needed was a “Montessori university” based in Rome. All over Europe people were looking to “the new Italy, which, governed by its DUCE had initiated protective racial measures”. With such an institute Italy would spearhead the international Montessori movement.79 Veratti, who may have been responsible for the previously mentioned article in L’Idea Montessori on Mussolini’s demographic policy entitled “In difesa della nostra razza”, warned in the memorandum against ignorant parents—the “main obstacle” to the regime’s ambitious eugenics programme. As psychoanalysis had shown, most personality defects were caused by poor child-rearing, so it was important to establish an institute that could draw up guidelines for scientific child-rearing, starting from

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the earliest years. Leaving childcare in the hands of adults “governed by prejudices and habits” was an approach doomed to failure. The threatening scenario that Veratti presented was in line with Montessori’s speculations during the Milan course on children’s accumulation of defects before scholarisation: The causes for most psychological anomalies in adults must be sought in childhood, as it is during this most primitive stage in life that the roots to the evils of the soul are to be found; as the repression that is the result of strong adults’ erroneous treatment of delicate children causes many types of total or partial arrested mental development.80

Apart from teacher training, an expanded Montessori institute would offer further education in psychophysical care of infants for physicians and nurses. Observation classes for different ages were also to be linked to the institute, as well as an infant department (0–3  years). Veratti also stresses the need for an “information and propaganda department”, to spread Montessori’s method worldwide and consolidate the international Montessori movement. All of this was of course to be led by Montessori.81 The new minister of education, Belluzzo, was not keen on the proposal. There was no budget plan, and courses in infant care could just as easily be organised by the university departments of medicine and the Red Cross school of nursing. Under a legal provision from 1926 no new colleges or universities could be established before February 1931. Disappointed about the refusal, Veratti pointed out in his response that the infant care Montessori had developed was completely different from the usual medical practices, and that it required staff trained in the Montessori method and specific Montessori materials.82 The regime’s intentions for the Montessori teacher training college were clearly described in a news item published in L’Idea Montessori in October 1928. The Regia Scuola di Metodo Montessori, it says, was part of a “comparative study of methodologies” with the purpose of offering the government a way of determining the respective value of the different methods. The chief purpose is therefore not the dissemination of the Montessori method but rather an evaluation of its applications. To this end L’Idea Montessori has adopted a policy of not arguing against other

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methods: as regards “Method A. Method B. Method C …”, it will eventually be possible to determine “which of these has the greatest educational value, which is most worthy of leaving its mark on the Nation’s schools”. Until then it should be borne in mind that the children belong to the nation and not to one educational method or another.83 Montessori had delegated the Montessori-method course at the teacher training college to Giuliana Sorge. When the course was about to begin, Sorge published an article that expressed her conviction that the Montessori method would win the ongoing method competition. All objections to the Montessori method would now “fall away like houses of cards in the wind”. With the Montessori Institute, the government had in fact laid down the foundation stone for a “great church where a new doctrine of humankind will be drawn up”. Or more precisely “the science of spiritual hygiene”. The students will not only be learning about a new philosophy or set of ideas but will also “live the new life”.84 The college statutes were published in the February issue of L’Idea Montessori. Apart from pedagogy, the curriculum included the history of Italy and geography, mathematics and natural sciences, modelling and drawing, and song and diction. Instruction was also offered in housework, hygiene, religion and fascist culture. Another article reveals that Montessori would be the college’s director, with Sorge as deputy director. However, ultimate responsibility for the administration lay not with the Montessori Society but with Nazareno Padellaro, superintendent of the elementary schools of Rome.85 The editors of L’Idea Montessori welcomed the Lateran Treaty under the heading “Il grande evento”, and invited all Montessori teachers in Italy to “lift the little children in our preschools and schools toward heaven” so they could receive the blessings of the King and the Pope. In one fell swoop the Lateran Treaty did away with the tug of war between the Holy See and the Italian State, which had been a destabilising factor in Italian politics ever since unification in 1870. The treaty strengthened the regime’s influence among the masses, and by means of a concordat the Church gained a stronger position in schools and wider society. Bianchessi and other clerical fascists had every reason to rejoice, as the Gentile faction had now been outmanoeuvred in terms of educational policy decisions.86

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Major political events were only briefly touched on in L’Idea Montessori. Most of the articles published between 1927 and 1929 dealt with the national Montessori school experiments that were conducted during this period. Guidelines were issued in a report by Marcucci, published by the Ministry of Education in 1926. The School Inspector Truffi was to lead the project, and local school inspectors and didactic directors were responsible for their respective group of teachers. Teachers’ seminars were arranged in 1927 and 1928. Bianchessi also offered continuous guidance to participants in the school experiment. Contributors to the journal were mainly teachers from his own district.87 The main problem for the teachers involved was access to the didactic materials. Few municipalities were prepared to pay for the expensive apparatus and purchase new furniture for classrooms. In Bianchessi’s district only three of the seven municipalities allocated funds for fully equipped Montessori classrooms in 1927. Angela Emilia Tronconi at Corteolona was one of the lucky few. She had been granted a full set of materials but no furniture. As she was keen for her classroom to be “Montessorian in both spirit and setting”, she ordered the full set of furniture. When the mayor asked her how much it had cost she nervously admitted that she would not be able to pay the bill, but the mayor came to her rescue. Fanny Galleppini Leoni was another lucky teacher. She had opened a Casa dei bambini in Sardinia, a poor region. When times were especially hard she was visited by an elegant lady from Milan who bore the cost of the materials, and later also the furniture.88 Other teachers, for example Luigina Migliavacca, had to make do with home-made materials throughout almost the entire experiment. Many were forced to resort to traditional teaching methods owing to a lack of materials. In the September 1928 issue the editors asked local councils to do better and immediately furnish all Montessori teachers with the “necessary materials”. Migliavacca eloquently described her painful plight of being unable to offer the right teaching aids. She suffered like a mother unable to feed her newborn baby. At the April 1928 seminar in Pavia, she gave a talk that caused Bianchessi to question the passivity of the Milan committee. “Why do these poor girls seem to be left to their own devices?” he asked in his report. Would it not be appropriate for them to “every now and then be called to the family seat in Milan” to have their

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convictions confirmed, perhaps even to hear a few words of wisdom from the leader of the movement? Did it really suffice to be supported by school leaders and inspectors with only a scant understanding of the Montessori method? In 1929 the Montessori Committee, which rarely contributed to the journal, responded to rumours that were circulating about the committee’s refusal to “offer teachers and school authorities any assistance whatsoever in their choices and procurement of materials”. Nothing could be more wrong; they were happy to send catalogues and price lists on request.89 Consequently, not a great deal could be expected from the leaders of the Montessori movement. Instead, Montessori’s son Mario published what is best described as a begging letter in the June and July 1929 issues of L’Idea Montessori. Under the heading “Associazione ‘Renilde Montessori’” the readers were informed about a foundation that had been set up in memory of Montessori’s mother, Renilde. She had inspired her daughter to dedicate her life to children, and Montessori’s first disciples used to put flowers on her grave. Montessori had placed the first copy of L’Autoeducazione in her tomb. However, during Montessori’s travels around the world, the grave became neglected, and this had saddened Montessori on her visits. Mario thought that finding the grave decorated with a multitude of candles and flowers would be comforting to Montessori when she returned to Rome in January 1930. This was the reason why the Renilde Foundation had been created. Contributors were to get their name inscribed on the little candle holders.90 Some teachers were forced to deal not only with tight-fisted local councils but also with a reluctant local population. Galleppini Leoni struggled to convince the mothers of Domusnovos of the importance of cleanliness. They failed to see the point of house-cleaning and personal-­ hygiene exercises. Tronconi received many gibes for her passionate Montessorism. In his reports Bianchessi pointed out that it would have been better if Montessori teachers had been less isolated during the experiment.91 The degree of fascistisation expressed in the articles submitted by teachers varied. Some were entirely free of such elements. Others reflected the superficial fascistisation of regular school life: special ceremonies, songs and decorations. Several articles mention the obligatory portrait of

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Mussolini in every classroom, which can also be seen in the background of photographs of the interiors of Mazzoleni’s, Galleppini Leoni’s and Tronconi’s classrooms. Galleppini Leoni recounted that a successful end-­ of-­term party at her Casa dei bambini had ended with the “hymn to Il Duce”. Tronconi included a child’s drawing of the fasces in an article about work done by her pupils. Migliavacca described in her journal how she celebrated the anniversary of the establishment of the first fascist units with an enthusiastic speech about how hard Mussolini worked for the welfare of Italy. A small boy had replied that he worked hard too, even if he was tired, because he wanted to be like Il Duce.92 Maria Antoinetta Mola’s and Goliardi Radi’s contributions were more explicitly ideological. Mola praised Il Duce, the great leader who cared about schools from the bottom of his heart. By supporting the Montessori method he had placed himself in the lead in terms of educational advancement and had solved the child-rearing problem in the “most convenient way possible”. Goliardi Radi, a male teacher at the Ostra boys’ school, hoped that L’Idea Montessori would become a “mighty weapon”, which when the “clarion call” came would spur all supporters on and drive away the opponents. He stressed that Montessori schools “are not and should not be sickly sweet”.93 In August 1929 L’Idea Montessori bade farewell with an article entitled “Riassumendo”. The school experiment had been successfully concluded, and the Montessori method had proved to be entirely on a par with fascist educational doctrine, which appreciated both traditional Christian values and the latest scientific results as they contributed to the “scientification of life”. There was every reason to continue investing in the Montessori method, which could safeguard fascism’s ultimate goal, the promotion of “the moral and physical health of the lineage”, better than any other school.94

Notes 1. Christopher Seton-Watson, Italy from Liberalism to Fascism 1870–1925 (London: Methuen, 1967) 570–577, 587–596, Renzo De Felice, Mussolini il fascista, I: La conquista del potere 1921–1925 (Turin:

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Einaudi,1966) 3–40, 137–146, 174–189, Mark Mazower, Den mörka kontinenten: Europas nittonhundratal (Gothenburg: Daidalos, 1999) 29, Felix Gilbert, David Clay Large, The End of the European Era, 1890 to the Present (New York: Norton & Company, 2002) 208. 2. Seton-Watson, Italy from Liberalism to Fascism, 605–630, De Felice, Mussolini il fascista, I, 211–223, 262–274, 282–374, 478–479, Giuliano Procacci, History of the Italian People (London: Penguin Books,1973) 418, Gilbert and Large, The End of the European Era, 209–210. 3. Seton-Watson, Italy from Liberalism to Fascism, 631–632, 635–638, De Felice, Mussolini il fascista, I, 388–400, 423–430, 434–438, 445–450, Lamberto Borghi, Educazione e autorità nell’Italia moderna (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1951) 221, Gilbert and Large, The End of the European Era, 210. 4. Seton-Watson, Italy from Liberalism to Fascism, 614, Comitato Nazionale Montessori sotto l’Alto patronato di S M Regina Madre, 12 February 1923 (ONM Archive, Rome)1–2. 5. Dina Bertoni Jovine, La scuola italiana dal 1870 ai giorni nostri (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1958) 265–273, Mario Alighiero Manacorda, “La riforma Gentile”, Momenti paradigmatici di storia dell’educazione, Giovanni Genovesi and Carlo Pancera (ed.) (Ferrara: Corso Editore, 1993) 163–176, Richard J. Wolff, “‘Fascistizing’ Italian youth: The limits of Mussolini’s educational system”, History of Education (13:4, 1984) 287–290, 296. 6. Bertoni Jovine, La scuola italiana, 222–234, Manacorda, “La riforma Gentile”, 165–170, Borghi, Educazione e autorità nell’Italia moderna, 232–235, Michel Ostenc,“Reforme Gentile et contre-reforme: recherches et methodes”, Ricerche pedagogiche (19:72–73, 1984)1–3. 7. Seton-Watson, Italy from Liberalism to Fascism, 633–634, Borghi, Educazione e autorità nell’Italia moderna 245–253, Gabriele Turi, Giovanni Gentile. Una biografia (Turin: UTET Libreria, 2006) 329–331, 342–343, 347, Vincenzo Sarracino, “La scuola elementare da Gentile alla Repubblica: linee di sviluppo”, I problemi della pedagogia (29:1–2, 1983) 195. 8. Bertoni Jovine, La scuola italiana, 226, Borghi, Educazione e autorità nell’Italia moderna 256, Hélène Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, Die Geschichte einer reformpädagogischen Erziehungskonzeption im italienischen Faschismus (Bad Heilbrunn: Verlag Julius Klinkhardt, 2001) 117–119, “The New Curriculum in Italy”, TES (22/3, 1924) 1.

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9. Regio Decreto, 8 August 1924, no 1534, Gazetta Ufficiale, 13 October 1924, no. 240, 3508, Renato Moro, “Il movimento montessoriano nella nostra legislazione scolastica”, Vita dell’infanzia (1:9, 1952) 7–10, Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, 68, 122, Maria Montessori, letter to Giovanni Gentile, 15 June 1924 in Giuliana Marazzi, Maria Montessori e il fascismo, diss. (Rome: Università degli Studi La Sapienza, 1998–1999) 192. See also the following articles in the TES, “New Montessori Centre in Italy” (17/5, 1924) 211, “Montessori Method in Rome” (29/11, 1924) 475. 10. Bertoni Jovine, La scuola italiana dal 1870 ai giorni nostri, 275–276, Borghi, Educazione e autorità nell’Italia moderna, 260–264, Ugo Spirito, “Gentile”, Enciclopedia Italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti, vol. 16 (Rome: Istituto Giovanni Treccani, 1932) 580. 11. Seton-Watson, Italy from Liberalism to Fascism, 650–656, 660, De Felice, Mussolini il fascista, I, 617–658, Turi, Giovanni Gentile, 358–376. 12. Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, 69–70, Nadia Labriola, “La scuola italiana e il Metodo Montessori”, La Coltura Popolare (15:4, 1925) 144–145. 13. Rita Kramer, Maria Montessori: A Biography (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978) 283, Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, 69–70. 14. Mussolini’s private secretary, Alessandro Chiavolini, forwarded the letter to the Ministry of Education on 21 September1925. See letter from Chiavolini to Fedele 21 September 1925 and letter to Chiavolini from L.  Trivelli, 5 October 1925 SPD.CO. (1922–43, B. 288. f. 15279/1, ACS Roma). 15. Renzo De Felice, Mussolini il fascista, II: L’organizzazione dello Stato fascista 1925–1929 (Turin: Einaudi, 1968) 31–33, 42–43, 142–143, 152–163, Seton-Watson, Italy from Liberalism to Fascism, 662–665, Bertoni Jovine, La scuola italiana dal 1870 ai giorni nostri, 285–288, Borghi, Educazione e autorità nell’Italia moderna, 265–269. 16. Maria Montessori, letter to Mussolini 20 January 1926, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1.2069, sf. 2, ACS Roma). For the amendment 4 February 1926, see Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, 71, La Coltura Popolare (15:12 December 1925) 453, I Diritti della scuola (27:16, 18/2,  1926) 232, La Coltura Popolare (17:4, April 1927) 149–150, Margarita Schweizer, “Maria Montessori in Lateinamerika”, Das Kind (14:1993) 56–62. 17. “Il corso Montessori a Milano”, I Diritti della scuola (27:18, 7/3, 1926) 263–264, Giovanna Alatri, Una vita per educare, tra arte e socialità: Alessandro Marcucci 1876–1968 (Milan: Unicopli, 2006) 62, 83,

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133–134, “Corso Montessoriano”, La Coltura Popolare (16:2, 1926) 43–44, “Montessori Course in Italy”, TES (13/3, 1926) 128, “Montessori Method in Italy”, TES (26/6, 1926) 270. Pietro Fedele, Letter to Mussolini 7 August 1926, PCM (f. 5.1.2069. sf. 2, ACS Roma). 18. Alessandro Marcucci, “Inaugurazione del corso magistrale ‘Montessori’, svoltosi a Milano presso la Società Umanitaria da febbraio ad agosto 1926”, Note sul metodo Montessori (Milan: Bestetti e Tumminelli, 1926) 39–42, Barbara Bracco, “Le Case dei Bambini, l’infanzia milanese di primo Novecento tra Maria Montessori e la Società Umanitaria”, Bambini a Milano, Francesco Caggio, Mimma Noziglia (ed.) (Bergamo: Edizione Junior, 1999) 28. 19. “Montessori Course in Italy”, TES (13/3, 1926) 128, “Corso montessoriano”, La Coltura Popolare (16:2, 1926) 43–44. 20. Maria Montessori, “Inaugurazione del corso magistrale Montessori, svoltosi a Milano presso la Società Umanitaria da febbraio ad agosto 1926”, Note sul metodo Montessori (Milan: Bestetti e Tumminelli, 1926) 43–48. 21. Maria Montessori, Il Metodo della Pedagogica Scientifica applicato all’educazione infantile nelle Case dei Bambini, Edizione critica (Rome: Opera Nazionale Montessori, 2000) 65, Maria Montessori, “Inaugurazione del corso magistrale Montessori, svoltosi a Milano presso la Società Umanitaria da febbraio ad agosto 1926”, 47. 22. Montessori, Il Metodo, Edizione Critica, 65, Maria Montessori, “Il 6 gennaio 1907”, Note sul metodo Montessori, 5–7. 23. Maria Montessori, “Lezioni di metodo: I materiali e l’educazione del mente”, Vita dell’Infanzia (46:1, 1997) 3–7. 24. Montessori, “Lezioni di metodo: I materiali”, 4. 25. Maria Montessori, L’Autoeducazione nelle scuole elementari: continuazione del volume Il metodo della pedagogia scientifica applicato all’educazione infantile nelle Case dei Bambini (1916) (Milan: Garzanti,1992) 66. 26. Montessori, “Lezioni di metodo: I materiali”, 7, Maria Montessori, “Lezioni di metodo: La maestra e l’ambiente organizzato-3”, Vita dell’Infanzia (45:4, 1996) 4–9. 27. Maria Montessori, “Montessori on Mental Tests”, TES (11/6, 1921) 261. 28. Maria Montessori, “Lezioni di metodo: Batteri, insetti, bambini, la mia psicologia sperimentale”, Vita dell’Infanzia (47:10, 1998)5–7. 29. Montessori, “Lezioni di metodo: Batteri”, 9. 30. Montessori, “Lezioni di metodo: Batteri”, 9.

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31. Maria Montessori, “Lezioni di metodo: L’organizzazione dell’ambiente-­ scuola e la sua funzione psichica-2, Vita dell’Infanzia (45:3, 1996) 10–17. 32. Montessori, “Lezioni di metodo: I materiali”, 6, Maria Montessori, “Inaugurazione del corso magistrale Montessori, svoltosi a Milano presso la Società Umanitaria da febbraio ad agosto 1926”, 43, 48, Maria Montessori, “Chiusura del Corso”, Note sul metodo Montessori, (Milan: Bestetti e Tumminelli, 1926) 50–51. 33. Montessori, “Chiusura del Corso”, 50, “Montessori Method in Italy”, TES (26/6, 1926), 270. 34. Luisa Lama, “Maria Montessori nell’Italia fascista. Un compromesso fallito”, Il Risorgimento. Rivista di storia del Risorgimento e di storia contemporanea (54:2, 2002,) 325, Victoria De Grazia, How fascism ruled Women, Italy, 1922–1945, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 41–165. 35. Kramer, Maria Montessori, 339. 36. Maria Montessori, “Quando la Scienza entrera nella scuola”, La giovane Montessori, Catarsi, Enzo (ed.), (Ferrara: Corso Stampa, 1995)171, Renzo De Felice, Mussolini Il Duce, I: Gli anni del consenso 1929–1936, (Turin: Einaudi, 1974) 51. 37. De Felice, Mussolini Il Duce, I, 26, 50. 38. De Felice, Mussolini Il Duce, I, 26, 32–37. 39. Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, 80, 107, 151–164, 246–249. 40. Letter from Fedele to Mussolini dated 7 August 1926, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1.2069. sf. 2, ACS Roma), Pietro Fedele, “Appunti relativi al Metodo Montessori circa la nota di S.E.  Il Governatore de Roma in data 30/6,  1926”, 31 July 1926, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1.2069. sf. 2, ACS Roma) 4–5. 41. “Montessoriana, apoteosi e critica revisionista”, La Coltura Popolare (17:4, 1927) 147–161. 42. Nadia Labriola, “La scuola Italiana e il Metodo Montessori”, La Coltura Popolare (15:4, 1925) 145. 43. Vincenzina Battistelli, “Dalla Montessori a Gentile, confessione di una Maestra”, Levana (5:2–3, 1926) 170–186. 44. Giovanna Alatri, Una vita per educare, 139–141, Adolphe Ferriere, L’Aube de l’école sereine en Italie (Paris: Julien Crémieu, 1927) 8–12. 45. Vincenzina Battistelli, “Dalla Montessori a Gentile, confessione di una Maestra”, Levana (5:5–6, 1926) 391–407.

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46. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, “A proposito del metodo Montessori”, L’Educazione nazionale (8:7, 1926) 21–25. 47. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, “La nuova edizione del ‘Metodo della Pedagogia scientifica’ di Maria Montessori”, L’Educazione nazionale (8:7, 1926) 33–50. For a special study of the five Italian editions of Montessori’s Il Metodo, see Paola Trabalzini, Maria Montessori, da Il Metodo a La Scoperta del bambino, (Rome: Aracne, 2003). 48. Leenders, Der Fall Montessori 131–132, Emilia Formiggini Santamaria, review in Italia che scrive, January 1927, cited in “Montessoriana”, La Coltura Popolare (17:4, 1927) 154. 49. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice,“La riforma didattica, Froebel e Montessori nella più recente critica del montessorismo”, L’Educazione nazionale (8:9, 1926) 1–10. See also Roberto Mazetti, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice tra l’idealismo pedagogico e Maria Montessori (Bologna: Malipiero, 1958), Giacomo Cives, Attivismo e antifascismo in Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, ‘Critica didattica’ o ‘didattica critica’? (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1983). Both Mazetti and Cives fail to notice this possible connection between Lombardo Radice’s antifascism and his anti-Montessori stance. 50. De Felice, Mussolini il fascista, II, 211–214. 51. Giacomo Cives, “Le 4 riviste montessoriane italiane 1927–1934”, Vita dell’Infanzia (47:8, 1998) 13–15. See also Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, 177–192. Paola Trabalzini, “Le riviste italiane di Maria Montessori: 1927–1934”, Annali di Storia dell’educazione e delle istituzioni scolastiche (14:2007) 205–221. While Leenders only looked for articles revealing fascistic infiltration in L’Idea Montessori, Trabalzini mainly focused on the psycho-pedagogical, apolitical articles. Trabalzini made no reference to Leenders’s research. 52. Massimo Grazzini, Bibliografia Montessori (Brescia: La Scuola, 1965) 11–13, 33–34, Antonio Bianchessi, “L’opera della Società Umanitaria e la Casa dei bambini”, L’Idea Montessori (2:8, 1929) 4–6, Goliardi Radi, “Vita Nostra”, L’Idea Montessori (1:3–4, 1927) 17–18. The journal’s editors were Ferdinano Negrini, 1927–1928 and Geremmia Ricci 1929. 53. Maria Montessori, “Liberiamo l’animo infantile”, L’Idea Montessori (1:7, 1927) 1, Maria Montessori, “Più alto dell’amore”, L’Idea Montessori (2:1, 1928) 1, Maria Montessori, “Il neonato”, L’Idea Montessori (1:8, 1928) 3–4. On the Messianic element in Montessori’s view of the child, see Jan Weisser, Das heilige Kind, (Würzburg; Ergon Verlag 1995) 76–77, 89–90, Egidio Lucchini, I segreti di Maria Montessori (Lanciano: Carabba Editore, 2008) 220–226.

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54. Maria Montessori, “L’educazione e il bambino”, L’Idea Montessori (1:2–3, 1927) 11, Mario M Montessori, “L’adulto e il bambino”, L’Idea Montessori (1:2–3, 1927) 7–9, Madeleine T J Gueritte, “Le idee della Dottoressa Montessori”, L’Idea Montessori (2:4, 1928) 9. 55. Maria Montessori, “Il Maestro”, L’Idea Montessori (1:3–4, 1927) 3–4. 56. Maria Montessori, “L’adulto educatore”, L’Idea Montessori (2:10, 1929) 3–5. 57. Maria Montessori, “L’adulto educatore”, 3–4. 58. Maria Montessori, “L’adulto educatore”, 4–5. 59. Maria Montessori, “La Carità ammalata di peste”, L’Idea Montessori (1:10–11, 1928) 3. 60. Antonio Bianchessi, “Sinite parvulos”, L’Idea Montessori (1:10–11, 1928) 4, Antonio Bianchessi, “Letizia ed energia nella educazione Montessoriana”, L’Idea Montessori (2:1, 1928) 3–5. 61. Antonio Bianchessi, “La bontà e la serenità nel metodo Montessori”, L’Idea Montessori (2:10, July 1929) 3–6. 62. Giulio Moretti, “La ‘Casa dei Bambini’ nel centenario Aportiano”, L’Idea Montessori (1:9, 1928) 5, Giovanni Modugno, I metodi Agazzi e Montessori e la riforma degl’istituti prescolastici (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1927) 3–5. 63. Rosa Agazzi, “I metodi italiani – gli asili ed il metodo Agazzi e Pasquali, iniziatosi nel 1898”, Rosa Agazzi and Pietro Pasquali, Rosa Agazzi and Pietro Pasquali: Scritti inediti e rari, Massimo Grazzini (ed.) (Brescia: La Scuola, 1973) 157–158. 64. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, “Postilla”, Scritti inediti e rari, Massimo Grazzini (ed.), 159, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, “Agazzi e Montessori”, L’Educazione nazionale (10.6, 1928) 316. 65. Lombardo Radice, “Agazzi e Montessori”, L’Educazione nazionale, 320, Excerpt of letter in Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, 121. 66. Maria Montessori, “Una risposta a Giuseppe Lombardo Radice (1927?)”, Montessori: perché no? Una pedagogia per la crescita. Che cosa ne è oggi della proposta pedagogica di Maria Montessori in Italia e nel mondo?, Grazia Honegger Fresco (ed.) (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000) 80–82. 67. Montessori, “Una risposta”, 80, Alatri, Una vita per educare, tra arte e socialità, 135. 68. Cives, Attivismo e antifascismo, 97–123. 69. Montessori, “Una risposta”, 82.

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70. Honegger Fresco, “Eda Margonari e Giuliana Sorge pioniere montessoriane in Argentina, a fine anni Venti”, Il quaderno Montessori (25:97, primavera 2008) 48–64. 71. Giuliana Sorge, “Quello che occore”, L’Idea Montessori (2:1, 1928) 2–3. 72. Sorge, “Quello che occore”, 2–3. 73. Giuliana Sorge, “Il metodo Montessori organo della educazione nel regime fascista”, L’Idea Montessori (2:2, 1928) 2–3. 74. Giuliana Sorge, “Rinascimento”, L’Idea Montessori (1:8, 1927) 10. 75. Lola Condulmari, “Gli esami del 13 Corso Montessori in Londra”, L’Idea Montessori (1:3–4, 1927) 20, Il Comitato, “Il Fratello del Duce alla nostra Casa dei Bambini”, L’Idea Montessori (1:10–11, 1928) 5, “Il Duce fra i bambini Montessoriani alla Scuola all’aperto ‘Principe Umberto’ di Milano”, L’Idea Montessori (1:12, 1928) 3, “S.E.  Pietro Fedele e il nuovo Ministro della P.  I. S.E.  Belluzzo”, L’Idea Montessori (1:May-Aug. 1928) 3. 76. Un dilettante di pedagogia, “In difesa della nostra razza”, L’Idea Montessori (1: May–Aug., 1928) 3–4. On Mussolini’s speech, see De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women, 41. 77. “Regio Scuola di metodo Montessori in Roma per la formazione delle maestre del grado preparatorio”, L’Idea Montessori (2:6, 1929) 3–5, Maria Montessori, letter to Mussolini, March 1928, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069. sf. 2, ACS Roma). 78. Luigi Veratti, “Il metodo Montessori”, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069. sf. 2, June 1928), Maria Montessori, letter to Mussolini 26 May 1928, SPD. CO (1922–43, B. 288. f. 15279/1, ACS Roma). 79. Veratti, “Il metodo”, 4. 80. Veratti, “Il metodo”, 6, 10. 81. Veratti, “Il metodo”, 12. 82. Giuseppe Belluzzo, letter to the government office 14 September 1928, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069. sf. 2, ACS Roma), Luigi Veratti, letter Secretary of State Francesco Giunta (11/10, 1928), PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069. sf. 2, ACS Roma). 83. “La Scuola di metodo Montessori a Roma e un sereno sguardo ad altri metodi e ad altre Scuole”, L’idea Montessori (2:2, 1928) 1–2. 84. Giuliana Sorge, “La R. Scuola di Metodo Montessori in Roma”, L’Idea Montessori (2:4, 1928) 3. 85. “Regia Scuola di metodo Montessori in Roma per la formazione delle maestre del grado preparatorio”, L’Idea Montessori (2:6, 1929) 3–5, “La

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R. Scuola di metodo Montessori in Roma all’opera”, L’Idea Montessori (2:6, 1929) 5. 86. “Il grande evento”, L’Idea Montessori (2:6, 1929) 1, De Felice, Mussolini il fascista II, 382–436, Borghi, Educazione e autorità nell’Italia moderna, 276–286. 87. “Visita a la Mostra didattica di Lecco”, L’Idea Montessori (1:6, 1927) 5–6, Angela E Tronconi, “Adunata di Maestri Montessoriani a Pavia”, L’Idea Montessori (1:6, 1927) 8, “Relazione del Circolo di Belgioioso”, L’Idea Montessori (1:6, 1927) 9, “Due Verbali di adunanze delle Maestre Montessoriane nel Circondario di Lecco”, L’Idea Montessori (1:12, 1928) 6–7, “Punti fondamentali per la prima attuazione triennale del metodo Montessori nelle classi elementari”, L’Idea Montessori (2:2, 1928) 3–5, Antonio Bianchessi, “La fede e l’opera degli insegnanti montessoriani”, L’Idea Montessori (2:6, 1929) 1–2, Antonio Bianchessi, “Il triennio di prova del metodo Montessori e gli esami”, L’Idea Montessori (2:8, 1929) 6–7. 88. Angela E Tronconi, “Resoconto della Scuola di Corteolona”, L’Idea Montessori (1:3–4, 1927) 15, Antonio Bianchessi, “Il Corso Montessori nelle Circoscrizione di Pavia nel suo assetto e nel suo sviluppo”, L’Idea Montessori (1:9, 1928) 3–6, Fanny Galleppini Leoni, “Bambini montessoriani a Domusnovas (Sardegna)”, L’Idea Montessori (2:9, 1929) 4–5. 89. Leonilde Vercesi, “Come senza materiale ho applicato il metodo Montessori”, L’Idea Montessori (1:12, 1928) 10, Antonio Bianchessi, “Adunanza delle maestre Montessoriane nelle circoscrizione di Pavia”, L’Idea Montessori (1:12,  1928) 8, Enrica Mazzoleni, “La mia prima Montessori in Garlasco con materiale preparato da me”, L’Idea Montessori (2:1, 1928) 7–8, “Note della redazione”, L’Idea Montessori (2:1, 1928) 8, Luigina Migliavacca, “La mia seconda classe”, L’Idea Montessori (2:4, 1928) 10–11, “L’Opera del Comitato Montessori”, L’Idea Montessori (2:5, 1929) 6. 90. Mario M Montessori, “Associazione ‘Renilde Montessori’, L’Idea Montessori (2:10, 1929) 1–2. 91. Galleppini Leoni, “Bambini montessoriani”, 4, Tronconi, “Resoconto” 14, “Relazione del Circolo”, 9. 92. Tronconi, “Resoconto”, 14, Mazzoleni, “La mia prima”, 7, Angela E Tronconi, “Nella Scuola Montessori di Corteolona, scorci di vita vissuta”, L’Idea Montessori (2:1, 1928) 9–12, Migliavacca, “La mia seconda”, 10, Galleppini Leoni, “Bambini montessoriani”, 4, Fanny

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Galleppini Leoni, “Un saggio finale dato da piccini Montessori di Domusnovas”, L’Idea Montessori (2:10, 1929) 12. 93. Goliardi Radi, “Vita Nostra”, L’Idea Montessori (1:3–4, 1927) 17–18, Maria A Mola, “Il nuovo indirizzo educativo della scuola primaria, il Metodo Montessori”, L’Idea Montessori (May–Aug. 1928) 15–16. 94. “Riassumendo”, L’Idea Montessori (2:11, 1929) 3.

8 Imperial and Pacifist Visions

8.1 AMI: Montessori’s Spiritual Empire Over a few days in August 1929 educationalists gather at Kronborg Castle, Helsingør, for NEF’s fifth congress. Montessori is among the invited speakers. She has asked the Danish Montessori Society to organise the very first Montessori congress on “The Montessori Method— Principles and Practice”. At the top of the agenda is the forming of an international organisation for the consolidation of national and local Montessori societies, with the aim of ensuring that they all move in the same direction without veering too much from the straight course as laid out by Montessori. The organisation—initially named Società Montessori Internazionale—was first based in Rome. It was moved to Berlin in 1932, and when the Nazis came to power to Amsterdam. By that time it had acquired its current name, Association Montessori Internationale, AMI.1 The many national Montessori societies now had to comply with SMI directives in terms of teacher training, schools, materials and sales, as well as general information about the purpose of the Montessori movement. According to the statutes, a society that failed to comply with the directives could be excluded from the SMI. Despite its transnational character, SMI leadership had to be clearly established in one of the member states,

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which would thereby hold the privileged central position within the international Montessori movement. The leader of that country’s Montessori society would also be vice president of the SMI. Montessori was to be head of the organisation.2 Montessori not only sought to control an increasingly sprawling movement and business through this new organisation. She clearly hoped to speed up the process that had been initiated with the founding of ONM in 1924, and realise her old dream of running her own government-­ funded institute in her native Italy. The Italian Montessori movement had hoped that the government would call Montessori back to Rome to lead an institute for research and teacher training. Scuola di Metodo Montessori was the first step on the way to realising this vision, but it was now time to move on. In Helsingør Montessori was able to announce that the 1930 international Montessori teacher training course would be held in Rome, with Mussolini as honorary president. In a letter to Mussolini and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dino Grandi, dated 3 July 1929, Marquise Maraini Guerrieri-Gonzaga pointed out that this should be seen as the first phase in the “centralisation” of the international Montessori movement to Rome. In her letter the Marquise stressed that several countries had offered Montessori opportunities for research, in the hope of becoming centres for the movement. Most recently, the British government had suggested a university institute for Montessori studies, but Montessori had declined all such offers, as she was hoping to “return to the homeland the work that belongs to Italy”.3 Six months later Montessori’s right-hand man, her son Mario—on whose initiative the SMI was created—was to offer Mussolini a more detailed explanation of the advantages, “from a national point of view”, of an international Montessori association. Apart from the main reason—to render more efficient the work on the emancipation of children that the Montessori movement engaged in worldwide—there was also an intention to strengthen Italy’s influence internationally. The aim of basing the Montessori movement in Italy was to “attract many scholars from every corner of the world and by means of a much valued scientific and social work raise people’s esteem for our Nation”. However, to succeed in turning Italy into this attractive centre for Montessori studies, the

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Montessori method would have to be spread to the country’s schools at a more rapid pace, “so that we do not appear too behind in this respect in comparison with the countries we invite”. But as there was still solid opposition to the Montessori method in Italy, and because this problem could only be solved through legislation, “we therefore request that a law stipulates that the new schools that are established in Italy, as of now shall be based on the Montessori method.”4 As Mario and his mother had anticipated, the Rome course in 1930 received a great deal of attention in the press. On 3 February 1930 Time Magazine offered a somewhat exaggerated angle on this event by describing it as Montessori’s triumphant return to Rome. According to this article, Montessori had been “an honorary member of the Fascist party” since 1926. This fifteenth international Montessori teacher training course was a most extravagant affair, with the opening and closing ceremonies held at the venerable Palazzo Senatorio on Capitoline Hill. Ambassadors from numerous countries as well as fascist leaders attended the opening on 25 January. Mussolini, who had been unable to attend, granted Montessori and the 150 participants an audience at the Palazzo Venezia in conjunction with the graduation ceremony in June.5 The solemn inauguration was portrayed in the February issue of the Ministry of National Education’s journal Annali dell’Istruzione Elementare. After a short welcoming speech by the Mayor of Rome, Francesco Boncompagni Ludovisi, the minister of education, Balbino Giuliano, gave a speech. The Montessori method, he said, was not only about the dissemination of knowledge and values; it aspired to cover every aspect of a child’s life. Not even a single moment of a child’s life must escape education, so it had to start as early as possible. Just as Montessori increased the child’s freedom with her method and speeded up the educational process, the fascists strengthened the nation in terms of its spiritual legacy. Even Il Duce could thus be perceived as a great educator whose invocation of Rome’s heroic past had aroused the national spirit.6 Then the president of the Italian Montessori movement, Giovanni Gentile, praised the movement’s success abroad and the investments that had been made in Italy, from the Milan course in 1926 to the opening of the method school in Rome in 1929. Rome could now justly be called a “world centre for studies and activities associated with the knowledge and

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application of Montessorian ideas”. The essence of Montessori’s message, Gentile concluded, was a deep respect for the child. It was indeed wonderful that participants from so many different nations had been able to come together around this message of love.7 In her opening speech Montessori draws a comparison with ill-­ conceived school reforms that by lowering standards expect less and less of children than her own more ambitious programme. The school problem cannot be solved if adults remain blind to their own shortcomings, their need to dominate, their conceit and their anger: “It is the adult that must change, not the child.” If the child can just follow its own rhythm in an environment adapted to its activity needs, it can develop astonishing discipline, industry and good will. The spiritual energy reserve that earlier methods have suppressed can then be given free rein, and this results not only in better grades but also in better people: “It is no longer about having a more or less well-informed child, which more or less obeys us, but about having a different child and better humans.” The road to “peace, the resurgence of our hearts” goes via the children. This road will lead us to a “new understanding of school, family and perhaps even society”. Montessori goes even further in her speech at the examination ceremony in June. The Montessori movement wants to achieve a “revolution of love” which administers justice for “the last of the oppressed on Earth: the child”.8 Excerpts from the speeches given during the audience at Palazzo Venezia were published in the September issue of the Ministry of National Education journal. The course participants’ representative, Amalia Zagni, paid tribute to Il Duce for his protection of the Montessori Association and the Balilla movement. A teacher from Rome, Dalma Cionci, went so far as to claim that the self-disciplined Montessori child could be “nothing but the fascist child”. Mussolini expressed his strong support for Montessori and his appreciation of the teachers. He also asked that when back home in their own countries the foreign participants describe Italy in more correct terms than the caricature being circulated by malicious people: “Tell them that Italy is a Nation that wants to live in harmony with all peoples.”9 One journal that distanced itself from the fascist staging of the Montessori method was Luigi Credaro’s Rivista Pedagogica, which

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throughout the 1930s managed to keep its distance from the imposed fascist ideology. The criticism of the regime was implicit, but no less effective. Instead of referring to the speeches that the fascist minister of education and his predecessor had delivered at the opening of the international Montessori course in 1930, Rivista focused on the support Montessori had received at the time of World War I, when Luigi Credaro was minister of education in Giolitti’s liberal government. A set of aphorisms formulated by Montessori and recently published in a German educational journal were also translated. According to Rivista Pedagogica they expressed Montessori’s desire to form: an independent free spirit, not bound by any kind of authority placed on it by adults and by tradition. And this is what is behind the success of the Montessori method in Holland, England, the Americas and in other genuinely democratic countries, where elementary schools have reached a high level. Each educational doctrine has its own political character, just as every school is a fragment of civil society.10

In the April–May 1930 issue it was pointed out that contrary to government propaganda the Montessori method must be seen as “international and humanitarian” from a scientific and moral standpoint.11 Several educationalists who had held important posts during the fascist regime were members of the Italian Montessori movement in the 1950s. One of them was Nazareno Padellaro, who during the 1930s had been administrative head of the Scuola di metodo Montessori in Rome. He was promoted to director general of the elementary schools of Italy in 1940. In connection with the eleventh Montessori congress in 1957, he recalled that the Rome course in 1930 had constituted not only a “Montessori revival” in Italy but also the beginning of a close friendship. Before his speech at the examination ceremony on Capitoline Hill he had been nervous, almost to the point of nausea, but a few kind words from Montessori had set him right. Padellaro was impressed by Montessori’s authority. During the 1957 congress he recounted that Montessori had tested him like a schoolboy to see how much he had understood about her method. Pleased with the result, she wanted to present him with the Montessori diploma—as if he were her little pupil. According to Padellaro,

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this episode showed that Montessori tended to “treat children like adults and adults like children.”12 In his speech at the 1930 examination ceremony Padellaro had sought to bring some sense into the cacophony of conflicting opinions surrounding Montessorism. As a warning example of the worst kind of slander, without mentioning any names Padellaro quoted Zanzi’s description of Montessorians as a drove of gullible “asses”. Padellaro dismissed more serious criticism with the argument that one point of view cancels out the other. If someone claims the method is too rigid, someone else will perceive it as being too chaotic and anarchistic. While some say it takes naturalism too far, others complain about its mysticism. However, no-one had ever maintained that the Montessori method was impossible to apply; this was the only meaningful critical opinion from a pragmatic standpoint. The secret behind Montessori’s unparalleled success is precisely this applicability, according to Padellaro. The Montessori method works; that is all that matters. In this respect it is superior to less user-­ friendly theoretical constructs. Highly intellectual pedagogical systems are usually as hermetically sealed as cathedrals without doors.13 It is possible that the gibe referring to hermetically closed projects was directed at the Gentile school programme, which was increasingly in the firing line. Padellaro was connected to the anti-rationalistic Scuola di mistica fascista, founded in 1930 by Niccolo Gianni. In his capacity as joint author of the 1934 fascist school curriculum, Padellaro was to contribute to making the mystifying Duce cult the main instrument for the fascistisation of Italian society. Instead of the Gentile reform’s attempts at establishing a leading cultural elite, mass indoctrination was now the chosen way forward. Fascism was to be turned into a living faith that every child could embrace. An interesting detail in this context is a collection of essays by Padellaro entitled La scuola vivente (1930), which includes his speech on the Montessori method as well as subjects such as “how to talk to children about fascism” and “the antifascist within”.14 In the former essay Padellaro advocates an alternative to the over-­ pretentious pedagogy that had long predominated. It was necessary to arrive at a pedagogy that could influence the child’s mind and feed the imagination, like a mother whose voice generates an immediate response—a maternal pedagogy that respects the way children reason and

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does not use pretentious turns of phrase. In his essay collection Padellaro expresses a kind of fascist self-criticism. Explanations of fascism have so far gone over children’s heads. How can a child be expected to understand, for example, that “fascism has saved Italy” when it has never known the country to be in danger? And what does “Italy” even mean to a child? It may be told to “love Italy because it is your fatherland.” But is it natural for a child who loves its parents and friends to also love something as abstract as the fatherland? Would it not rather dream of exciting, faraway places like the moon or the jungle, America or Australia?15 Children love adventure—everything that is beautiful and magnificent. They are all rebels, utopians, revolutionaries at heart. This is what the educator must bear in mind. It is true that Mussolini represents law and order, but had he preached nothing but “order, peace, resignation” there would never have been a fascist revolution. It is because Italy has changed that Mussolini seems different today. The “true Mussolini” that the child can take to heart remains a rebel—a “hero who is constantly fighting a monster”. In fact, fascism is all about “rebelling against the rebellion”. Fascist education must therefore retain its revolutionary spirit and excite the child’s suggestible imagination with heroic tales. Padellaro goes on to say that the teacher must be like an artist, able to evoke intense emotional states in the knowledge that a “primitive mentality” is more likely to be absorbed by drama than by what is purely rational. Fascist education is not rebellious in any lawless sense of the word, but it encourages “love of hardship, of risk, the desire to establish an order of better things, to forego oneself for the sake of others, the desire to obey the revolutionary laws and to be prepared, body and soul, to prove oneself worthy when the time comes”.16 When mentioning the “antifascist within”, Padellaro refers to pessimistic doubts that in the form of vague questions such as “In which direction are we heading?” undermine fascist conviction. Young people are at particular risk. To get through to them you need to be able to “promise them a revolution” that gives vent to their ardent fighting spirit. However, now that fascist ideas reign supreme and all philosophical and religious battles have ceased, there is a great risk of the fire going out. You need to make them understand that fascism is not only external but is also based on a living faith—an idealist stance. The revolution lives on, but in the mind,

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like a “spiritual preparation for a better tomorrow”. Padellaro’s essay ends with a critique of those learned “men of culture” who in schools and universities infect young people with the “antifascist virus” of scepticism and irony. Being masters of the art of deception, these intellectuals can appear in the guise of fascists so they can continue to disseminate a “deforming culture” that denies all high ideals. Unfortunately, mind-reading is not possible, or these antifascists in disguise could be exposed by means of an “examination of the brain”.17 After the course Padellaro was honoured with the task of writing a new foreword to Montessori’s Manuale di pedagogia scientifica, which was published in a new and revised edition in autumn 1930. Some additions had been made, for example, regarding the spiritual energies of children, and the socialist Arturo Labriola’s foreword from 1921 was removed. The style of Padellaro’s foreword is even more impressionistic than the one in La scuola vivente. He makes almost no mention of the detailed instructions regarding materials and exercises. Instead, he expands on the culture-­critical idea that adults should resemble children. If the Gentile school represents a form of erudite, elitist idealism, Padellaro advocates a kind of naive idealism that gives precedence to childish spontaneity. According to Padellaro, the Montessori method is loved by so many because it enables the realisation of a dream—the dream of a happy childhood—as until now childhood has been anything but happy. If a child had written a book on the history of education it would have been entitled The History of Tyranny. It would be about all the tyrants who have boxed children’s ears, handed out thrashings and sown the seeds of scepticism and insidious lies. Like Freud, Montessori has shown that psychological deformation begins in childhood by means of educational methods that darken the child’s mind.18 Montessori not only makes a dream of happy children come true. Her return to Rome also means that the “cult of childhood” has found its way back to its origins. The myth about the she-wolf who nursed the twins Romulus and Remus was groundbreaking. Wildness formed an alliance with innocence. Instead of the child sacrifices of earlier civilisations, the powers that be were now on the child’s side. Like the gospels, which were beyond the grasp of pagans but which the Roman Empire turned into a cornerstone of cultural life, the cult of the child grew even deeper roots

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until in its modern guise it reached perfection with the Montessori method. This is the gist of Montessori’s teachings, that is, that childhood is sacred and should be worshipped.19 While Padellaro reinterpreted Montessorism and placed it within the fascist myth of Rome, the ONM management was in crisis. Burdened by his work as editor of the great Enciclopedia Italiana, Gentile announced his resignation as ONM chair in the summer of 1930. As there was to be a second international course in Rome in spring 1931, a replacement had to be found quickly. Mario Montessori wrote to Mussolini on 3 September, recommending the head of Opera Balilla, Renato Ricci, who was already a member of the ONM honorary committee and had “realised the importance of our organisations and understood that rapid expansion would be possible”.20 In December a solution had still not been found. On 21 December Montessori wrote to Mussolini from Budapest, mentioning the need for the party’s support. Course preparations had been “paralysed” owing to the lack of a representative from the party or the Ministry of National Education who could be the “link between our activities and the State”. Why not appoint Padellaro to lead the ONM, asked Montessori, but Mussolini had already asked the former minister of education, Fedele, if he would be interested. In January Fedele declined the offer. A few days before the course was due to begin, it was announced that Emilio Bodrero—professor of the history of philosophy at the University of Padua—had been appointed president of the ONM.21 Bodrero officially took up his post at a committee meeting on 16 February 1931, at which Gentile was thanked for his services. It was decided that the following year’s course should be given the same formal setting as the previous one, with a belated opening ceremony on 25 February on Capitoline Hill. The international teacher training course, attended by some 120 participants from about twenty countries, had started on 29 January. A national Montessori teacher training course was held simultaneously. The Ministry of National Education had decided to allow Italians to attend Montessori courses within the scope of their professional duties, but they had to pay for them out of their own pocket. The monthly Montessori, pubblicazione mensile dell’ente morale Opera Montessori, edited by Padellaro, was published during the 6 months of

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the course. Just like L’Idea Montessori, the main purpose of the journal was to propagate the Montessori movement, but with less focus on local school experiments and more on the general ideological debate. The journal contributed to a semblance of complete consensus between the ONM and the regime.22 The first issue paid tribute to Mussolini, who had entrusted the Montessori method with the “mission to yet again allow Italian culture to reassert itself worldwide”. In the second issue Emilio Bodrero, ONM’s new president, was introduced with a signed photograph. As the article made clear, Bodrero had an extensive CV. Apart from his professorship and chancellorship at the University of Padua, he was a decorated war veteran who had joined the party early on. This prominent fascist hierarch had been an under-secretary at the Ministry of Education since 1928. He had been part of the legislative assembly and was now vice president of the Chamber of Deputies and leader of the syndicate for the country’s culture workers and artists.23 With his book about the victories of the fascist doctrine (1927) Bodrero made an important contribution to the imperial myth that underpinned Mussolini’s regime. Fascism was not only a national affair; its universal mission was to disseminate Italian culture worldwide. With the example of Pax Romana in mind, Bodrero pointed out that the idea of empire was spiritual and peaceful, rather than warmongering: The empire is a magnificent, moral fact. Empire signifies the gift that a people after long, hard work, after their martyrdom, offers to all other peoples on Earth, the gift of a great idea that solves a problem that these peoples have struggled with for centuries. This is the empire that Italy aims to achieve, only this, as Italy is imperialistic only in this sense.24

A somewhat similar imperial vision seems to have inspired Montessori and her son when they founded the International Montessori Association (AMI) with the important difference that the “great idea” that was to emanate from Rome was not the fascist doctrine but the doctrine of Montessorism. The new Italian Montessori journal was much more militant than the previous one. The first issue begins with Montessori’s article “La pagina bianca”—an inflammatory speech opposing the adultism that

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makes all of society and culture revolve around adults, while almost completely disregarding children. By means of the adultism concept, Montessori wants to show the way children—who are deprived of a distinct social function—have been marginalised to such a degree that they are perceived as the property of adults. The dominance is complete. Oppressed at all levels, the child has never been recognised as an individual with needs of its own. Montessori does not mince words. Through their “tyranny” the family and the school have formed “an alliance of the strong against the weak”.25 In the article the child’s situation is compared with that of other oppressed groups throughout history. No oppression has been as widespread as that of children. Slavery was abolished during the American Civil War, and “veritable duels” were fought between rich and poor in order to “implement new economic principles” during the French Revolution and subsequent rebellions. Children, however, have not been able to take up the fight, and their “insecure, timid voices” have never made themselves heard in society. When charitable organisations paid attention to the suffering of children it was always as a step in the struggle against extreme poverty. Realising that the sufferers included children was painful indeed, but no-one paid attention to the oppression that went under the name of education. There has never been a slave that has been the property of its master to the same extent as a child is owned by its parent, and never has a servant been forced to serve with the same degree of loyal obedience. Workers who were exploited by their employers were at least able to find refuge in their own homes, while children have always been subject to the complete control of their parents.26 The arrival of Montessori schools has seen the opening of a shelter—an “oasis in the desert” where children’s right to develop on their own terms is respected for the first time. The blank page, Montessori concludes, refers not to the child itself but to how little the history books have to say about children as the suffering companions of adults throughout history. It is this “as yet unknown figure” we must get to know.27 This theme is further developed in the article “Le due vite”, published in the February issue. The culture war that is waged between children and adults has no counterpart in the animal kingdom. All animals seek to protect their own offspring. And animals do not raise any obstacles to

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their development. What would happen, asks Montessori, if animals lost their natural instinct and began to put themselves first, like humans do? Wouldn’t butterflies look at larvae and pupae with contempt! Frogs would pull their tadpoles up on land and the male lion would force its cubs to hunt prey, because a dead lion cub is preferable to one that is a coward and doesn’t dare to fight. The ability to remove themselves far beyond the natural order established by the Creator is the price humans must pay for their free will, and this has damaged the relationship between the generations. It is necessary to understand that children and adults are entirely different by nature—that they have different roles to play at different times of life. Adults’ actions must be directed outwards, whereas the child’s focus is inwards, “perfecting its body and building its mind”. An adult is as focused on dominating and competing as the child is mild and peaceable. If only these two life forms could exist in harmony, a “better human” than the present one could come into being.28 According to an article by Sorge in the same issue of the journal, Montessori’s first six lectures on theory focused on the struggle between children and adults that is typical of traditional child-rearing. In one of these course lectures Montessori explains to the participants that she has wanted not only to contribute a school reform but also to draw attention to the child’s lack of legal rights and unfree situation: “We intend to help this child, this human being, we seek recognition of its rights, we seek to liberate it from slavery.” The objective is to conduct a “social, humane and scientific” experiment. However, it is not all about the charity adults show helpless children; children help adults through their service to life itself. If only we were able to appreciate that the child represents the very foundations of life that we all depend on, the entire moral fabric of society would be fundamentally changed. The shift that Montessori is looking for here is well expressed in the poetic meditation printed next to her photograph in the first issue of Montessori. Parents have not created a future person simply by producing a child. No, the child creates the adult, but once the creation has been accomplished, the child is no more. The activity of the child has always been perceived as a vigorous manifestation of life. However, the child’s activity is instead that of building up a person: it is the incarnation of the spirit.29

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Another central theme of the 1931 international Montessori teacher training course revolves around this concept of incarnation. As Sorge points out in her article “L’Incarnazione”, Montessori has found it suitable for describing the initial process of integration in the infant’s psyche—the unification of “the spiritual activity and the muscular activity”. According to Sorge, during the course Montessori had emphasised that the child “at birth is only anatomically incarnated; the real incarnation work, that is to say the animation of the flesh, the transition of the soul to the muscles,” children have to accomplish on their own. During this incarnation process the small child learns to coordinate body and mind to form a functioning whole, so that “the motor apparatus acts in unison with the spirit, is infused by it, forming one single individual with it.” This inner formation continues until the age of four. It explains the great need for movement in small children, which is of the utmost importance spiritually.30 When the preschool child conceptualises the structures of the surrounding world by using the various Montessori materials, it has used its body before and, as it were, taken control of it. In L’Autoeducazione (1916), Montessori used the concept of “psychical embryo” in a vague attempt at defining the innermost core of the child’s psyche, assuming that it was in a chaotic state—a tangle of impulses—until the polarisation process started at preschool age. Influenced by depth psychology, she came to gradually refine this theory. The concept of defence mechanisms in the child’s psyche that she borrowed from Freud and Adler in the early 1920s was a first step on the path leading to her incarnation theory. However, as outlined above this concept did not explain the deeper, formative processes that took place in the child’s psychical embryo. The next step in the development of her theory introduced the more positive concept of sensitive periods presented during the 1925 London course—a series of constructive phases in the child’s early development when new skills are easily learned, such as the mother tongue or the manual fine motor skills necessary for learning to write. Unlike the incarnation concept, the sensitive-periods concept could not offer a general explanation, as it was limited to specific capabilities. It had more to do with the learning psychology of preschoolers than with the general mental processes of infants. Montessori’s incarnation concept reflects the Catholic turn her

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writing took during the interwar period. In theological terms incarnation referred to the embodiment of God in Jesus Christ. The Infant Jesus was God incarnate—a god that had been become a man of flesh and blood. The concept of incarnation was the first clear expression of the divinification of the child that came to characterise Montessori’s theosophically inspired later writings.31 The word “incarnation” derives from the late Latin verb incarnare meaning “make flesh”. Within Christian anthropology the concept is used in a figurative sense as the carnality of man, contrary to more materialistic perceptions of the body as well as to purely idealistic conceptions that assign no importance whatsoever to the corporeal. In 1931 Montessori explains in one of her course lectures how by using the concept of incarnation she had sought to understand the organising principle behind the earliest stages of personality development: […] it is this organising principle we call incarnation. That is to say, the dissemination of energies in the flesh. Flesh is a colloquial word that is precise, but not at all clear; but there is a scientific term for the same thing, which is much clearer, and that is voluntary musculature.32

In another course lecture Montessori describes the “fundamental union of spirit and movement”—the goal of the initial integration process—in terms of a “synthesis of the personality”. She emphasises that this synthesis does not come about because of a vague instinct, but that it is governed by willpower, “as the muscles are the instruments of the will and not servants of the stomach or blood circulation or metabolism”.33 The fact that the term “synthesis” has made its way into this argument may well be on account of the influence of the Italian psychologist Roberto Assagioli’s psychosynthesis theory. In 1931 he led a course at his Institute for Culture and Psychological Therapy in Rome during which one of the lessons was dedicated to the Montessori method. He also contributed a series of articles in Montessori’s journal in which he agreed with Montessori’s view on the child-adult conflict and presented his own theories on the different levels of the psyche.34 Montessori also presented her new findings about the psychological development of the child in more functionalist terms at the NEF

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congress in Paris on 2 April 1931. Unlike animals, which are instinctdriven, humans need to “construct the great instrument through which the soul can manifest itself and act”. The child thus does not begin life as a fully formed being, but is characterised by a “dualism, a functional contrast between psychological life and motor life”. It is therefore up to the child to animate, through the self, the extremely complex “apparatus of movement”. This is why infants have such a great need for movement— they are working on unifying themselves. “This is the key to personal development.”35 Catholic theologians did not quite know what to make of Montessori, and were unsure whether she was on the right side or not. On the one hand she published excellent manuals on the Catholic upbringing of children—as in I bambini viventi nella chiesa—and the discipline in her schools was satisfactory. On the other hand, the rhetoric in her culture-­ critical speeches and articles pointed in the opposite direction to that of Catholic orthodoxy. As Mario Casotti, professor of pedagogy at the Catholic university of Milan, pointed out in 1931, Montessori appeared to speak with “double tongues, depending on whether she is addressing Catholics or an audience with a variety of views and creeds”.36 The conservative faction of the Catholic church consolidated its power through the Lateran Treaty of 1929. In Divini illius magistri, the encyclic on education issued by the Holy See on 31 December 1929, Pope Pius XI condemned educational methods that rejected original sin on naturalistic grounds and undermined the authority of the educator in the name of the emancipation and autonomy of the child. In 1930, referring to the encyclic, the Jesuit Father Mario Barbera questioned Montessori’s orthodoxy. Barbera had previously claimed that Montessori’s forte as an educator was pragmatic, while her theoretical statements were less well-thought-out, and needed “correcting” to align with Catholic doctrine. His judgement was now more severe. Montessori did not even seem to listen to reason and was making increasingly exaggerated statements, for example, in her opening speech to the Rome course in 1930. In direct opposition to the encyclic, she had advocated the elimination of teacher influence. She had also strayed into theological territory by interpreting the Gospel of St Matthew as describing the innocence of the child, in the spirit of naturalism. However, what Christ had said about

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being like a child in order to enter heaven referred not to their innate good nature but to having the right faith as a result of baptism and divine grace. Another ill-boding matter was the aphorisms published in Rivista Pedagogica, in which Montessori had defended children’s right to stand up to adult authority. Barbera feared that she had crossed the line and entered the camp of “fanatic liberals”. If she wanted to regain the confidence of Catholics she should not continue to claim that she had “revolutionised” education.37 Barbera’s article added to the suspicion of Montessori in Catholic circles. It allegedly influenced the outlook of many of the participants at the congress organised by Catholic women’s associations from various countries in Rome in the summer of 1930. The German Catholics were not deterred, however. Dr Krabbe, the leader of the German Catholic women’s association, invited Montessori to speak in Cologne on 14 January 1931. During the lecture tour—which comprised Vienna, Berlin and Munich—Montessori established contact with Austrian and Bavarian Catholic organisations.38 The Catholic correctness of the Montessori method was discussed in an article signed X in the ONM journal in 1931. The author had invited Barbera to one of Montessori’s model schools in Rome. Barbera allegedly emphasised that he was only sceptical about Montessori’s theoretical digressions, which he found compromised the excellent method of education. However, the author convinced Barbera that Montessori knew nothing about the move made by the German journal. It was a malicious attempt at distorting her message, and give it a leftist angle by means of biased quotes taken out of context. As to original sin, Montessori had never denied it, but she had made it clear in The Child in the Church (1929) that those who had been brought up in accordance with her programme had been taught good manners, which made the soul more receptive to divine grace. Real virtuousness of the heroic, self-sacrificing and sacred kind required God’s assistance.39 The Divini illius magistri had referred to Solomon’s proverb about punishing a child for its own good. Montessori alluded to it in a searing criticism of the encyclic’s approach to children. In the article “I reattivi psichici”, published in the March 1931 issue, readers are invited to participate in a thought experiment by considering their own attitude to

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parental responsibility in the light of various Bible quotations. We often, almost unconsciously, harbour conflicting beliefs without even thinking about it, not least when it comes to children. We say we love them, call childhood angelic, pure and innocent. At the same time we judge them harshly and believe they deserve punishment. It is as if the very sight of innocence triggers its opposite—the idea of something horrific, the image of a “threatening ghost: original sin”. This is the case because “these conflicting emotions sleep side by side in the mind of adults.” Which of these attitudes are most deeply rooted, and which rather serve as “camouflage”? Which attitudes are the most reasonable?40 Now the test can begin. Montessori quotes Solomon’s proverb about children: “Do not hesitate to punish your children. A father who spares the rod hates his own son, by condemning him to hell.” This is in fact a combination of Proverbs 13:24—“He who spares his rod hates his son”— and Proverbs 23:13–14—“Do not withhold correction from a child, for if you beat him with a rod, he will not die. You shall beat him with a rod, and deliver his soul from hell.” However, as Scocchera argues, Montessori’s point is not to analyse the precise wording of the Bible quote but to reflect on the impression that Solomon’s views on child-rearing has left in people’s minds.41 What would now happen to the venerated Bible quote? Should we replace the child with the adult? For example, whether a husband must beat his wife for her own good, or whether a son-in-law should not spare his rod on his mother-in-law? It would be perceived as a bad joke and met with ridicule. At best the quote could be used to describe the relationship between a slave owner and his slave—but if the slave is beaten it is hardly out of love! Montessori sees a parallel in that “the child, too, is the property of another human being.” Do we believe the child to be a miserable slave?42 St Paul’s words of wisdom in 1 Corinthians 13:1–7 on unselfish, patient love come out differently when tested on human relationships. We do not laugh at the idea of the positive influence a loving person can have as a member of a family or charity. If unselfish love could enter every heart, poverty and hard labour would no longer exist; but when it comes to parents’ and teachers’ relationship with children the outcome appears to change. Several objections would then be made against St Paul, for

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example that you should not give children too much credit; they are, after all, liars, and who can tolerate all their antics? Adults would obviously be more inclined to take Solomon’s side rather than St Paul’s, which reflects the mysterious relationship between children and adults.43 Despite Mussolini’s personal backing and the support given to the Montessori course, the Montessori method had not yet penetrated Italian schools. Yet again Mario Montessori asked Mussolini to intervene. In a letter dated 6 May 1931 he frankly described ONM’s situation as being worse than ever. Opening of new Montessori schools had been stopped because the Montessori course diploma had not been approved by the school authorities as being equivalent to the state school examination. The Montessori method school in Rome had not received the promised funds, and made a very poor impression on foreign attendants. As in his letter of the previous year, Mario was hoping for new legislation to pave the way for the introduction of the Montessori method in every school in the country.44 Montessori had just received a letter from the minister of education, Giuliano, stating that in her capacity as a school leader paid by the government she was required to be present at the method school in Rome. Not only did Montessori spend 4000 lire a month on the Italian Montessori Society, which had not received the promised government funding, but she was also expected to work for 1500 lire a month as a school director while having to cancel the London courses, which yielded half a million lire in 4 months! Mario knew that if he showed Montessori the letter she would “not hesitate to leave Italy immediately and forever”. This, he stressed in his letter, “would mean bringing the entire spiritual empire” that she had wanted to offer Italy into exile!45 It seems that Mario perceived Mussolini as a modern version of the enlightened despot, able to overcome every obstacle in the form of legislation, bureaucracy and stakeholders standing in the way of progressive reform. The letter also emphasised that not only local councils but also the central school authorities were hostile. As Mario pointed out, the recommendations on expanding the Montessori method school to house a research institute, which had been proposed at the budget negotiations the previous year, had not been accepted. With a new round of negotiations coming up, it was of the utmost importance that Mussolini bestow

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on the president of ONM, Emilio Bodrero, the necessary “prestige” that would enable the implementation of the Montessori programme.46 At the budget negotiations in parliament on 15 May 1931, the Opera Nazionale Montessori was represented by Paolo Orano, who was closely connected to Francesco Orestano, president of the Italian association of philosophers and vice president of the ONM. Orano was to support Orestano at the eighth philosophy congress in Rome in 1933, when Gentile’s idealism was ousted in favour of a less speculative and more empirically orientated fascist philosophy. Orano was known for making drastic statements against anything that smacked of liberalism or intellectualism. During the school debate that preceded the introduction of the obligatory fascist reader—libro di stato—in the nation’s schools in spring 1930, Orano had proclaimed that “philosophy is a past phase in the development of humankind: the philosopher is an inferior mental type.”47 Orano’s speech to parliament on 15 May 1931 was quoted in full in the Montessori journal. It opened with Montessori’s triumphal progress across the world and how Il Duce had brought her home so she could make Rome a centre for her glorious work. Unfortunately, legislation prevented the implementation of the Montessori method in Italy. Direct intervention—an assurance of “exceptional means”—was needed in order to catch up with other countries, allowing the Montessori method to keep up with the competition and develop at home. Orano admitted that as an old fellow student of Montessori’s he was a little jealous of her exceptional success worldwide. They had read philosophy and pedagogy together at the beginning of the century, and Orano had followed her career ever since. Less-informed Italians simply did not understand how revolutionary her method was. It was no exaggeration to claim that she within her field had gained a position on a par with that of the inventor Marconi. The minister of education now had an opportunity to put things right and ensure that the Montessori method be given due recognition.48 According to an article in Montessori, Rivista in 1932, Orano’s speech did not have the desired effect because of a persistent scepticism regarding the Montessori method owing to its background in clinical special pedagogy. However, reading between the lines, it was suggested that the

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real reason was that Orano’s putting Montessori in the same heroic category as Marconi was unfortunate and had caused vigorous protest. The day after the disappointing defeat in parliament Montessori picked up her pen and wrote a frank letter to Emilio Bodrero. She did not hide her disappointment over Bodrero’s passive stance, which had placed the ONM in a hopeless position. Although Bodrero had accepted the post of president of the Montessori Association after Gentile’s resignation, the committee had not yet convened, and Bodrero had been unavailable for urgent matters. Montessori had not been granted an audience either with him or with the minister of education.49 The problems had piled up during this “interregnum”, which had almost “annihilated” the ONM. Rather than supporting an extension of the method school in Rome to form an international Montessori centre, the Ministry of National Education opposed the entire project. Montessori had recently received a letter from the Ministry containing a strange ultimatum that would have been upsetting if it had not been so absurd. Montessori did not offer any details, but it appears to have referred to the message demanding her attendance at the method school that Mario had mentioned in his letter to Mussolini on 6 May.50 A rumour had by now reached Montessori, suggesting that Bodrero’s discouraging stance may have been based on doubts as to whether the principles of the Montessori method were in fact in line with the aims of the fascist government and the Balilla movement. In order to dispel his doubts Montessori embarked on an explanation about the nature of this compatibility. Leenders pays a great deal of attention to this document, which she interprets as Montessori’s only attempt so far to apply a fascist perspective to her method. She believes that in this letter Montessori adopts the Balilla movement’s ideas on disciplinary education. In my opinion this conclusion is premature, as rather than siding with the fascists Montessori adopted a common-sense standpoint, according to which any regime is served by a healthy, strong population.51 Instead of directly discussing her own method Montessori makes a sports comparison. Bodrero must surely agree that physical exercise at a young age is pleasant, allows the body to move more freely and promotes health. Even if these effects do not in any way coincide with the fascist predilection for self-sacrifice and discipline, does he really think that

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sport must be banned? If you are to sacrifice yourself for your country you must first grow strong, especially considering that all other nations use these means to toughen up new generations. The same applies to mental capacities. Just as sport builds strong, confident bodies, the Montessori method builds strong, self-confident, intelligent and disciplined personalities. These are desirable qualities in a population, and that is why so many nations have adopted this method. Rejecting the Montessori method would thus be as pointless as rejecting sport: In this respect my method is worthy of cooperating with fascism: it offers an opportunity for building up vast spiritual energies; it is a veritable “psychic hygiene” and, applied to our race, it may also increase the value of its excellent strengths.52

The patriotic hope for a stronger Italy able to compete on the international scene does not make Montessori a fascist in the ideological sense of the word. The nationalism expressed here is counterbalanced by a universal perspective that can be attributed to all nations, regardless of the form of government—the same interest in the wellbeing of their own population from a purely utilitarian point of view. No trace is to be found of the fascist ideological creed that says the strong have the right to dominate the weak—either in this document or in any of the previously mentioned lectures. There is, however, a fascination with strong personalities—a fervent desire to enhance the energies of future generations—which could perhaps be explained in the light of her medical perspective. With her method Montessori seeks to combine the humanist ideal of spiritual freedom and individual self-determination with perfectionist ideals of hygienism. Freedom cannot be an end in itself; it must result in a perfectly healthy balance between body and soul. This duality can also be detected in the combination of rational technology optimism with a culture-critical pathos of a more romantic kind, as well as in the combination of biologistic and spiritualist motifs. However, regardless of these tensions in Montessori’s thinking the question remains: why did she not see that the fascist doctrine was incompatible with her own doctrine of

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freedom? Had this not been obvious since the introduction of dictatorship in 1926? In lectures such as “Il Maestro” (1927) Montessori unequivocally expressed the opinion that tyrannical educational regimes were as much a thing of the past as tyrannical rule. In the past, she claimed, people accepted the powers that be in the belief that they were endowed with the divine right to reign supreme. How could Montessori then miss the similarity between tyrants of the past and the fascist dictator who ruled supreme in her own lifetime? Should Montessori’s uncritical attitude towards Mussolini be interpreted as a manifestation of pure political naivety, as suggested by Kramer, or was Leenders right in claiming that Montessori kept a straight face in an evil game for opportunist reasons?53 Montessori’s standpoint may appear less enigmatic in the light of De Felice’s notion that Mussolini’s popularity among the masses had more to do with personal prestige and charisma than with the ideology he represented. As De Felice has also shown, in the early 1930s Mussolini’s regime was not entirely in the hands of the Fascist Party. Rather than being totalitarian—as was the case in Nazi Germany—Mussolini’s dictatorship was more of an autocracy in which the state bureaucracy, as well as the Fascist Party, were used to counterbalance and secure Mussolini’s position of power. Consequently, by not assuming that support for Mussolini’s regime necessarily entailed an acceptance of fascist ideology it may be easier to understand the way Montessori reasoned when she offered Mussolini her services.54 It seems to me that a document that neither Leenders nor Schwegman or Kramer referred to in their research shows that Montessori was not entirely blind to the problems of cooperating with a dictator. It is a short meditation on Mussolini that Montessori is said to have written during her tour of Germany before commencement of the course in January 1931. Unlike statements Montessori made about Mussolini in newspaper interviews—such as the one published in Argentina in 1926—this text has a more poetic, personal tone. Rather than forming the basis of an article or interview it appears to have been written in order to deal with conflicting emotions, as if Montessori wanted to convince herself of the legitimacy of Mussolini’s authority. Montessori’s secretary, Sorge, who discovered this eulogy among Montessori’s private documents, copied it

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and attached it to a letter forwarded to Mussolini on 29 January 1931. It is unlikely that Sorge wrote this text herself. It is most definitely in the style of Montessori, and there would have been a risk of Mussolini mentioning it at some future encounter with Montessori.55 The text begins with a statement: “A Mussolini cannot be a tyrant.” Only someone who abuses an inherited position of power out of pure self-interest and defends their sovereignty by citing a historical predestination governed by God can be a tyrant. “If Mussolini were a thousand times stronger it would not explain his power,” because Mussolini is just a simple man who leads many millions of people. He was a man “and he became the man to a people in need of willpower”. The people, who were on the brink of death, seemed to be born again, and they “accepted him and became attached to him”. This brief argument ends thus: “This is not tyranny and it is not dominion. It is unity, it is incarnation.”56

8.2 Peace Education Montessori formulated an ultimatum in the letter she sent to Bodrero after the budget negotiations in 1931. If her method did not suit fascist Italy she would have to open her institute in another country. These words of warning appear to have hit the mark; the new president of the ONM finally called a committee meeting on 31 August. It resulted in a proposed bill for a new research institute in Rome—Istituto Internazionale Montessori—and the decision to launch a new Montessori journal edited by Enrico Castelli. Six issues of Montessori, Rivista bimestrale dell’Opera Montessori came out in 1932. Castelli—a philosopher, like Bodrero— succeeded Sorge as ONM secretary, while Sorge continued as Montessori’s private secretary. In the first issue of Montessori, Rivista Castelli explained that the Montessori method school for teacher training in Rome was to be transformed into an international Montessori centre. He also announced plans for collaboration with the League of Nations in Geneva.57 Now that Montessori had sorted out the problems confronting the ONM she could continue with the preparations for her seventeenth international teacher training course in London. At the opening

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ceremony in September 1931 a guest from afar paid tribute to Montessori. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had the previous year alerted the whole world to India’s struggle for independence by conducting his peaceful Salt March—a three-week mass demonstration against British colonial rule. A round table conference on the future of India was held in London in autumn 1931, with Gandhi representing the Indian National Congress party, INC.58 In his speech in honour of Montessori, Gandhi declared that he fully shared her view that a “child is not born in sin.” As a father he had discovered what a loving parental approach could achieve. He had heard of Montessori schools as early as in 1915, and was hoping to find Montessori in London during the conference. The peaceful and well-organised London Montessori schools had made a strong impression on him. However, would the millions of India’s poor village children ever have access to such first-class education? No problem is unsolvable if you have the right faith—because, as Montessori says, to achieve a peaceful world you must start with the children.59 On his way back to India Gandhi spent a few days in Rome, where he visited General Moris, an ONM committee member and friend of the pacifist Romain Rolland, whom Gandhi also met during his European trip. The Italian press reported on the Mahatma’s visit, stating that he admired the art treasures in the Vatican and was shown Montessori’s method school. Montessori, Rivista reported that Gandhi had promised to help spread the method in India.60 Montessori inaugurated her new journal with the very article—“La Chiamata”—published in The Call of Education eight years earlier, now entitled “Nuova Mobilitazione”. The next issue included a policy statement: the journal was to have a “unilateral” approach to the Montessori movement’s programme for reconstructing society, but it “also recognises allies along whom we wish to fight”, for example psychoanalysts and social children’s organisations like the Balilla movement. Her new article “L’Attitudine morale” is a variation on the theme of tyrannical teachers. The current school system is based on teachers forcing their instruction on passive or obstinate pupils. Paraphrasing the Bible, pupils might say, “it is not I who lives, but the teacher who lives in me,” but they hear a subconscious voice that whispers: “It is you that must live, you must

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choose between growth and death.” This life-and-death situation—this duel between autocratic teachers and rebellious schoolchildren—can be overcome once and for all if you liberate the teacher from the task of teaching. By means of material-based teaching and independent learning teachers and pupils will be able to meet in “peaceful fellowship”.61 A new theme is added to Montessori’s cultural criticism during this period. Between 1932 and 1939, Montessori participates in peace congresses around Europe, and the main theme for the 1937 Montessori congress in Copenhagen is Education for Peace. The many peace congresses reflect a harsher and increasingly unstable political and economic climate in the years leading up to World War II.  After World War I, everyone had said: “No more wars,” and the League of Nations was founded. Contributing to peaceful solutions to bilateral conflict, safeguarding minority rights and defending the Versailles Treaty in Europe were part of the League of Nation’s mission. A few triumphs were won in the 1920s, including the dispute between Sweden and Finland over the island of Åland in 1921. However, the League of Nations’ peace effort was marred by several defeats in the 1930s. The most powerful states had never come on board. The United States failed to join, and when the Soviet Union acceded in 1934 its proposals were met with suspicion. Disagreements between the leading European member states—France and the United Kingdom— contributed to an inefficient League of Nations, as did the fact that they lacked armed forces and were only able to use economic sanctions. In her opening speech at the 1937 Montessori congress, Montessori pointed out that the delegates at the peace conferences she had participated in were almost never able to agree, but that they split into factions that fought each other. “That which was called peace appeared to be a whirlwind of passion and hate; or worse, a smile of agreement covering the deepest lack of trust.” You would also hear the most absurd points of view being defended, such as “War is necessary to protect Christianity, peace and civilization.”62 In the current public debate on war and peace, there was an important distinction between the power-struggle perspective of realpolitik and the liberal market perspective on international relations. While the former found the threat of war a constant reality in a world of rivalling

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states—following the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz’s motto on war as the continuation of politics with other means—the latter tended to believe that increasing international trade would guarantee peace. Financial interdependence between states would in the long term prevent war through a combination of economic interests. A debate published in Rivista Pedagogica in 1931 is a good example of these opinions, which were common at the time. The problem under discussion was whether a militaristic education was preferable to a broader, humanistic one. The person confronting Captain Vittorio Rosetto was an educationalist by the name of Sereno Villa.63 “Everyone knows, that in order to ensure peace one needs to be prepared and well equipped for war,” said Rosetto. Only by maintaining a strong defence and a patriotic desire to defend the homeland could attacks from other nations be resisted. A military regime of “maximal intensity” was essential. Defence spending was, admittedly, a burden on the treasury, but this spending should be set against the services the army would be able to render during peace, as educators of the people. By referring to Fredric the Great of Prussia and the Spartans, Rosetto argued in favour of a “barrack education” from an early age, which by means of psychological suggestion and group pressure instilled a “war ethic” and “rigid discipline” in the population.64 Villa countered by arguing that the premise relied on by Rosetto’s militarism was the norm of everyone’s war against everyone. On the contrary, social progress demanded a “peaceful mentality” focused on business and industry as well as the development of culture. Militaristic education should only be seen as part of a wider educational programme, and the Balilla movement met that objective more than adequately. Mechanical barrack education would degenerate into nothing but military drill and reduce humanity to the instinct-driven level of animals. In the event of war rational citizens were sure to stand up as one man and follow their leader, but what could be expected from a people reduced to a passive flock of sheep?65 Judging by this debate, it was still possible in the early 1930s to discuss the degree of militarisation within a fascist education. Italy participated in the League of Nations’ major disarmament conference that began in February 1932, and in spring 1933 they attempted to mediate a peace

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treaty between the United Kingdom, France, Italy and the new Germany. This four-power pact failed when Germany withdrew from the League of Nations in October 1933.66 Several organisations held conferences on various peace projects during the world disarmament conference in Geneva in 1932. In March 1932 the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, in cooperation with the League of Nations and the Bureau International d’Éducation, organised a conference on peace education. Jean Piaget, director of the BIE information department, invited Montessori to the conference. Montessori’s speech “La paix et l’éducation” was published by BIE later that year. During her stay in Switzerland she also gave lectures in Lausanne, Zürich, Bern and Locarno. She left Sorge in Zürich to lead a basic course in the Montessori method from 20 to 26 March. Later that year the Swiss Montessori society, SMG, was formed, with Piaget as president and the peace activist Elisabeth Rotten as vice president.67 Two Italian journals published Montessori’s peace lecture. An abridged version of the lecture appeared in the May/June issue of Montessori, Rivista in 1932 under the heading “Educazione sociale”. The full version of the lecture was published in the November/December issue of Rivista pedagogica in 1933, which probably reached a wider readership. The translator, Mario Bernabei, who was also a member of the editorial board, had previously published a somewhat ambiguous review of Montessori’s method manual in Rivista pedagogica. According to Bernabei, Padellaro’s foreword with its bold metaphors and Spartan turn of phrase could not detract from the fact that Montessori’s method, with its message of emancipation, humanism, internationalism and pacifism, belonged to the pre-­ war period and had little in common with the militaristic education that was now called for. “It is abundantly clear that these two educational methods, the Montessorian and the Spartan, are each other’s opposites.” Reading between the lines, one could discern a suggestion that being outmoded was to the Montessori method’s advantage, as it would never result in an education of obedience “for obedience’s sake”.68 Another, slightly revised, version of “Educazione e Pace” was published in 1949 in a collection together with fourteen more lectures on peace by Montessori. I am here referring to “La paix et l’éducation” (1932), as it is the original version and the text that Mussolini was informed about back

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in April 1932, before the publication of “Educazione sociale” in Montessori, Rivista. Montessori had thought it prudent to present Mussolini with a copy of the peace lecture via her secretary, Sorge. Sorge’s covering letter, dated 10 April, expressed the hope that Mussolini would appreciate the ideas that had been received so enthusiastically at the peace conference in Geneva.69 Montessori begins by reflecting on the fact that she had been invited to speak about peace. You would not expect a mathematician to comment on art, or a humanist to elaborate on radioactivity. There are no experts in this business—no science on peace has yet seen the light of day. This is remarkable, since every aspect of war—strategic as well as relating to armaments—has long been the subject of study. But our concepts of peace are too vague to shed light on the problem. The usual definition— peace as the cessation of war—takes war as its yardstick. The aim of those who wage wars is to win them, in which case peace is equal to the victor’s definitive triumph over the defeated party. Seen as the ultimate consequence of war, peace becomes frightening. It explains why people have always been prepared to continue to wage war until the very end, rather than surrender and submit to the victor’s demands. If you carry this negative definition of peace to its extreme, peace might be compared to the lingering toxic smoke after a fire that has destroyed a palace full of precious art. Or why not a patient whose immune system finally succumbs in the struggle against a major infection, and who is now resting in peace at the cemetery? It goes without saying that it would have been better if the patient could have recovered from the illness, because war is like a disease and peace is health itself. Offering pseudo-explanations is typical of the unscientific approach. The explanations surrounding war and peace that have been circulating so far obstruct the view of what is really at stake. People have focused on what is most obvious, namely that war and social inequalities go together, as do war and greed. Alternatively, the previous war is referred to—as if it would explain anything at all. It is the easiest thing to find a scapegoat. The war was the fault of the “Kaiser, the tsarina, the priest Rasputin or the regicide in Sarajevo”. To end all wars once and for all one must dig deeper and scrutinise the moral compass that has made us confuse peace with war. The compass is clearly broken. Our whole epoch seems to suffer

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from collective split-personality disorder, says Montessori. While a scientist who has discovered a new serum that will save innumerable human lives is celebrated, someone who has found a means to “eradicate an entire population” is even more venerated. The primary cause should therefore be sought in the mind. We need to examine ourselves so as to understand the untamed force of the human psyche, “which constitutes an immense danger to humanity”.70 Montessori clarifies her argument by comparing war to the plague. Both these scourges have tormented humans and reaped lives since time immemorial. In their wake follow economic and psychological suffering, famine and poverty. It has also been impossible to predict the next war or plague epidemic. The plague was for a long time believed to be caused by a poison spread by malicious individuals, just as war was understood by referring to the actions of individuals. When people tried to protect themselves against the plague and came together at prayer meetings, the rate of contamination increased. Similarly, one of the causes of the world war was the treaties that were signed between states to create a balance of power and avert war. Instead, this system invited disaster through the chain reaction that followed as the states were linked to each other. “And if today every nation on earth came together to avoid war, but did not do anything about the underlying reasons, the risk of war spreading across the earth would be great.”71 The mystery of the plague has now been solved. Medical science discovered its cause: microorganisms. By conducting hygiene campaigns, contamination was reduced and public health improved. Nevertheless, it is clear from the spread of decadence that no similar recovery has been made at the moral level. Licentiousness is celebrated as a liberation from the “chains of morality”; entertainment is preferred to work. Those who are recklessly hedonistic are like tuberculosis patients in the initial, consumptive stage. Montessori maintains that “we live in a state of degeneration.” A mentally sound person “is today a rare creature, almost impossible to find, like the physically healthy before individual hygiene helped them to find their way back to health”. Not only does Montessori rail against moral decline, she also questions the irrationalism of her time—an emerging “madness”.72

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According to Montessori mental ill health—which leads to war and moral decline—is caused by poor upbringing. The original conflict— “the first war among people”—is the “war between parents and children, the war between teachers and pupils”. It is the strong’s oppression of the weak that has so far been passed off as education. Consequently, the great national wars emanate from small wars in the family and at school. It may appear as if Montessori is talking about a kind of eternal loop—as if the conflict between the generations, and thereby war, are inevitable for as long as there are parents and children. But Montessori believes she has discovered how to get around this conflict: if only children were left to their own devices, they would grow healthier and stronger. “To achieve a sound mental reconstruction of mankind” you need to start with the children.73 Instead of being forced to adapt to the expectations and demands of the adult world, the child needs a free zone where it can follow its natural course and gradually develop its great potential. Traditional upbringing has been based on adult standards, as if the uniformity of human nature could be taken for granted. Disharmony has been the result of this inability to understand and value the specific nature of the child. Montessori establishes that “the human personality is not one”; each person in fact lives two lives, first as a child, then as an adult. In line with her incarnation theory Montessori compares childhood to a kind of extended embryonic state—a spiritual “pregnancy”. The foetus matures physically in the womb; mental growth begins after birth—an inner work in the service of personal development.74 We need to place our hope in these inwardly directed children, as they show the way to a more peaceful world. Like Nietzsche’s superman these “new children” herald a higher form of human excellence, far beyond the barbaric war stage. However, this potential for peace is wasted in a school organised in accordance with society’s competitive herd mentality, and nothing changes. With their examination stress and demand for obedience, traditional schools are hothouses for war. What else can you expect when from the very beginning pupils are conditioned to see each other as contestants who are to be defeated, and the teacher as a leader to be revered.75

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The situation is serious, and humanity is at a crossroads: either continue towards total destruction or enter the epoch of the “third dimension”. Montessori is drawing up her futurist vision of the limitless expansion that science and technology will offer humanity in the future. We already have aeroplanes that defy gravity, and more miracles are undoubtedly to be expected. Montessori intertwines this futurist vision of technology with her idealism, so it is hard to figure out whether she is referring to space travel or spiritual travel when she talks about humanity having risen to the “sidereal world” and being ready to “conquer eternity”. In any case, humanity must prepare for this new world and approach it through peace education, peace organisations and peace science.76

Notes 1. S. Naesgaard, letter to Mussolini 20/2, 1929, PCM (1934, f. 14.3. 415. sf. 1, ACS Roma), Mario M. Montessori, “Che cosa è l’AMI”, Vita dell’ Infanzia (1:10–11, 1952) 14–15, Rita Kramer, Maria Montessori: A Biography (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978) 305–306, 310–311, Rosy Joosten-Chotzen, “Le premier Congrès International Montessorien à Elseneur”, Pour l’Ère Nouvelle (8:53, 1929) 299–300. 2. For a more detailed account of the SMI statutes see Hélène Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, Die Geschichte einer reformpädagogischen Erziehungskonzeption im italienischen Faschismus (Bad Heilbrunn: Verlag Julius Klinkhardt, 2001) 94–96. 3. Marquise Maraini Guerrieri Gonzaga, letter to Mussolini and Dino Grandi 3/7, 1929, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069. sf. 2, ACS Roma). 4. Mario M. Montessori, letter to Mussolini 9/6, 1930, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069. sf. 2, ACS Roma). 5. “Dottoressa Maria Montessori”, Time Magazine (3/2, 1930), Mario M Montessori, letter to Mussolini 7/6, 1930, SPD. CO. (1922–43, b. 288. f. 15279/1). 6. “L’inaugurazione del XV Corso internazionale ‘Montessori’”, Annali dell’istruzione elementare (5:1 feb, 1930) 28–37. 7. “L’inaugurazione del XV Corso”, 33.

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8. “L’inaugurazione del XV Corso”, 34–37, “La chiusura del Corso internazionale Montessori”, Annali dell’istruzione elementare (5:5, 1930) 87. 9. “La chiusura...”, 86. 10. “Maria Montessori a Roma”, Rivista pedagogica (23:1, 1930) 62–63. 11. “Metodo Montessori in Parlamento”, Rivista pedagogica (23:4–5, 1930) 362–363. 12. Nazareno Padellaro, “Presenza di Maria Montessori”, Maria Montessori e il pensiero pedagogico contemporaneo, Marziola Pignatari (ed.) (Roma: Vita dell’infanzia, 1959) 261–266. Some of the other members of the Italian Montessori movement of the 1950s who had previously served the fascist regime were Roberto Mazetti, Giacomo Santucci, Salvatore Valitutti and Luigi Volpicelli. However, most of the research on the fascistisation of Italian schools deals with persons higher up in the fascist hierarchy such as Gentile, Bottai and Starace. See Michel Ostenc, Intellectuels italiens et fascisme (1915–1929) (Paris: Payot,1983), Gabriele Turi, Lo Stato educatore. Politica e intellettuali nell’Italia fascista, (RomeBari: Laterza, 2002), Anthony J Gregor, Mussolini’s Intellectuals. Fascist social and political thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), Mirella Serri, I redenti: Gli intellettuali che vissero due volte, 1938–1948 (Milan: Corracio, 2005), Franco Cambi, “La politica scolastica in Italia: fascismo e dopoguerra. Un seminario di studio del CIRSE a Milano”, Scuola e Città (41:3, 1990) 139. 13. Nazareno Padellaro, “Maria Montessori e il suo metodo” La scuola vivente (Turin: Paravia, 1930) 204–210. 14. Renzo De Felice, Mussolini il duce, II.  Lo Stato totalitario 1936–1940 (Turin: Einaudi, 1981) 117–121, Dina Bertoni Jovine, La scuola italiana dal 1870 ai giorni nostri, (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1958) 339–348, 356–357, 378–382. 15. Padellaro, La scuola vivente, 1–8. 16. Padellaro, La scuola vivente, 10–15. 17. Padellaro, La scuola vivente, 20–40. 18. Nazareno Padellaro, “Futura olim”, in Maria Montessori, Manuale di Pedagogia Scientifica, (Naples: Alberto Morano, 1930) 7–13. 19. Montessori, Manuale 12–13. 20. Giovanni Gentile, letter to Montessori about his resignation, 1930, in Giuliana Marazzi, Maria Montessori e il fascismo, diss. (Roma: Università degli Studi La Sapienza, 1999) 193, Mario M Montessori, letter to

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Mussolini 3 September 1930 SPD. CO (1922–43, b. 288. f. 15279/1, ACS Roma). 21. Balbino Giuliano, letter to Chiavolini 29 October 1930, SPD.  CO (1922–43, b. 288. f. 15279/1, ACS Roma), Maria Montessori, letter to Mussolini 13 December 1930, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069 sf. 2, ACS Roma), Pietro Fedele, letter to G. Beer 1 January 1931, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069 sf. 2, ACS Roma), G. Beer, letter to Giuliano 27 January 1931, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069 sf. 2, ACS Roma). 22. “Il XVI Corso Internazionale Montessori”, Montessori, Pubblicazione menzile dell’Ente morale Opera Montessori (1:1, 1931) 25–27. “Notiziario”, Montessori (1:2, 1931) 43, “Notiziario”, Montessori (1:3, 1931) 47. 23. “A S.E. Benito Mussolini”, Montessori (1:1, 1931) 3, “Emilio Bodrero”, Montessori (1:2, 1931) 2–3. 24. Renzo de Felice, Mussolini il duce, I: Gli anni del consenso 1929–1936 (Torino: Einaudi, 1974) 310–311. 25. Maria Montessori, “La pagina bianca”, Montessori (1:1, 1931) 6–10. 26. Montessori, “La Pagina bianca”, 8, 9. 27. Montessori, “La Pagina bianca”, 8, 10. 28. Maria Montessori, “Le due vite”, Montessori (1:2, 1931) 5–8. 29. Giuliana Sorge, “Lo svolgimento del corso internazionale”, Montessori (1:2, 1931) 14–18, Maria Montessori, “E così carissimi amici”, Il metodo del bambino e la formazione dell’uomo, Augusto Scocchera (ed.) (Rome, Opera Nazionale Montessori, 2002) 225–237, Maria Montessori, “Quale padre”, Montessori (1:1, 1931) 5. 30. Giuliana Sorge, “L’incarnazione”, Montessori (1:5–6, 1931) 33–34, 37. 31. Ola Sigurdsson Himmelska kroppar. Inkarnation, blick, kroppslighet (Gothenburg: Glänta, 2006) 11–25, 55–92. 32. Maria Montessori, “Doveri dell’educatore”, Montessori (1:2, 1931) 19. 33. Maria Montessori, “La costruzione della personalità attraverso l’organizzazione dei movimenti”, Montessori, Rivista bimestrale dell’opera Montessori (1:6, 1932) 326–329. 34. “Notiziario Montessoriano”, Montessori (1:5–6, 1931) 71. The series of articles entitled “Parole franche agli adulti” were published in no. 1, 3 and 5–6 of Montessori 1931, and in no. 1 of Montessori, Rivista 1932. Roberto Assagioli, “Parole franche agli adulti (II)”, Montessori (1:3, 1931) 12–19. 35. Maria Montessori, “Il compito preciso del nuovo maestro”, Montessori (1:4, 1931) 10–12.

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36. Mario Casotti, Il metodo Montessori e il metodo Agazzi, (Brescia: La Scuola, 1931) 13. 37. Mario Barbera, “Luci ed ombre nel metodo Montessori”, La Civiltà Cattolica (81:2, 1930) 238–248. 38. Dott. Z, “Il movimento Montessori in Germania”, Montessori (1:4, 1931) 26–30, X, “Luci e ombre cattoliche sul metodo Montessori”, Montessori (1:4, 1931) 33–46, Mario Barbera, “Novità pedagogiche e moderazione italiana”, La Civiltà Cattolica (84:3, 1933) 221–234. 39. X, “Luci e ombre”, 33–46. 40. Maria Montessori, “I reattivi psichici”, Montessori (1:3, 1931) 3–8. 41. Montessori, “I reattivi psichici”, 4, Augusto Scocchera, “Due reattivi ‘teologici’ di Maria Montessori”, Vita dell’infanzia (41:5–6, 1992) 7–10, Egidio Lucchini, “Dai ‘Bambini viventi nelle chiesa’ alla ‘Catechesi del buon pastore’. Appunti per un’indagine sulle innovazione e sugli sviluppi dell’educazione religiosa proposta da Maria Montessori”, Infanzia (7–8, 2007) 377–380, Aldo Ragazzoni, “Il ‘metodo Montessori’ nel giudizi dei cattolici”, Problemi della pedagogia (1:2, 1955) 289–298, Paola Trabalzini, “Il metodo Montessori nelle critica cattolica (1909–1934)”, Scuola e Città (50:4, 1999) 131–139. 42. Montessori, “I reattivi psichici”, 5–6. 43. Montessori, “I reattivi psichici”, 6–8. 44. Mario M Montessori, letter to Mussolini 6 May 1931, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069 sf. 2, ACS Roma). 45. Mario M Montessori, letter to Mussolini 6 May 1931, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069 sf. 2, ACS Roma) 2–3. 46. Mario M Montessori, letter to Mussolini 6 May 1931, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069 sf. 2, ACS Roma) 4, “Metodo Montessori in Parlamento”, Rivista pedagogica (23:4–5, 1930) 362–363. 47. Gabriele Turi, Giovanni Gentile. Una biografia (Torino: UTET Libreria, 2006) 439–440, Eugenio Garin, Cronache di filosofia italiana, 1900–1960, vol. 2 (Roma: Laterza, 1997) 450–453, Renzo De Felice, Mussolini il duce, II: Lo Stato totalitario 1936–1940 (Torino: Einaudi, 1981) 313–314, Anthony J. Gregor, Mussolini’s Intellectuals, 257–258, Cesare Pillon, I comunisti nella storia d’Italia, vol. 1 (Milano: Teti Editore 1973) 364. 48. Paolo Orano, “L’opera di Maria Montessori (Discorso alla Camera Italiana)”, Montessori (1:4, 1931) 13–15.

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49. Quemme, “Diffusione del Metodo Montessori all’Estero”, Montessori, Rivista (1:5, 1932) 272–284, Maria Montessori, letter to Bodrero 16 May 1931, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069 sf. 2, ACS Roma). 50. Montessori, letter to Bodrero, 1. 51. Montessori, letter to Bodrero, 1, Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, 200–204. 52. Montessori, letter to Bodrero, 2. 53. Maria Montessori, “Il maestro”, L’Idea Montessori: organo dell’Opera Nazionale Montessori (1:3–4, 1927) 4. 54. De Felice, Mussolini il duce, II, 3–14. 55. Maria Montessori, “Un Mussolini”, in Giuliana Sorge, letter to Mussolini 29 January 1931, SPD.CO (1922–43, b. 635 f. 204359, ACS Roma). “Un Mussolini non può essere un tiranno: ma un ‘uomo volitivo’ accettato da un popolo. Perchè tiranno può essere colui che ha ‘ereditato’ un potere e non comprendendone la finalitá, ne abusa, prevalendo in lui l’egoismo dell’individuo alla missione dell’imperator popoli. Ma Mussolini, qual potere ereditò? Di dove prese ‘l’abuso di dominio’? Ciò che non ebbe è appunto un potere ereditario. Fu uomo e divenne l’uomo di un popolo bisognoso di volontà. Se Mussolini fosse un Mussolini mille volte più forte, ciò non spiegherebbe il suo potere. Perchè: ecco un semplice uomo davanti a milioni di uomine!!di dove prende le mosse del dominio? Da una tradizione storica, che lo indica predestinato degli Dei? Da un trono, che lo distingue per l’altezza? Da dove comincia? Non ha inizio altro che nella sua preparazione: ‘ci si fa uomo’. È un popolo moribondo e vitale (come chi nasce) lo accetta e si attacca a lui. Questa non è tirannia e non è dominio. È ‘unità è incarnazione.” 56. Maria Montessori, “Un Mussolini”, 1931. In the early twentieth century “dictator”, in the sense “democratically elected autocrat”, still had more positive connotations than “tyrant”. It was therefore not unnatural for Montessori, in her 1915 lecture “Quando la scienza entrera nella scuola” – La Coltura populare (5:1, 1915) 14 – to pay tribute to the elementary school teacher of the future as “divino dittatore dei popoli”. 57. Montessori, letter to Bodrero 16 May 1931, 3, Enrico Castelli, “Presentazione”, Montessori, Rivista (1:1, 1932) 5–7, “Statuto dell’opera Nazionale Montessori”, Montessori, Rivista (1:1, 1932) 60–63. Eugenio Garin, Cronache di filosofia italiana, 1900–1960, vol. 2 (Rome: Laterza,1997) 455. 58. Paola Trabalzini, “Montessori e Gandhi, in immagine e parole”, Vita dell’Infanzia (53:10, 2004) 4–5, “Notiziario”, Montessori, Rivista (1:1,

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1932) 54–58, QM, “Il Metodo Montessori nei rapporti culturali Italo-­ Indiani”, Montessori, Rivista (1:4, 1932) 227–228, Felix Gilbert and David C. Large, The End of the European Era: 1890 to the Present (New York: Norton & Company, 2002) 243–245, Jan Morris, Farewell the Trumpets. An Imperial Retreat (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1980) 286–294. 59. Q M, “Il Metodo Montessori nei rapporti”, 227. 60. LDPC, “Gandhi a Roma, dicembre 1931”, Il Quaderno Montessori (15:58, 1998) 34–37, “Notiziario”,Montessori, Rivista (1:1, 1932) 55. 61. Maria Montessori, “Nuova mobilitazione” Montessori, Rivista (1:1, 1932) 9–12, Maria Montessori, “Programma”, Montessori, Rivista (1:2, 1932) 67–68, Maria Montessori, “L’attitudine morale”, Montessori, Rivista (1:2, 1932) 73, 76. 62. Gilbert and Large, The End of the European Era, 173–177, Mark Mazower, Den mörka kontinenten: Europas nittonhundratal (Göteborg: Daidalos, 1999) 68–77, 80–85, Maria Montessori, Educazione e pace, (1949) (Rome: Opera Nazionale Montessori, 2004), Maria Montessori, “La pace e i pacifisti”, Vita dell’Infanzia (50:10, 2001) 4–6. 63. Leif Eriksson, Krigets och fredens politiska ekonomi – ett idéhistoriskt perspektiv, diss. (Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, 1993), 315–337, Amanda Peralta, Med andra medel. Från Clausewitz till Guevara – krig, revolution och politik i en marxistisk idétradition, diss. (Gothenburg: Daidalos, 1990) 19–36. 64. Vittorio Rosetto, “La Educazione bellica la salvezza della crollante civiltà”, Rivista pedagogica (24:2, 1931) 251–265. 65. L.  Sereno Villa, “Proprio educazione bellica? Risposta al Capitano Rossetto”, Rivista Pedagogica (24:3, 1931) 445–451. 66. Richard Lamb, Mussolini e gli inglesi (Milano: Corbaccio, 1998) 130–139. 67. “Notiziario Montessoriano”, Montessori, Rivista (1:1, 1932) 57, “Notiziario Montessoriano”, Montessori Rivista (1:2, 1932) 124–125, “Notiziario Montessoriano”, Montessori Rivista (1:4, 1932) 252, “Notiziario Montessoriano”, Montessori Rivista (1:6, 1932) 373–374, Harold Baumann, Hundert Jahre Montessori-Pädagogik. Eine Chronik der Montessori-pädagogik in der Schweiz 1907–2007  (Bern: Haupt Verlag, 2007) 199–215, 267, Harold Baumann, “On the Historical Background of the Montessori-Piaget Relations”, Communications, AMI (2–3:1999) 6–20.

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68. Maria Montessori, “Educazione sociale”, Montessori, Rivista (1:3, 1932) 131–150, Maria Montessori, “La pace e l’educazione”, Rivista pedagogica (26:5, 1933) 786–801, Mario Bernabei, “Maria Montessori, Manuale di pedagogia scientifica, (recensione)”, Rivista pedagogica (26:3, 1933) 494–496, Marco A. D’Arcangeli, Luigi Credaro è la Rivista pedagogica (1908–1939), (Rome: Tipolitografia Pioda, 2000) 212–213, 239. 69. Maria Montessori, Educazione e pace, (1949) (Rome: Opera Nazionale Montessori, 2004). Giuliana Sorge, letter to Mussolini, 10 April 1932, SPD.CO (1922–43, b. 288 f. 15279/1). 70. Maria Montessori, La paix et l’éducation (Geneva: Bureau International d’éducation, 1932) 3–8. 71. Montessori, La paix et l’éducation, 7–9. 72. Montessori, La paix et l’éducation, 11, 12, 17. 73. Montessori, La paix et l’éducation, 12–14. 74. Montessori, La paix et l’éducation, 14. 75. Montessori, La paix et l’éducation, 16–18. 76. Montessori, La paix et l’éducation, 22.

9 Montessorism Without Montessori

9.1 Polizia Politica and the Sorge Affair In Rome life mostly goes on as usual. In June 1932 Bodrero proposes a seven-step programme for the expansion of regional Montessori schools in Italy.1 ONM and the regime appear to be on excellent terms. At the beginning of July Padellaro delivers an acclaimed lecture that according to the press wiped the floor with everyone critical of Montessori. Narrow-­ minded technology enthusiasts and pedantic academics have missed the point of the Montessori method—it offers a “way of life”. On 7 July Il Messaggiero, Il Tevere and other newspapers report on the event, which is attended by high-ranking party officials, school leaders and cultural personalities. Sorge is so excited that she yet again writes to her hero, Mussolini. In exchange for everything he has done for the Montessori movement, she would like to offer her services as governess to his youngest children, Romano and Anna Maria. It would be an immense honour to be allowed to teach them: “It is the greatest wish of every Italian Montessori teacher.” Considering her important work at the method school in Rome and because she is close to Montessori, she simply has to be the best choice.2 Only a few days later Sorge appears in the limelight, but not in the way she had hoped. Before she has received Mussolini’s polite telegram in © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Quarfood, The Montessori Movement in Interwar Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14072-3_9

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response to her letter, sent by Chiavolini on 10 July, her life is shattered. The scandal that in the secret police reports is referred to as either the Sorge affair or the Montessori affair begins dramatically on 8 July when Sorge is arrested in the middle of examining the final‑year students. She is forced to spend the next 24 h in solitary confinement like a common criminal. It is a “tremendous scandal”, Montessori writes to the minister of education, Francesco Ercole, on 10 July. She is shocked by the degrading treatment of her trusted colleague. Is this how you choose to treat a representative of a school that has been selected by the government to lead an educational reform? Montessori demands an explanation!3 Sorge’s arrest was caused by a tip-off according to which the Montessori method school in Rome is the haunt of antifascists and the teacher Sorge has been making disrespectful remarks about Il Duce. An investigation is opened. After her release the fascist secret police, the Polizia Politica, place Sorge under surveillance. It is suspected she wishes to join her father in Milan, perhaps to destroy compromising documents relating to Montessori. The father’s address is unknown, but he is said to be a shoe and leather merchant, and with a name like his it should not be impossible to track him down before Sorge gets there. Another letter sent to the Polizia Politica on 12 July states that many prominent people are supporting Montessori and that “Gentile is doing all he can to salvage the sinking ship.”4 Sorge writes to Mussolini on 17 July. Despite her thinking so highly of Mussolini she has been falsely accused of insulting him! The situation is even more absurd considering that the words she allegedly uttered were in the Mediterranean dialect, not in Milanese—and she is from Milan. Because of these allegations she has lost her position and her reputation has been tarnished as if she were a common criminal. In the hope of rehabilitation she is now turning to the great leader who promised Montessori and her followers protection in Milan some years ago. The only solace during this difficult time is Mussolini’s kind telegram of 10 July.5 On 18 July the Polizia Politica agent reports that the “Montessori affair” has caused an uproar in educational circles. He has spoken to staff at the method school, who tell him that Sorge, despite the serious allegations, was honoured with a reception organised by the Montessori teacher

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Maria Antonietta Paolini as a demonstration of solidarity against the police investigation. Sorge was said to have brandished the telegram from Mussolini’s private secretary with the words: “I am stronger than they think, and they will have to pay for this.” As to Sorge’s and the Montessori observation class teachers’ suspected antifascism, the agent suggests that the school caretakers be interviewed, as they ought to know a thing or two. The report also refers to what “Miss Moretti” had said during the investigation, presumably referring to Angiola Moretti, a high-ranking party member who had been head of the fascist women’s organisation. If you want to find out whether Montessori is antifascist, she informed the investigators, you should consider the circles she moves in abroad.6 Montessori had simultaneously written to the Minister of Education to complain of Sorge’s non-Montessorian colleagues at the method school. Incapable of understanding the method Sorge had taught, they had resisted and vilified her from the very beginning. In his reply to Montessori—dated 19 July—the minister of education points out that during her 4 years as director Montessori has neither complained about nor reported on the teachers’ performance. To proceed with the case he would need a more detailed report, including individual teachers’ past performance. Ercole received a letter from the teachers in question stating that Montessori had hardly ever been seen at the school, and that on the few occasions when she did turn up she never addressed any teachers other than her “little priestess”, Sorge. The letter oozes hostility towards Montessori, who had not wanted to step down from her “Olympian” heights, and it seems that Sorge, her favourite, was very unpopular indeed. The incriminating information that had started the whole affair was sent by the teacher of fascist culture, Orazia Belsito Prini. Her first letter was not filed, but many of those that followed were. In the letter that arrived at the Polizia Politica on 14 July she worries about rumours claiming that the Marquise Maraini Guerrieri Gonzaga supports Sorge, and she alleges that prominent people are trying to pull the wool over Mussolini’s eyes. It is her duty, says Belsito Prini, to be “one hundred per cent fascist” and continue unmasking the culprits.7 The second Montessori congress takes place in Nice at the end of July in conjunction with the sixth NEF congress. Although the Montessori movement has not joined the NEF, the joint congresses show that a

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professional relationship has been established. Montessori seems less keen to distance herself than she was during the Milan course in 1926, and Ferriere, who had been criticised in the April 1931 edition of Montessori, is allowed to publish an article in the November/December issue of Montessori, Rivista 1932. The congresses share premises in Nice’s scenic Parc Imperial. The exhibited model Montessori class, involving a handful of Roman children under the guidance of Maria Antonietta Paolini, is a very popular attraction. Visitors also flock to the classroom, where they can try out the didactic materials. In her keynote speech Montessori explains the way her method makes complex numerical ratios such as square roots accessible to children. She also delivers her peace talk at the dual conference joint session, and the same version is published in the May/June issue of Montessori, Rivista. It is decided that the next Montessori congress will be held in Berlin in 1933. This is probably also when the decision is made to move AMI’s head office to the German capital. The news of the establishment of an “international information office” is published in the July/August issue of Montessori, Rivista, in which it is also announced that the 1933 international teacher training course will take place in Barcelona.8 Montessori and her son are followed on their way home to Barcelona. An anonymous report from Barcelona to the Polizia Politica in Rome dated 7 August 1932 reveals that they have renewed their passports at the consulate in Barcelona, most likely for security reasons. The report is the first of some thirty on file. After the exile in 1934 surveillance focuses on Montessori’s participation in the Brussels peace conference in 1936. Mario is also suspected of involvement with the republicans during the Spanish Civil War. At least four agents appear to have been part of the 1932–1936 surveillance operation, one of them going under the surname Torre. During the years immediately before the war both mother and son were under surveillance via official channels. The correspondence between the Ministry of the Interior’s security department and various Italian consulates in Europe includes multiple queries about their activities.9 As the police surveillance operation began shortly after Montessori’s first peace talk, some Italian Montessorians have suggested that the Sorge affair was merely a pretext for incriminating Montessori and forcing her to cease her involvement with ONM, as further cooperation had become

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impossible after her talk in Geneva. Maria Teresa Marchetti—a Montessori pioneer who had been active since the 1930s—claimed in an interview in 1997 that: Here in Rome, the break occurred at the teacher training college, but that was not the reason why Montessori had to go into exile. The real reason was the talks Montessori gave all over Europe against the war.10

However, Mario Montessori denied this interpretation as early as in 1938. In a letter to a Romanian Montessorian he drew attention to the fact that in its journal ONM had been free to publish the peace talk, and to its being politically neutral. “But there were probably many enemies and only a few friends, not very active, so the former were able to discard her entire body of work.” If the Sorge affair was the first assault in a conspiracy orchestrated from above, you would also have to dismiss Belsito Prini’s letters informing on Montessori as being inauthentic and commissioned. The fact that the Polizia Politica tapped Belsito Prini’s telephone, which they would have had no reason to do if she had acted on their orders, contradicts this. Belsito Prini not only informed on teachers at Montessori’s method school but also drew attention to the antifascism of teachers at other schools. Her many letters to the Polizia Politica, and to Mussolini, show an almost fanatical devotion to fascism and an equally strong aversion to Montessorians.11 In a telephone conversation intercepted on 23 October 1932 Belsito Prini describes Montessori as a gold digger who sacrifices the teachers in her poor native Italy so she can earn a fortune abroad. Belsito Prini also appears to have been personally offended. She recounts how during one of her rare visits to the method school Montessori had interrupted Belsito Prini’s passionate lessons on patriotism. Away from the classroom Montessori explained to her that “our universal homeland is our only homeland, this is how you should conduct the lesson.” This appears to be a credible rendition of the way Montessori may have expressed herself in her capacity as mentor. In the same telephone conversation Belsito Prini claims to be prepared to do everything in her power to inform Mussolini about the undermining of fascism going on at Montessori’s method

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school. She will do her duty even if no-one believes her or if she “ends up under Il Duce’s car”.12 The Sorge affair has made the fascists more vigilant. They are now beginning to ask themselves whether Montessori has deceived them. Their suspicions concerning the Montessorians are intensified when a copy of Montessori’s peace talk is anonymously sent to Mussolini on 30 July. Unlike the previous copy, which ONM sent in April, this one has a handwritten annotation in the margin claiming that Russian Montessori children, “trained like dogs”, had performed at the opening of the Nice congress. Mussolini forwards the document to Bodrero for closer inspection, but Bodrero sees no reason for concern. Montessori had simply adapted her message in line with the peace theme and the audience, which consisted of Nordic and Anglo-Saxon feminists. Any objections that could be raised concerning her arguments were of a purely educational nature. For example, he finds it “grotesquely” naive to believe that it would be possible to do away with competition in schools, as it is typical of all children’s games. In fact, competition contains the principle of war in its “embryonic” stage.13 Bodrero becomes more suspicious when he learns that Castelli, the new secretary of ONM, has been banned from the Montessori congress in Nice. The dispute appears to have begun when Castelli forwarded information about Montessori’s complaints to the method school teachers. However, Bodrero cannot see how resentment over this mishap could be a good enough reason to ban Italy’s official representative from a congress at which the future international Montessori institute was to be discussed. In a letter to Montessori dated 26 August he points out that her letters to the Ministry of Education are official, not private, documents.14 Yet another serious incident that occurs during the Nice congress is mentioned in the surveillance reports. At a certain point the participants call out “long live Montessori, down with fascism!” Although it cannot have escaped the fascists that many members of the Montessori movement are antifascists, it is now confirmed that the Montessori congress is not a politically neutral arena. Mario Montessori had previously mentioned, in a letter to Mussolini dated 6 May 1931, that there were

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tensions between rightists and leftists within the Montessori movement. He explains that: It has not been easy for us to persuade the foreign organisations to in some respects feel they are dependent on Italy: we have lost friends and money trying to persuade them.15

Another teacher from the method school, Maria Lo Preiato, writes in August to the Polizia Politica claiming she has information to share with the inspector in charge of the investigation. Lo Preiato fears that it may be too late, and that everything will continue as before at the school, as she has heard rumours about Mussolini’s intention to rehabilitate Sorge. It is now claimed that Sorge has fallen victim to a colleague’s malicious slander. Sorge has been assigned a lawyer, and even Castelli is doing his best to normalise the situation, writes Lo Preiato.16 As Lo Preiato predicted, Sorge is rehabilitated a few weeks later. The road back to Montessori’s method school remains closed, but thanks to Mussolini’s intervention she does not lose her teaching position at the Milan school, from which she has been on leave of absence. Sorge also continues to work for the Italian Montessori movement, whose dire situation she describes in a vivid letter to Mussolini dated 30 October. With the exception of Piero Parini, against Il  Duce’s recommendations the school authorities have shown little interest in the spreading of Montessori schools. Instead of being converted into an educational centre, the method school in Rome has become the scene of petty personal grievances that might well result in the destruction of all that the movement has strived to attain. Sorge hopes, however, that Mussolini will yet again protect Montessori’s life’s work, and she does not hesitate to repeat the offer of her services as governess to Mussolini’s youngest children. She has even sent a letter to little Romano, enclosing Il Mistico Dramma, Montessori’s guide to the Catholic mass. Chiavolini immediately files it away as something too advanced for a child.17 Meanwhile, Montessori fails to convince the Minister of Education to replace Sorge with a Montessori-trained teacher. Montessori’s own choice, Adele Costa Gnocchi, was ready to accept on the condition that all method-school teachers be replaced, which the minister is not prepared

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to accept. Instead, he appoints a certain Professor Rivara to the chair of educational methodology without even asking Montessori. She is still head of the method school but has agreed to delegate daily operations to the school commissioner, Francesco Lepore, who is expected to solve the problems.18 According to the police agent’s report dated 10 October this is the perfect moment for permanently “eliminating” the dottoressa. “In other words: Montessorism without Montessori.” It has been done before, he continues. There are non-authorised Montessori schools in Milan and in the United States that do not have to answer to Montessori. What does it matter if Montessori threatens excommunication? It would only dissolve the “economic-didactic bonds” that prevent us from taking over the production of the didactic materials, and one would not have to deal with the temperamental and ideologically unreliable dottoressa. In a later report the agent also complains about the way Montessori, as a follower of Rousseau’s despicable teachings, has succeeded in securing protection from the highest authority. Apart from the more “technical details” nothing is “more spiritually antifascist than the Montessori method”. However, Montessori’s ship is about to founder, so she is not likely to remain at liberty much longer.19 Montessori has by now realised that ONM is slipping out of her hands. In a letter dated 6 December she accuses Bodrero of abuse of power. He has forged schemes using the method school in Rome for his own purposes, handing out attractive posts to his underlings. In the letter, which is also forwarded to Mussolini and to the vice president of ONM, Orestano, Montessori points out that “a Montessori method school without the Montessori method” is simply absurd. Moreover, Bodrero has undermined the “Italianity” of the Montessori method! He has contacted unauthorised Montessori societies abroad behind Montessori’s back. The purpose of the international Montessori institute is not to propagate “foreign forgeries” and mixed methods. If the purity of the method can no longer be guaranteed, Montessori will be forced to give up her ONM membership. In a letter to Mussolini dated 15 December, Mario—whose wording is similar to that of the police agent—writes that ONM’s leader, Bodrero, has done a disservice to his native Italy by attempting to “eliminate the Dottoressa”.20

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When asked by Mussolini to respond to the criticism, Bodrero asserts that he fully understands Montessori’s dissatisfaction with the appointment of Rivara to the post of methodology teacher at the method school. The minister of education could not of course meet Costa Gnocchi’s demand that all the teachers at the school be replaced, but he should not have picked a teacher who knew nothing of the Montessori method. However, Bodrero cannot agree with Montessori on how best to protect the integrity of the method. Most important of all must be winning back unregulated Montessori societies abroad. It should not be very difficult to guide them on to the right path, as the break with Montessori often appears to have been caused by personal, rather than doctrinal, conflicts. For example, Montessori had opposed Bodrero’s suggestion to appoint Teresina Bontempi as vice president of the Swiss Montessori society, despite Bontempi’s excellent record in terms of spreading Italian culture and introducing the Montessori method in the Canton of Ticino.21 It was as editor of the journal L’Adula that Bontempi, as a fierce irredentist, had argued for the unification of Ticino with fascist Italy. Montessori’s refusal to give in to Bodrero’s pressure, exemplified by her appointment of the peace activist Elisabeth Rotten instead of the fascist Montessori pioneer Bontempi, marks an important turning point in her relationship with the fascist regime. On 15 January 1933 Montessori— who no longer wants to have anything to do with Bodrero—announces her resignation from ONM. Mario steps down as a committee member the following day. When a month later Montessori is informed by the school commissioner, Lepore, that she is still formally the director of the method school, she too resigns from this post. In an angry letter to the minister of education, and an even angrier one to Lepore, she laments the deplorable fact that a method school that has reintroduced mark books and other nonsense that she has fought against all her life still bears her name. She asks the minister of education to immediately delete “Montessori” from the name of the Rome method school. However, she is grateful to Mussolini for Bodrero’s resignation as president of ONM. His successor is in her opinion the more sympathetic Piero Parini, director general of Scuole Italiane all’estero—the coordinating body responsible for Italian schools abroad.22

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Montessori now has more important things on her mind. Between February and June 1933 she leads her eighteenth international teacher training course, this time in republican Spain. The French course programme, quoted in Montessori, Rivista, indicates that the main reason for Montessori’s choice of host country is “the changed and more favourable political and social conditions” in the new Spain, as well as the progressive cultural policy of the “young European republic”. According to the same journal the new Montessori school in Barcelona’s Casa degli Italiani functions as a model class. With approximately 15,000 Italians living in Barcelona, this elementary school is among the largest in the city.23 Sorge informs Mussolini about how the Spanish school authorities were planning a gradual transition to the Montessori system in the country’s schools back in October 1932. In January 1933 Mario announces that the course is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education, the Catalan Republic and the Municipality of Barcelona. He has made sure to include several important persons who are loyal to Italy on the course committee. About three hundred participants from some fifteen countries attend the course—most of them from Spain, Catalonia, Germany and the Netherlands.24 The man from the Polizia Politica is also in Barcelona, dispatching Spanish newspaper cuttings. In one of them Mario is presented as Montessori’s son—an interesting piece of information that may come in useful in the event of a future smear campaign. The agent points out that although Montessori and her son always speak well of Mussolini’s regime in the presence of Italian fascists, they are sure to express themselves differently when in the company of the Catalan president, Francesc Macià. During interviews they both avoid making statements about fascism. Mario is also reported to have applied for membership of the local fascist organisation in March 1933. The police spy is suspicious, still being convinced of Montessorism’s antifascist tendencies. A potentially intentional spelling mistake mocks their “red” ideology. In a letter dated 27 February mother and son are described alternately as Montessori and Monterossi: The Monterossian system is now popular in Spain, how could it be otherwise? Its anarchoid principles are in tune with the spirit of the new Republic.25

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9.2 The 1934 Rome Congress: Exit Montessori After the Barcelona course the third Montessori congress was meant to take place in Berlin between 29 July and 3 August 1933, but owing to the volatile political situation caused by the new Nazi regime, the location is changed at the last minute. German Montessorians are now being persecuted—to begin with predominantly members of the leftist Deutsche Montessori Gesellschaft, but from January 1936 also the more orthodox, AMI-affiliated Verein Montessori-Pädagogik Deutschlands. The Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg labels the internationalistic, individualistic Montessori method as “un-German” with “Jewish and Marxist elements”.26 The third Montessori congress is held in Amsterdam, where AMI’s head office has been moved. The theme, “The Spiritual Re-birth of Man”, is expanded on during the London course in the autumn. Despite the turmoil surrounding the Sorge affair and Montessori’s resignation from ONM, the plans for a Montessori institute in Rome have not been abandoned. ONM’s new president, Parini, and the school commissioner, Lepore, persuade Montessori to return to Rome with promises of a more dignified position than director of the Montessori method school. It is decided at the congress in Amsterdam in 1933 that the next Montessori congress will be held in Rome in April 1934. According to the minutes of a meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs dated 26 January 1934, the renewed contact with Montessori was initiated at the order of Mussolini. Parini is tasked with steering ONM in a “national and fascist direction and making it an instrument in the service of the regime”.27 The ONM journal is reinstated in 1934 for this very purpose. The editor of Opera Montessori, Bollettino Bimestrale, Gianna Spargella, is also the secretary of Parini and ONM. The first issue is dedicated to a retrospective review of major events within the Montessori movement during 1933, including the Amsterdam congress. A brief excerpt from Montessori’s The Mass Explained to Children (1932) has been translated. Also included is an excerpt from Mussolini’s eulogy to his prematurely diseased brother Arnaldo, who is described as an altogether excellent

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person. The appeal to Montessori teachers working in the field to submit article material is repeated, accompanied by a short essay written by a pupil—little Anna’s tribute to the father of the people: “I love Il Duce very, very much. Long live Il Duce. Greetings to our dear Duce.”28 There is also an account of a ceremony that took place in March 1933 at the Montessori method school in Rome, which had retained Montessori’s name despite her request that it be removed. Membership of the Fascist Party was granted to the young students. The superintendent for the subject fascist culture at the Rome schools, Angiola Moretti, attended the event. Other prominent party members included the representative of the Balilla movement, Silvia Rocco, and Lucia Pagano, headmistress of the city’s girl’s college. The vice president of ONM and deputy secretary at the Ministry of Education, Arrigo Solmi, was also present at the celebrations, as well as Spargella, Rivara and Lepore.29 Belsito Prini, the teacher of fascist culture, is now offered the opportunity to show off her rhetorical skills, but deep down she is still sceptical about the Montessori method that the authorities want to appropriate. This is clear from a letter addressed to Mussolini in June 1933, in which she portrays the teachers at the method school as being hopelessly antifascist. They have only recently joined the party to keep up appearances. Were it not for her and the Balilla movement, the school would still be an antifascist bastion. As one of the teacher students had once confided in her: “Signora, if you had not enlightened us, we would all have been communists now.”30 Belsito Prini also mocks the upcoming Montessori congress in an anonymous submission to the fascist daily newspaper Ottobre (15 March 1934). For a reasonable 35 lire you can learn how to rescue children from smothering adults by means of the Montessori’s apparatus, and can achieve an “angelic peace” whereby children “with white wings on their backs fly about in the ether” singing anything but fascist hymns of “universal brotherhood”.31 The theme of the fourth Montessori congress in Rome on 3–10 April 1934 is “Deviation and Normalisation”. Apart from Montessori, the keynote speakers include the educator Giovanni Calò and the psychologist Jean Piaget. The Viennese Adlerian Ervin Krauss gives a talk on the

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psychology of the Montessori child. The method lessons, led by Elise Braun and Elisabetta Oddone, deal with musical education.32 The Rome congress is magnificently framed in the ONM/AMI programme. There are no pictures of children, except for the historic wolf statue featuring Romulus and Remus. The obligatory portrait of Montessori is instead surrounded by postcard motifs of the eternal city. The Victor Emmanuel monument—symbol of the unification of the nation—is a given, as is the Capitoline Hill, where the opening of the congress will take place. The grand avenue that Mussolini has built between the Forum Romanum and the Fori Imperiale—the Via dell’Impero—is partnered in the programme by the forum that bears the name of Mussolini—a new athletics stadium in the Roman imperial style. The new towns on the drained Pontine Marshes are represented by a picture of the post office and telegraph tower at Littoria, and it is announced that there will be excursions to Tivoli and Frascati.33 Judging by the crowds at the opening ceremony on 3 April, the Montessori congress is a popular event. Apart from the approximately 300 delegates, there are government officials and teachers in attendance. The minister of education’s welcome speech places the Montessori method in the context of fascist child and family policy, ONMI and the Balilla movement. Fortunately, a study visit to the ONMI crèche has been added to the programme, informs Ercole. When it is Montessori’s turn to deliver her opening speech, she praises the regime for the concrete results they have achieved. Opera Montessori cites her as having said: “Today, many ask themselves: What is then this fascist Italy? And I tell them: Come and see, the land is redeemed, new cities appear, new roads are opened, the youth is loved and honoured.”34 The exhibition at the Montessori method school is opened later that day. Apart from the usual works by pupils and the Montessori materials, the artists Angelo della Torre and Mario Guerri, together with the architect Ridolfi, have built a series of Montessori-style rooms, including a nursery, a schoolroom and a dining room. There is also a children’s theatre and a children’s chapel—the latter decorated with naive frescoes depicting the life of Jesus. The method school classes, comprising children of preschool and elementary-school age, are open to the delegates. The visitors can watch work inside the classroom from a balcony—a

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setup not unlike the panopticon control tower. The Swedish elementary school teacher Oscar Augzell, who visited the Montessori method school in Rome in 1934, described the scene: First, we enter a large room with a gallery along one side. From here there is an excellent view of the different classrooms, and before us are some female spectators. From this height it all appears like a big stage with the different classrooms divided by low walls. In each room is a teacher with a group of children.35

However, it is not only the Montessori children who are being watched. The congress’s most prominent delegate is also under close surveillance. The Ministry of the Interior is especially interested in discovering who is mixing with Montessori in Rome. Reports of varying length arrive at the Polizia Politica in the first few days of the congress. The opening event is reported to have taken place in an orderly fashion, and Montessori expressed some very apt opinions on the regime’s child policy. Unfortunately, the large crowds at the opening ceremony make surveillance difficult. The hordes of Italian teachers with friends and relatives in tow and the tourists who have somehow gained access to admire the view from the Capitoline Hill make it hard to distinguish foreign delegates.36 In the first lecture on 4 April Montessori offers a retrospective summary of the marvellous normalisation phenomenon from which her movement had sprung. The Casa dei bambini children’s extraordinary powers of concentration and discipline once and for all disproved previous notions of childish inadequacy. Educators like Pestalozzi and Tolstoy had been on the right track, but failed as a result of neglecting scientific study of the children’s environment. Montessori’s contribution had been establishment of the requisite environmental conditions for this normalised state. The phenomenon of normalisation has since been repeated wherever the method has been tried. This is testament to the universality of the method, although it should not be forgotten that it was here, in Italy, that the discovery was made. As in the case of Christianity, the mission originated in Rome.37 The police report sent that same day describes her talk in fairly neutral terms. Montessori’s idealism is indeed unrealistic, and hardly suitable as

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preparation for the “life struggle”, but her criticism of rigid teaching methods is not without merit. For the method to become truly accepted in Italy it would be necessary to overcome the scepticism of the Ministry of Education. So far the Montessori method is only favoured because of Il Duce’s protection. The informant also expresses opinions about the delegates, whose national peculiarities are noted. It appears that delegates coming from the Nordic countries were the most orthodox, while the British delegates stood out on account of their desire to approach the child on its own terms. The conversations the agent had listened in on seemed to focus entirely on teaching, while the host country’s culture and social-policy programme were of little interest: “Not the slightest comment, either good or bad, about the Regime or its accomplishments.”38 It is also clear from the reports that the ambience deteriorates rapidly on the third day of the congress. It all begins at the method school on the morning of 5 April. The delegates have to vacate the area while Princess Maria di Piemonte visits the exhibition. Plain-clothes agents led by Spargella brusquely herd them out into the rain. There are mutterings in every tongue, not only against the Montessori committee but also against the “fascist regime’s police system”.39 The mayor’s banquet later that day is another low point. A group of “ladies and gentlemen that had nothing to do with the congress” devour the buffet. Moreover, the mayor prefers to talk to them rather than to the Montessorians anxiously hovering in the background. When Belsito Prini tries to enter the banquet she is refused admittance and her ticket is confiscated. The agent, who has heard that Spargella is involved, follows the ONM secretary on her way home on the bus that night, and notices that she keeps a blue ticket in her handbag—probably Belsito Prini’s.40 The first report from Torre is dated 6 April. He is the one who has engaged Belsito Prini by giving her a ticket to the congress, “not for surveillance, as she is a notorious dissident to the Montessori method” but to provide Torre with short summaries of what is being said during the lectures. This goes according to plan for the first few days. Torre believes he can explain why the Montessorians have refused admittance to Belsito Prini. They have realised that it was she who wrote the infamous article published in Ottobre on 15 March.41

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Montessori delivers her second lecture on 5 April. While traditional education aims to correct childish defects—such as lying—by means of direct confrontation, the Montessori method achieves normalisation indirectly. In the prepared environment offered by Montessori schools, psychological and physiological deviations disappear without the teacher having to intervene. At the same time certain traits that have erroneously been assumed to be good and useful disappear. Examples include submissive clinging to the mother or the “habit of asking many things, which is supposed to show a strong desire to learn; all such things, which we find desirable because they are useful in traditional education, also disappear from our schools.”42 Montessori emphasises the importance of liberating the child from excessively tight bonds, so it can acquire a “personality of its own”. Not even the most loving adult intervention is a good thing if the child remains passive. Personal development can only be achieved through independent activity. The child has to conquer its own normality through its own efforts. If the child is to create its future adult self, a degree of isolation is necessary in order to enable the child to remove itself from the influence of others. The primary relationship is between the child and its environment. A child that becomes absorbed in a task forgets about other people. To be forced to bow to a will stronger than one’s own is “the real danger”, according to Montessori, who pleads in favour of an autonomy that the anonymous agent condemns as “super anarchistic and in absolute contradiction to fascist objectives”.43 An unpleasant incident forces Montessori to interrupt her lecture. During the last 10 min some youths enter at the back of the lecture hall and start to disturb the proceedings. Loud talking, laughter and rowdiness drown out the lecture. Mario tries to find out what is going on. Is it a prank or a hostile provocation? After a few catcalls they finally leave, and Mario returns to the podium as his visibly shaken mother rapidly ends the session. Spargella then tries to calm the audience down, and instructs the method school teachers not to let in any visitors they do not recognise.44 The incident is not mentioned in the report that Torre submits on 6 April, but he does mention that Montessori is aware of being under surveillance and that she is constantly on her guard. Mario never leaves

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her side, and pays close attention to “every person that is approaching his mother”. They also avoid openly associating with antifascists. A spy report that arrives from Spain on 14 April reveals that they were both behaving nervously before leaving for Rome. Mario allegedly visited the Italian consulate in Barcelona to make sure they would be allowed to get back into Spain after the congress. In Torre’s next report, dated 7 April, the Polizia Politica is reminded of the fanaticism of Montessori’s disciples and how, roused by her peace talk in Nice, they shouted: “Long live Montessori and down with fascism!!!” According to Torre, Montessori’s movement had joined the “crusade” that under the slogan “children all over the world unite” had emanated from Geneva. The crusade Torre refers to is probably the campaign for international cooperation in education initiated by the Bureau International de l’Éducation, which was founded in 1925, and the Declaration of the Rights of the Child adopted by the League of Nations the year before. Torre concludes by paying tribute to the “ordinary” teachers, so despised by Montessorians, who with the help of Opera Nazionale Balilla and ONMI were paving the way for the fascist era. The Montessori teachers may have joined the Fascist Party, “but they have never told Italy’s children about why and how fascism started”.45 The Montessorians’ failure to actively convey the right values and social mores to school children was also mentioned in the keynote lecture Giovanni Calò delivered on 6 April. Calò, a Herbartarian and director of the national didactic museum in Florence, introduced himself as a representative of the official pedagogy that the Montessori movement rebelled against. Nevertheless, he applauds the struggle for children’s rights initiated by Montessori. Montessori has rightly criticised materialistic educational theories from a spiritual point of view, and she has defended children’s right to self-realisation. Education is not just about adapting to the demands of the surrounding world. The process starts within, with the child’s spiritual energies. So far Calò agrees with Montessori. What the child primarily needs is to actively constitute itself to become a “human subject”.46 Unlike the Montessorians, Calò is not interested in idealising this initial childhood stage. Children are amoral during their first years of life— entirely “beyond good and evil”. Referring to another keynote speaker at

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the congress, Calò bases his statements on the egocentricity of infants as described in developmental psychology. Piaget has shown how this egocentric stance is expressed in the child’s communicative behaviour. Children’s language is monological rather than dialogical. When small children babble on it is not because they are interested in other people’s ideas, but because they want to verbalise their own thoughts. The child thinks aloud, as it were, but has trouble understanding others’ point of view.47 The social awakening during late childhood is thus a phase of critical adjustment. It is not until now that the gap between the self and the world can be bridged. This requires more active interference by adults than during the preschool stage that is relevant to the Montessori method. For children to become members of society and acquire the right social mores and values, one cannot simply trust the energies of the child’s psyche and hope for a spontaneous socialisation. The child’s mind is not perfectly harmonious, as many choose to believe, but consists of a whole range of conflicting tendencies. This is where adults need to step in, so as to guide them and set boundaries.48 Calò describes society as an organism of interlinked wills and thoughts bound by common values, ideals and laws. The individual does not only “live in society, society lives in him and is an essential part of his own self”. Schooling can facilitate this integration by encouraging the competitions and team efforts that help build a sense of community and team spirit. Discipline achieved through play, competitions and solving tasks, however, is not enough—something more is required. A “sense of dependence on the entire social context” must be instilled—an awareness of belonging and responding to the communal authoritative will that controls and sets boundaries for the individual self as well as the smaller groups the individual belongs to. The amalgamation of the child’s own personality and the laws and ideals of this communal will must be achieved. This also includes knowledge of the country’s cultural heritage.49 According to Calò it is this element of authority and discipline that is accentuated within fascist pedagogy, which channels the energies in a constructive way. Fascist education is not opposed to the Montessori method—it integrates it as a first step. Before social awakening it is beneficial for a child’s personality to exist freely in a world of its own, before

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it is ready to take the leap into the real world—the world of social realities. It is via the Balilla movement, Calò continues, that the child’s will power and agency are truly linked to the national will.50 On the other hand, there is reason to be wary of youth movements that do not recognise the authority of adults. Within contemporary educational reform movements there is a regrettable tendency to “exclude adults as much as possible from the child’s life and activities”. Respect for the child’s freedom and autonomy must not make us lose sight of the boundary-setting function of adult society and the cultural legacy.51 In his talk Calò not only established the child’s need for boundaries but also clearly indicated the limited space allotted to the Montessori method within the fascist school system. With its principles of individual freedom and non-intervention, the Montessori method belonged to the preschool level and the lower grades. Socialisation and instruction relating to the national cultural heritage demanded different methods. Montessori, who intends to further develop the normalisation theme, changes the subject of her third lecture on 7 April as a direct response to Calò. Montessori begins by stating that congresses are to be open to a variety of theories and points of view. She also mentions how Piaget’s and Krauss’s psychological research confirms her own theory on the importance of bodily movement for the developing mind. She then moves on to Calò, who has approached the child not from an experimental, scientific standpoint but as a philosopher. His point of departure is thus a preconceived theoretical framework relating to the individual in society into which his pedagogical ideas have to fit. Montessori briefly summarises the main points of Calò’s argument. During its early years the child should be allowed to develop freely in accordance with its creative, spiritual nature. However, in its egocentricity the child is isolated from a society it cannot enter until it has undergone a crisis of adjustment. During this critical phase the child must subordinate itself to the adult’s volition and guidance, and the Montessori method is not suitable for this purpose. Moreover, Calò bases his defence of adult authority on the social requirements of fascism.52 Montessori questions the notion that infants should be cut off from social life and cocooned within themselves. In her opinion “the social concept is part of the development of the individual.” Children are

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receptive—they “absorb” the environment in which they exist. The child’s first “social step” is taken as a baby, when its need for loving care is met. Calò speaks a great deal about the importance of boundaries, but he forgets that children’s boundaries must be respected too. They need a well-­ defined environment in which they can develop different abilities at their own pace, without having to adapt to the life rhythm of adults. The more the child’s autonomous activity is stimulated, the less need there is for rigid control. It is not difficult to rule over children who are confined to a classroom they are not allowed to leave, but with such coercive methods it is not possible to win their trust and develop their social skills.53 The Montessori method improves both the teacher’s and the child’s performance. Coercion in schools was after all associated with the vast amounts of knowledge that had to be memorised. Transmitting this knowledge to the pupils was a major chore for the average teacher. The Montessori apparatus automates teaching and upgrades the teaching profession’s status. The teacher becomes a mentor who helps the children choose tasks and encourages them in their work—a real leader they can look up to.54 What about the transmission of social mores and the child’s introduction to society? The sense of community that fascist pedagogy supports has existed since time immemorial. Institutions such as family, church and state have contributed to norms and laws that citizens have had to comply with. This should not be confused with the dominance strong individuals are able to exert over those who are weaker, creating a power imbalance that hardly contributes to the common good. In Montessori’s eyes fascism is part of a greater social order upheld by family, church and state. Does fascism then really make a difference?55 Fascism not only contributes superficial discipline but is also a “new force that sets the world in motion”, says Montessori—a force that stimulates a lethargic society entrenched in sterile routines. Fascism has energised society. “And with the creation of Opera Balilla, fascism has not forgotten the child,” Montessori continues. Through this organisation, which involves almost every Italian child, the “parents’ chaotic and exclusive authority” as unpredictable child educators has been partially broken and children have at last emerged as a distinct social group. It is the kind of “mobilisation of children” that the Montessori movement has tried to

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achieve, exclaims Montessori, and now the dream has come true. Who knows what heroic deeds these children, who march so proudly together, will perform one day? Like Montessori’s movement, this organisation will no doubt reveal the treasures that reside in the child’s mind. From the two cases that conclude her argument it is obvious that Montessori is not referring to belligerent activities. In the first case poor children worked in their leisure time so they could pay the fee to Balilla without troubling their parents. In the second case Balilla children managed to save a drowning friend by organising a human chain.56 The topic of Montessori’s closing lecture on 10 April was the blocking of vital energies caused by incorrect educational methods. A distaste for work or certain school subjects is symptomatic of psychological obstacles that cause one’s energies to veer from the straight course of normal development. It is equally bad if the energy flow only results in fantasies and daydreams. Play is a similar flight response: “Unless it can do something worthwhile, the child seeks satisfaction in the fiction of play.” Montessori concludes by drawing a parallel between her own struggle to help children and the great achievements of the Italian regime. In both cases many obstacles have had to be overcome and prejudices have had to be fought. Just as the Montessori method has achieved peace between children and adults, the regime has succeeded in achieving peace in society, putting an end to the party struggles between workers and employers that had prevailed for so long. “Miracles”, entirely comparable to the new children produced by the Montessori method, have been achieved in the form of new cities and the transformation of malaria-infested swamps into fertile agricultural land. Poor people have been given the opportunity for rest and recreation at the seaside. Even children have been allowed to accompany the Italian people on the road to normalisation, and this makes Montessori especially proud.57 Montessori’s praise of the regime’s social policy does not convince Baron Julius Evola. He claims that a “Trojan horse” has been admitted by allowing the international Montessori movement to hold court on the Capitoline Hill. During the concordat negotiations in 1928 Evola had blamed the Catholic Church for all the evils of modernity, and advocated a return to paganism as being more compatible with the Roman spirit of fascism. Taking as a basis his esoteric neopaganism, in the 1930s he was

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to develop a theory of “spiritual races”, the most prominent being the Aryan-Roman race—a theory that won Mussolini’s support in 1941. Evola also wrote the preface to the Italian translation of the antisemitic text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1938.58 When Evola catches sight of Montessori in 1934 he has just become involved in the journal Vita Italiana’s campaign against the Freemasons. His fierce attack on the Montessori movement in the article “Il caso Montessori” should be seen in the light of this. According to Evola, Montessorism, like Freemasonry, has a background in the hated Enlightenment. He indirectly aims his arguments at a cultural elite whose fundamental values have not been fascistised enough. Evola claims that Montessori, like “the Jew Freud” and “the Jew Bergson”, is an adherent of the Enlightenment, which glorifies nature at the expense of man. The seemingly optimistic message of a good and wise nature that has been disseminated since Rousseau conceals a deeply pessimistic idea about what man can achieve of his own accord. Evola mocks the idea that a child could educate itself like a “Leibnizian windowless monad”, without the need for adult guidance. The gist of Montessori’s message is that the child replaces the adult as a role model. In political terms it dismisses everything that fascism represents: “Authority, hierarchy, action from above, dominance.” Such a pedagogy, Evola warns, undermines the respect for strong leaders on which fascist society is based.59 Evola’s article includes a description of the commotion during Montessori’s second course lecture, and the incident was also mentioned in the Polizia Politica reports. Evola had heard about the Montessori congress by chance, and on 5 April he takes a seat in the auditorium. Despite being surrounded by the kind of female audience that tends to swoon over everything that “theosophists, feminists, vegetarians, preachers of universal brotherhood and animal welfare” have to say, the atmosphere is curiously subdued. It is obvious that Montessori and her followers no longer feel welcome in fascist Italy. “That’s enough!” someone calls out halfway through the lecture. Afterwards Evola learns that the protest had been organised by the fascist youth organisation. The lecture is rapidly brought to a close and Montessori’s “son” announces the following day’s programme, adding: “Unless we are disturbed”. Evola finds the Montessorians’ concern justified, as ideologically aware fascists will

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inevitably feel an “instinctive aversion” to Montessori’s ideas. For even if the Montessori method is marketed as being politically neutral, it is nothing but “liberalism and anarchistic optimism applied on education”.60 The Rome congress was Montessori’s last public appearance in Italy for a very long time. The educational establishment was soon to turn its back on her, but not primarily on account of Evola’s attack. The anticlerical and science-averse “magician’s” polemic did not find much favour with leading Italian intellectuals. The Ministry of Education had long obstructed the activities of the Montessori Society, but this had more to do with a broad consensus among the teaching community about which preschool method best served the regime’s requirements. Lombardo Radice’s campaign in favour of Agazzism now began to bear fruit. Educationalists such as Mario Casotti and Andrea Franzoni adopted Agazzism at an early stage, as did the preschool teachers’ association Associazione Educatrice Italiana on the occasion of the Aporti centenary in 1927. AEI organised subsidised preschool teacher training courses focusing on the Agazzi method alongside the Montessori Society’s courses and congresses. The Milan course in 1931 was followed by the Pavia course in 1932, the Turin course in 1932–1933 and the Verona course in 1933, totalling some 800 examined participants. The head of the AEI, the fascist cleric Alessandro Alessandrini, pointed out that the Agazzi method was best suited to Mussolini’s restoration project, as it anchored the child in its immediate life context and promoted a sense of order, self-­ discipline, common sense and piety at no great cost. This down-to-earth method strengthened the bond to one’s family, local community and home country. While the Montessori method contributed to Italy’s reputation abroad and met with approval in wealthy countries and within the scientific community, the Agazzi sisters’ method was perfectly tailored to the needs of the Italian people.61 In an article published in 2001 Marchella Falchi claims that the Agazzi sisters were being approached by the regime, to fill the void after Montessori, who had “mysteriously” gone into voluntary exile. It is, however, doubtful whether Montessori saw her cooperation with the Italian regime as having ended when she left Italy to hold courses in the Netherlands, Spain and France after the Rome congress. ONM and the Montessori method school in Rome did not close until June 1936.

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Agazzism in fact seems to have been considered the most genuine Italian preschool educational method even before Montessori left the scene. The strong support for the Agazzi method from preschool teachers, the Ministry of Education and local school authorities ultimately outweighed Mussolini’s personal protection of Montessori.62 The choice of Agazzism in preference to Montessorism as Italy’s official preschool pedagogy was made during the AEI Rome course in September 1934. It was the first AEI course for teacher trainers. The purpose of the two-week course—significantly shorter than the previous regular preschool teacher training courses—was to inform lecturers at the country’s teacher training colleges of the preferred didactic method for preschools. The course was given a patriotic, Catholic angle that included a short mass during the opening ceremony. The Jesuits supplied premises near the Trinità dei Monti church at the top of the Spanish Steps, and the students were invited to an audience with Pope Pius XI at his summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, as well as being offered a selection of outings and guided tours. An infant school led by Rosa Agazzi was prepared for a demonstration of Agazzi lessons, and an exhibition of sensory and language training materials attracted many prominent visitors, among them Father Barbera, representing the Jesuits, and Parini, the head of the Opera Nazionale Montessori.63 During the course—led by Andrea Franzoni, editor of the preschool teacher journal Pro infantia, assisted by the AEI secretary Anita Ferrari— various lecturers gave an account of the development of Italian infant schools from a historical, legal and hygienist perspective. Alessandrini emphasised the Catholic framework of the Agazzi method, while Franzoni stressed the principles of “peer education and cooperation”, as well as the teachers’ active role and the emphasis on aesthetic education. According to Casotti, both Montessori and Agazzi offered a material-based method, but while the former’s prefabricated materials were based on geometrical forms, Agazzi’s everyday objects, collected by the children themselves, were more concrete objects of study. The analysis of geometrical forms was not forced on the children initially, but was rather the result of exercises carried out together with their teacher. The minister of education, Ercole, expressed his strong approval of the Agazzi method, in his closing speech.64

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One advantage of the Agazzi method was of course its clear focus on the preschool stage. It consequently did not intrude on schoolteacher territory, as Montessorism did. Thanks to its popular appeal, Agazzism’s modest approach also meant it could more easily live up to the idea of italianità that had come to define fascist Italy. However, the timing of Agazzism’s victory was not insignificant. This was when perhaps the most important shift in the progress of fascism occurred—the transition from imperial rhetoric to imperial warfare. As long as Mussolini’s empire building was limited to domestic reforms and extravagant slogans about Italy’s greatness and its international mission, Montessorism was the perfect complement to Agazzism, despite its explicit pacifism. Montessori’s grand reputation and the worldwide spread of her movement were better suited to the regime’s prestige purposes than the more subdued, home-spun Agazzism. With the transition to imperial warfare the alliance with Montessori became more problematic. Unlike the Agazzi sisters, Montessori could hardly be expected to refrain from declaring her opinions about the direction society was taking and the global situation. Because of its patriotism and lack of international perspective, Agazzism was easier to transform into an obedient tool in the service of the regime’s power policy.65 The first stop on the road to war was the fighting that broke out along the Abyssinian border in December 1934 and the subsequent military escalation in the surrounding Italian colonies Somalia and Eritrea during spring 1935. The Italian invasion was underway by October 1935, and the League of Nations’ half-hearted economic sanctions served merely to tighten the bond between Italy and Nazi Germany. Abyssinia was conquered in May 1936, partly by means of chemical warfare, and revanchist Italy saw the eruption of impassioned victory celebrations that significantly boosted the regime’s popularity. Italian East Africa was formed through a merger of Abyssinia, Somalia and Eritrea. This new colony, which seemed to fulfil the fascist regime’s ambitions of grandeur, allowed Victor Emmanuel to adopt the title of emperor, while Mussolini was given the epithet “Founder of the Empire”.66 The letter Mario Montessori sent to Mussolini in March 1935 suggests that his mother had not yet given up hope of finishing her life’s work in her native Italy. Mario did inform Mussolini about the Montessori

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movement’s critical situation, how incompetent management at the method school in Rome had thwarted everything Montessori had tried to achieve and how ONM completely disregarded the Italian Montessori teachers’ precarious situation. But he also reminded Mussolini about the promise made to Montessori after her resignation from the method school: She was promised a more worthy post that would have given her authority and an opportunity to work with her method, in Italy and abroad, as an official representative of the Italian teaching community.67

In his letter Mario does not mention what kind of post he was referring to, except that it would have made Montessori independent of school inspectors in that she would only answer to the Ministry of Education. This may be a clue as to why Montessori returned to hold her congress in Rome in 1934, despite having left ONM and the method school. Maybe the ex-fascist Umberto Biscottini was not spreading completely unsubstantiated rumours in 1949 when in his article “Superuomo su ricetta” he suggested that Montessori had been considered for the post of inspector general of the regime’s new teacher training programme. According to Biscottini it had all come to nothing, owing to the Ministry of Finance’s veto.68 A sharply formulated letter dated May 1935 from the newly appointed minister of education, Cesare Maria De Vecchi di Val Cismon, made it clear that Montessori’s services were no longer required by the Italian government. Although it would have been painful to be rejected without explanation after so many years of cooperation, Montessori probably soon realised the impossibility of proclaiming her message of peace within an autocratic state that had chosen the path of war. When chemical warfare in Abyssinia was at its most intense in February 1936 even Sorge, who previously idolised Mussolini, changed sides. According to a police report, Sorge had recently been dismissed from her teaching position at a Catholic school in Milan for making pro-British remarks and delivering inflammatory speeches to her pupils in criticism of the war in Abyssinia.69 In June 1936, after the victory in Abyssinia, the Italian government dismantled ONM and closed the Montessori method school in Rome. The Spanish Civil War broke out the following month, and Montessori

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was forced to flee from her home in Barcelona on board a British battleship. As of that moment Montessori lived in exile, first in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, and during World War II in India. The Italian secret police continued to stay updated on her activities up until the war. In a police report dated 11 August 1936, which claimed that Mario had joined the republicans in Barcelona, someone had written in the margin: “This miserable woman was saved a few years ago with the help of the Ministry of National Education.”70 The subsequent period of Montessori amnesia in Italy was the complete opposite of the former lively debate. The Montessori-method experiments in the country’s preschools and schools were dismantled overnight, and only a small number of privately run schools managed to survive without media coverage. Discussion of Montessori’s ideas was no longer acceptable. Of the seven Italian titles included in Montessori, Bibliografia Internazionale (2001) for the period 1936–1945, only two were articles from educational journals, while the rest were short biographical entries in encyclopaedias and unpublished academic papers. The publication of Montessori’s work was not entirely stopped, however. A third edition of Montessori’s method manual, with the foreword by Padellaro, came in 1935, and an edition of Il bambino in famiglia appeared in 1936, including a number of essays that had not been part of the first edition published in Austria. In 1935 the Roman publisher Maglione sold the rest of the 1926 edition of Il Metodo, and in 1940 the 1916 edition of L’Autoeducazione had sold out. Montessori’s new book, The Secret of Childhood, which had won great acclaim in Paris and was quickly translated into several languages, could not be published in Italy. An Italian version entitled Il Segreto dell’infanzia was instead published in Switzerland in 1938.71 The educator Guido Della Valle, who had sharply criticised the Montessori method in 1911, had the last word in the interwar debate on Montessori in Italy. In a 1937 review of Calò’s book on national education, which included the lecture from the Montessori congress in 1934, Della Valle mocked the Montessori movement’s misadventures in fascist Italy. A method that originated in a setting “steeped in Freemasonry and liberalism” was naturally of no use to the regime. Not only were Montessori’s “almost anarchist views on free activities” incompatible with

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fascism, but the extremely “absurd” doctrine of auto-education was reprehensible and should be consigned to the scrap heap of educational history. However, Montessorism was no longer an issue for debate. Everything started to go quiet after Della Valle’s polemic attack. In Enciclopedia Biografica e Bibliografica from 1939 the entry on Montessori offers a biography that focuses on her early medical and educational career in Italy at the turn of the century, while later accomplishments are hardly mentioned. The list of references to writings critical of Montessori is twice as long as the entry itself. The short biography concludes by stating that Montessori’s “greatness” should be attributed solely to her “exceptional personality as a teacher” rather than to methodological or theoretical achievements.72

Notes 1. Emilio Bodrero, letter to the Government Office, 17 June 1932, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069 sf. 2, ACS Roma). 2. “Notiziario Montessoriano”, Montessori, Rivista, (1:41932) 248, 251, Giuliana Sorge, letter to Mussolini 6 July 1932, SPD.CO 1922–43 (b. 635 f. 204359, ACS Roma). 3. “Alessandro Chiavolini, telegram to Sorge 10 July 1933, SPD.CO (1922–43, b. 635 f. 204359, ACS Roma), Maria Montessori, letter to Minister for Education, Francesco Ercole 10 July 1932, in Harold Baumann, “Montessori-Pädagogik und Faschismus – eine Entgegnung”, Montessori-Pädagogik: aktuelle und internationale Entwicklungen, Reinhard Fischer and Peter Heitkämper (ed.) (Münster; Lit Verlag, 2005), 141–142. 4. Anonymous report 12 July 1932, MI.PP (b. 859, ACS Roma), Anonymous report 12 July 1932, MI.PP (b. 859, ACS Roma), Grazia Honegger Fresco, Montessori, perché no? Una pedagogia per la crescita, che cosa ne è oggi della proposta pedagogica di Maria Montessori in Italia e nel mondo? (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000) 32. 5. Giuliana Sorge, letter to Mussolini 17 July 1932, SPD.CO (1922–43, b. 635 f. 204359, ACS Roma).

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6. Anonymous report 18 July 1932, MI.PP (b. 859, ACS Roma), Victoria De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women, Italy 1922–1945 (Berkeley; University of California Press, 1992) 32, 39, 184, 263, 268. 7. Francesco Ercole, letter to Montessori, 19 July 1932, MI.PP (b. 859, ACS Roma), The teachers’ letter (undated) MI.PP, (b. 859, ACS Roma), Orazia Belsito Prini, 14 July 1932, MI.PP (b. 859). 8. Rosy Joosten-Chotzen, “Il II Congresso Internazionale Montessori a Nizza”, Montessori Rivista (1:4, 1932) 213–214, 249–250, Maria Montessori, “La liberazione dell’intelligenza. Note all’ultima lezione del congresso di Nizza”, Montessori Rivista (1:6, 1932) 330–332, Adolphe Ferriere, “Che cosà e la scuola attiva?”, Montessori Rivista (1:6, 1932) 333–334, “Notiziario”, Montessori Rivista (1:4, 1932) 248. 9. Anonymous report 7 August 1932, MI.PP (b. 859, ACS Roma), Renato Foschi and Elisabetta Cicciola, “La leggenda nera di Maria Montessori. Considerazioni Storiografice”, Il destino di Maria Montessori. Promozioni, rielaborazioni, censure, opposizioni al Metodo, Renato Foschi, Erica Moretti, Paola Trabalzini (ed.) (Rome: Féfé Editore, 2019) 115–149. As Foschi and Cicciola point out, Torre was the code name for the clerical fascist spy Santorre Vezzari. 10. Marta Gandiglio, Sulle tracce di Maria Montessori. Testimonianze, interviste e racconti di collaboratori, allievi, estimatori (1930–1999) (Rome: Università degli studi La Sapienza, 1997) 126. 11. Harold Baumann, “Montessori-Pädagogik und Faschismus  – eine Entgegnung”, 122–179, File with Prini’s letters to Mussolini 1929–1943, SPD.CO (1922–43, b. 1411  f. 513603). Prini told her life-story to Mussolini, sent him her photograph and asked for an audience. Her wish was never granted. 12. Orazio Belsito Prini, intercepted telephone conversation on 23 October 1932 at 19.35 h, MI.PP (b. 859, ACS Roma). 13. Hélène Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, Die Geschichte einer reformpädagogischen Erziehungskonzeption im italienischen Faschismus (Bad Heilbrunn: Verlag Julius Klinkhardt, 2001) 206–208, 210, Emilio Bodrero, letter to Mussolini 7 August 1932, SPD.CO (1922–43, b. 288  f. 15279, ACS Roma). 14. Emilio Bodrero, letter to Montessori 26 August 1932 MI.PP (b. 859, ACS Roma). 15. Emilio Bodrero, letter to Montessori 26 August 1932 MI.PP (b. 859, ACS Roma) (annotation on Polizia Politica’s copy of Bodrero’s letter),

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Mario M. Montessori, letter to Mussolini 6 May 1931, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.12069 sf 2, ACS Roma) 3. 16. Maria Lo Preiato, letter to Polizia Politica 22 August 1932, MI.PP (b. 859, ACS Roma). 17. Alessandro Chiavolini to the secretary at the Ministry for Education, E.  Scardamaglia 4 September 1932, SPD.CO (1922–43, b. 635  f. 204359, ACS Roma), Francesco Ercole, letter to Chiavolini 8/9, 1932, SPD.CO (1922–43 b. 635 f. 204359, ACS Roma), Giuliana Sorge, letter to Romano Mussolini with book, 5/10, 1932, in: SPD.CO (1922–43 b. 635 f. 204359, ACS Roma), A Chiavolini, comment on Sorge’s gift of a book 5 October 1932, SPD.CO (1922–43 b. 635  f. 204359, ACS Roma), Giuliana Sorge, letter to Mussolini 30/10,  1932, SPD.CO (1922–43 b. 288 f. 15279/1, ACS Roma). 18. Giuliana Marazzi, “Montessori e Mussolini: la collaborazione e la rottura”, Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica (13:1, 2000) 186–187. 19. Anonymous report 10 October 1932, MI.PP (b. 859, ACS Roma), Anonymous report 29 October 1932, MI.PP (b. 859, ACS Roma). 20. Mario M.  Montessori, letter to an Italian Montessorian 6 December 1932, SPD.CO 1922–43 (b. 288  f. 15279/1, ACS Roma), Maria Montessori, letter to Mussolini 15 December 1932, SPD.CO 1922–43 (b. 299 f. 15279/1, ACS Roma). 21. Emilio Bodrero, letter to Chiavolini 23/121932, SPD.CO (1922–43 b. 288 f. 15279/1, ACS Roma). 22. Maria Montessori, letter to Bodrero 15 January 1933, SPD.CO (1922–43 b. 288 f. 15279/1), Mario M. Montessori, letter to Bodrero 16 January 1933, SPD.CO (1922–43 b. 288 f. 15279/1), Mario M Montessori, letter to Mussolini 18 January 1933, SPD.CO (1922–43 b. 288 f. 15279/1), Emilio Bodrero, letter to Mussolini 15 February 1933, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069 sf. 2, ACS Roma), Maria Montessori letter to Lepore 15 February 1933, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069 sf. 2, ACS Roma), Maria Montessori, letter to Minister for Education Ercole 21 February 1933, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069 sf. 2, ACS Roma), Maria Montessori, letter to Piero Parini 21 February 1933, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069 sf. 2, ACS Roma), Harold Baumann, Hundert Jahre Montessori-­ Pädagogik 1907–2007. Eine Chronik der Montessori-Pädagogik in der Schweiz (Bern: Haupt Verlag, 2007) 25–49, 86–88, 199–215. 23. “Notiziario Montessoriano”, Montessori, Rivista (1:4,  1932) 249–250, “Notiziario Montessoriano”, Montessori, Rivista (1:5, 1932) 312.

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24. Giuliana Sorge, letter to Mussolini 30 October 1932, SPD.CO (1922–43, b. 288 f. 15279/1, ACS Roma), Mario M. Montessori, letter to Mussolini 15 January 1933, SPD.CO (1922–43, b. 288 f. 15279/1, ACS Roma), Maria Montessori, letter to Mussolini 25 March 1933, PCM (1934–36, f. 5.1. 2069 sf. 2, ACS Roma). 25. Anonymous report 27 February 1933, MI.PP, (b. 859, ACS Roma) Anonymous report 12/3,  1933, in: MI.PP, (b. 859, ACS Roma), Anonymous report 21 March 1933, MI.PP, (b. 859, ACS Roma). 26. Rita Kramer, Maria Montessori: A Biography (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,1978) 323, Harold Baumann, “Montessori-Pädagogik und Faschismus – eine Entgegnung”, 177–179, Günter Schulz-Benesch, Der Streit um Montessori: Kritische Nachforschung zum Werk eine katholischen Pädagogin von Weltruf, mit einer internationalen Montessori-Bibliographie (Freiburg: Herder, 1961) 163–166. 27. Piero Parini, letter to the mayor of Rome, Boncompagni Ludovisi 16 November 1933, PCM (1934–36, f. 143415 sf. 2, ACS Roma), Mario M.  Montessori, letter to Mussolini dated March 1935, SPD.CO (1922–43, b. 288  f. 15279/1), 1, Gianna Spargella, “Attività Montessoriano all’Estero-Primo Congresso Internazionale Montessori ad Amsterdam”, Opera Montessori (2:1, 1934) 44–52, Minutes from the Ministry of Education to the government office 26 January 1934, PCM (1934–36, f. 143415 sf. 2, ACS Roma). 28. Benito Mussolini, “La bontà”, Opera Montessori, Bollettino Bimestrale (2:1, 1934) 3–4. Maria Montessori, “La messa spiegata ai bambini”, Opera Montessori (2:1, 1934) 5–11, La Redazione, “Una parola alle insegnanti Montessoriane”, Opera Montessori (2:1, 1934) 12–13. 29. “Consegna della tessera fascista alle allieve della scuola di Metodo Montessori”, Opera Montessori (2:1, 1934) 30–31. De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women, 34, 153. 30. Orazia Belsito Prini, letter to Mussolini 25 June 1933, SPD.CO (1922–43, b. 1411 f. 513603, ACS Roma). 31. “Metodi educativi?”, Ottobre, quotidiano del fascismo, 15 March 1934. 32. “Programma dei lavori”, Opera Montessori (2:2–3, 1934) 71. 33. “Programma dei lavori”, Opera Montessori (2:2–3, 1934) 71. Associazione Internazionale Montessori AMI, II. Congresso Internazionale Montessori, (programma): Roma 3–10 aprile 1934, (1934), Armando Ravaglioli, La Roma di Mussolini. Fasti e nefasti del regime fascista nella storia della

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capitale, (Rome; Newton & Compton 1996) 7–12, 26–31, 34–50. Why the congress was called the second is not clear as it was in fact the fourth. 34. “Le giornate del Congresso”, Opera Montessori (2:2–3, 1934) 72–76. 35. “Le giornate del Congresso”, Opera Montessori (2:2–3, 1934) 77–80, Oscar Augzell, “Ett besök vid Montessoriskolorna i Rom”, Skola och samhälle (15:4, 1934) 49. 36. Anonymous report 5 April 1934, MI.PP, (b. 859, ACS Roma). 37. Maria Montessori, “Deviazione e Normalizzazione”, Opera Montessori (2:2–3, 1934) 7–16. 38. Anonymous report “Congresso Montessori” 4 April 1934, MI.PP, (b. 859, ACS Roma). 39. Anonymous report 5 April 1934, MI.PP, (b. 859, ACS Roma). 40. Anonymous report 5 April 1934, MI.PP, (b. 859, ACS Roma). 41. Torre, report 6 April 1934, MI.PP, (b. 859, ACS Roma). 42. Maria Montessori, “Seconda Conferenza”, Opera Montessori (2:2–3, 1934) 22. 43. Maria Montessori, “Seconda Conferenza”, 20, 24–25, Anonymous report 6 April 1934, MI.PP, (b. 859, ACS Roma). 44. Anonymous report 5 April 1934, MI.PP, (b. 859, ACS Roma), Anonymous report 6 April 1934, MI.PP, (b. 859, ACS Roma). 45. Torre, report 6 April 1934, MI.PP, (b. 859, ACS Roma), Anonymous report 14 April 1934, MI.PP, (b. 859, ACS Roma), Torre 7 April 1934, MI.PP, (b. 859, ACS Roma). 46. Giovanni Calò, “Il fanciullo e gl’ideali sociali”, Opera Montessori, (2:2–3, 1934) 54, Dina Bertoni Jovine, La scuola italiana dal 1870 ai giorni nostri (Rome; Editori Riuniti, 1958) 190–192. 47. Calò, “Il fanciullo e gl’ideali sociali”, 54–55. 48. Calò, “Il fanciullo e gl’ideali sociali”, 55–56. 49. Calò, “Il fanciullo e gl’ideali sociali”, 55–56, 60. 50. Calò, “Il fanciullo e gl’ideali sociali”, 66–70. 51. Calò, “Il fanciullo e gl’ideali sociali”, 68. 52. Maria Montessori, “Terza Conferenza”, Opera Montessori (2:2–3, 1934) 33–35. 53. Montessori, “Terza Conferenza”, Opera Montessori (2:2–3, 1934) 36–38, 41. 54. Montessori, “Terza Conferenza”, Opera Montessori (2:2–3, 1934) 39–40. 55. Montessori, “Terza Conferenza”, Opera Montessori (2:2–3, 1934) 40–41. 56. Montessori, “Terza Conferenza”, Opera Montessori (2:2–3, 1934) 41–43.

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57. Maria Montessori, “Quarta Conferenza”, Opera Montessori (2:2–3, 1934) 44–46, 48–49. 58. Julius Evola, “Il caso Montessori”, Vita Italiana (43:5, 1934) 615–621, Renzo De Felice, Mussolini il duce, II: Lo Stato totalitario 1936–1940 (Torino: Einaudi, 1981) 297, 316–317, Eugenio Garin, Cronache di filosofia italiana, 1900–1960, vol. 2 (Rome: Laterza, 1997) 350, Anthony J.  Gregor, Mussolini’s Intellectuals. Fascist social and political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005) 191–220, Fabio Venzi, “Julius Evola and Freemasonry”, Italian and German Freemasonry in the time of Fascism and National Socialism, Martin Papenheim (ed.), European Masonic Paper (Bayreuth: Quator Coronati, 2012) 49–81, Aldo A. Mola, Storia della Massoneria italiana dall’Unità alla Repubblica (Milan: Bompiani,1976) 515, 557. 59. Evola, “Il caso Montessori”, 617–621. 60. Evola, “Il caso Montessori”, 616, 619. 61. Anita M Ferrari, “L’Associazione Educatrice Italiana e il metodo delle sorelle Agazzi”, Rosa Agazzi a dieci anni dalla morte (Brescia: La Scuola, 1961) 57–58, Alessandro Alessandrini “Il metodo Agazzi”, Annali dell’Istruzione elementare (8:2, 1933) 150–161. 62. Marcella Falchi, “La questione del sistema educativo agazziano come metodo italiano”, Alle origini dell’esperienza agazziana: sottolineature e discorsi, vol II, Sira Serenella Macchietti (ed.) (Azzano San Paolo: Edizioni Junior, 2001) 202. 63. Ferrari, “L’Associazione educatrice italiana”, 57–58, “Il corso agazziano di Roma 2–15 settembre 1934”, Pro Infantia (22:6, 1934) 163–165, 175–176, 191–196. 64. Mario Casotti, “Presupposti storici e filosofici del metodo Agazzi”, Pro Infantia (22:6; 1934) 177–178, “La chiusura”, Pro Infantia (22:6, 1934)195–196, Alessandro Alessandrini, “L’educazione religiosa del bambino”, Pro Infantia (22:6, 1934) 187–190. 65. Marcella Falchi, Alle origini dell’esperienza agazziana: sottolineature e discorsi, vol. II, Macchietti, Sira Serenelli (ed.) (Azzano San Paolo: Edizioni Junior, 2001) 202–209, Massimo Grazzini, Sulle fonti del Metodo Pasquali-­Agazzi e altre questioni (Brescia: Istituto di Mompiano, 2006) 26–72, 380–413, 576–581. Marco Agosti’s and Vittorio Chizzolini’s introduction to the Agazzi method, La scuola materna italiana (1939), is a good example of the fascist framing the Agazzi method was given after Montessori had gone into exile. The Montessori method was entirely

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absent from the introduction on the historical background (pp. 9–22). The book ends with a chapter on “La Scuola Materna nell’Impero”, including photographs of children in Balilla uniforms. 66. Renzo De Felice, Mussolini il duce, I: Gli anni del consenso 1929–1936 (Turin: Einaudi, 1974) 597–808, Giorgio Rochat, Guerre italiane in Libia e in Ethiopia: Studi militari, 1921–1939, (Treviso: Pagus, 1991), Mark Mazower, Den mörka kontinenten: Europas nittonhundratal (Gothenburg: Daidalos, 1999) 89. 67. Mario M.  Montessori, letter to Mussolini March 1935, SPD.CO (1922–43, b. 288 f. 51279/1, ACS Roma). 68. Mario M.  Montessori, letter to Mussolini March 1935, SPD.CO (1922–43, b. 288 f. 51279/1, ACS, Roma). The letter also mentions a missing payment of 240,000 lire for Montessori’s teacher training courses in 1930 and 1931. 69. Cesare M. De Vecchi di Val Cismon, letter to Mussolini 16 May 1935, SPD.CO (1922–43, b. 288 f. 15279/1, ACS Roma), Anonymous report 8 February 1936, SPD.CO (1922–43, b. 635 f. 204359, ACS Roma). For the fate of Sorge see Ilia Suleu-Fira, “Montessori-Erinnerungen”, Assoziation Montessori Schweiz (2:1991) 29–59, Carla Roverselli, “Giuliana Sorge, Luigia Tincani e la diffusione del metodo Montessori”, Rivista di Storia dell’Educazione (8:2, 2021) 83–95. 70. Hélène Leenders, Der Fall Montessori, Die Geschichte einer reformpädagogischen Erziehungskonzeption im italienischen Faschismus (Bad Heilbrunn: Verlag Julius Klinkhardt, 2001) 228, Anonymous report 11 August 1936, MI.PP (b. 859, ACS Roma). 71. Montessori, Bibliografia Internazionale, (2001). Reference numbers of the seven titles mentioned: 2293, 3215, 3451, 3885, 5063, 8899, 11692. 72. Guido Della Valle, “Riforma idealista e controriforma realistica nella scuola Italiana”, Rivista pedagogica, (30:1, 1937) 35–50. Della Valle’s, as well as Calò’s, criticism of self-education primarily concerned the pedagogics of the Gentile school system. Ernesto Codignola, “Montessori, Maria”, Enciclopedia Biografica e Bibliografica, (Milan: Ebi,  1939) 299–300. There is a striking contrast between Codignola’s article and the entry on Maria Montessori in Gentile’s Enciclopedia Italiana (Rome: Istituto Giovanni Treccani,  1934), vol. 23, 758–759, a well-informed account of Montessori’s educational system and ideas. The description of her career also included her major successes in Mussolini’s Italy.

Timeline

1870 Maria Montessori is born on 31 August in Chiaravalle in the final years of the Risorgimento. Unification of Italy is completed in September when Rome is incorporated in the new nation state established in 1861. 1875 The family moves to Rome, where Montessori’s father, Alessandro, takes up his post as a civil servant at the Ministry of Finance. 1883 Women are by law permitted to attend secondary and upper-­ secondary schools. After finishing elementary school, Montessori goes on to study engineering.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Quarfood, The Montessori Movement in Interwar Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14072-3

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1890 A two-year course at the university faculty of natural sciences prepares Montessori for medical studies. 1896 Montessori passes her medical doctor exam on 10 July. She opens a private clinic alongside working at various hospitals and clinics. She participates in a women’s congress in Berlin. 1898 Her son Mario, born on 31 March, is left with a foster family. M. becomes involved in a medico-pedagogical campaign for the protection of mentally disabled children together with Mario’s father, Giuseppe Ferrucio Montesano. M. raises the issue of remedial classes and special-­needs institutions at the first national teachers’ congress in Turin. Rosa Agazzi’s educational method is presented at the same event. 1899 Propaganda tour for the medical-pedagogical society. Delegate at a women’s congress in London in June. In July, a study visit to the Bicêtre Hospital in Paris where Edouard Séguin’s special education method is practiced. 1900 M. and Montesano have joint directorship of the medical-­ pedagogical Orthophrenic School of Rome. Lectureship in hygiene and anthropology at a women’s teacher training college in Rome, a position M. holds until 1917, but most of that time she is on leave of absence.

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1901 Presentation of the Orthophrenic School at the second national teachers’ congress in Naples. M. and Montesano break when he marries another woman. M. leaves the school and enrols at the University of Rome, where she studies anthropology under Giuseppe Sergi and pedagogy under Luigi Credaro. 1903 Teaches at Ugo Pizzoli’s anthropology course for teachers at Crevalcore. 1904 M. qualifies as university lecturer in anthropology on 29 December. 1906 M. lectures in pedagogical anthropology at the Scuola pedagogica in Rome, a cross-disciplinary further education university course for teachers. 1907 The Casa dei bambini project is launched as part of the Istituto Romano’s social housing project in the San Lorenzo district in Rome. 1908 The Umanitaria Society opens its first Casa dei bambini in Milan. Culmination of the women’s suffrage campaign. M. participates in two women’s congresses in Rome and Milan.

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1909 Il Metodo della pedagogia scientifica, an account of the Casa dei bambini experiment, is published. The first Montessori teacher training course at Città di Castello. Collaboration with Franciscan nuns in Rome. A Montessori movement begins to form, leading to a break with Istituto Romano. 1910 Antropologia Pedagogica, a summary of Montessori’s course at Scuola Pedagogica 1906–1910, is published. Montessori teacher training course in Rome supported by the Italian women’s association. Municipal teacher training course. 1911 Articles in McClure’s Magazine and The Times describe M. as a pioneering pedagogue. Educators from across the world travel to Rome. 1912 Montessori societies are founded in the United States and the UK. The Montessori Method is published. Montessori’s mother, Renilde, dies. 1913 M. is reunited with her son Mario. The first international Montessori teacher training course in Rome. Comitato Nazionale Montessori is founded. First tour of the United States in December. 1914 Dr. Montessori’s Own Handbook is published. The second international Montessori teacher training course in Rome. Break with

 Timeline 

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McClure. Montessori leads a course in collaboration with Umanitaria. Italy’s first state preschool programme favours the ­ Agazzi method to Montessori’s disadvantage. 1915 Participation at the San Francisco Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The third international Montessori teacher training course in Los Angeles and San Diego, the fourth in San Francisco. Cooperation with Catalan authorities initiated. Montessori’s father, Alessandro, dies. Italy enters World War I. 1916 The Montessori method is expanded to include schools as outlined in L’Autoeducazione nelle scuole elementari. The method is tested in two Rome schools, among others. The fifth international Montessori teacher training course in Barcelona where M. initiates a religious instruction experiment and psychological studies of children at an orphanage. 1917 Back in the United States, Mario marries Helen Christy. The sixth international Montessori teacher training course in San Diego. The Advanced Montessori Method is published. M. proposes a White Cross organization for children affected by war. Montessori loses control over the American Montessori Society. The Dutch and Danish Montessori societies are founded. 1918 The newlyweds move in with Montessori in Barcelona. The first of four grandchildren, Mario junior, is born. Pope Benedict XV blesses Il Metodo. Società degli Amici del Metodo Montessori is founded in

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Naples. School experiments are also initiated there. Final collapse of the American Montessori movement. 1919 The seventh international Montessori teacher training course in London. A German Montessori society is founded. Mussolini’s fascist movement is founded. 1920 A Dutch research team assists M. in developing her method for secondary and upper-secondary education. 1921 The eighth international Montessori teacher training course in London. The Montessori Society UK splits up. State and municipal evaluation of Rome Montessori schools. Manuale di Pedagogia scientifica is published with a foreword by the socialist Arturo Labriola. Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF) is founded. 1922 Results from the Barcelona experiment are published in I bambini viventi nella chiesa. It is the first in a series of publications on Catholic education and liturgy. M. is invited by the minister of education, Antonino Anile, to inspect Italian Montessori schools, and she participates in the decision to close the Rome Montessori schools. In October, the March on Rome. Mussolini is appointed prime minister. 1923 Das Kind in der Familie, an essay collection on the relationship between parents and children, is published. The Austrian Montessori

 Timeline 

297

society is founded. The ninth international Montessori teacher training course in London. Montessori is made an honorary doctor at Durham University. Spanish Montessori schools are closed d ­ uring the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. Giovanni Gentile’s educational reform is initiated in Italy. 1924 Eight issues of The Call of Education, the first international Montessori journal, are published in Amsterdam during a period of two years. The tenth international Montessori teacher training course in Amsterdam. As a result of the Acerbo Act, the PNF wins an overwhelming majority of seats in parliament. Parliamentary stalemate after the Matteotti assassination. The two Montessori associations CNM and SAMM are reconstituted to form the Opera Nazionale Montessori (ONM). 1925 The eleventh international Montessori teacher training course in London. The municipal Montessori schools in Naples are closed. The ONM’s office is moved from Rome to the Umanitaria Foundation in Milan where there are still well-functioning Montessori schools. Fascist family policy is introduced and the Opera Nazionale per la Maternità ed Infanzia (ONMI) is founded. The first laws paving the way for dictatorship come into force in November. 1926 The first national Montessori teacher training course in Milan. Gentile takes over the leadership of ONM; Mussolini is appointed honorary president. Montessori’s first audience with Mussolini. The fascist children’s and youth organization Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB) is founded. Montessori makes a tour of Argentina in September. After the introduction of new legislation in November,

298 Timeline

Italy has become a one-party state with no freedom of the press, a political police and a special tribunal for crimes against the state. 1927 The twelfth international Montessori teacher training course in London. The thirteenth international Montessori teacher training course in Berlin. The second national Montessori teacher training course in Milan. Montessori’s second audience with Mussolini. Some twenty issues of L’Idea Montessori, organo dell’Opera Nazionale Montessori, the first Italian Montessori journal, are published in Milan during three years. Montessori’s and Agazzi’s preschool methods are highlighted in connection with the centenary of the Aporti infant schools. Montessori, Mario and his family return to Barcelona. 1928 Regia Scuola di Metodo Montessori is inaugurated in Rome. Montessori is director of studies, Giuliana Sorge vice director. Administrative head of the method school is Nazareno Padellaro, superintendent of the elementary schools of Rome. 1929 The fourteenth international Montessori teacher course in London. The first Montessori congress at Helsingør in connection with the fifth NEF congress (NEF: New Education Fellowship, a network of radical reform educationalists). Foundation of the international Montessori organization SMI, renamed in 1932 as Association Montessori Internationale (AMI). The Lateran Treaty between the Church and the State consolidates the position of the Catholic Church in Italian politics. On 31 December, the Divini illius magistri encyclical issued by Pope Pius XI advocates authoritarian educational methods with reference to original sin.

 Timeline 

299

1930 The fifteenth international Montessori teacher course in Rome. ONM head office is moved to Rome, which is also where the SMI head office is situated. The second edition of Manuale with a ­foreword by Padellaro. The obligatory fascist reader, the libro di Stato, is introduced in Italian schools. 1931 The sixteenth international Montessori teacher course in Rome. The seventeenth international Montessori teacher course in London. Foundation of the Spanish Montessori Society. Emilio Bodrero succeeds Gentile as president of ONM. The ONM adopts new statutes on 31 August. Five issues of Montessori, pubblicazione mensile dell’ente Opera Montessori are published in Rome. In parliament Paolo Orano argues in favour of intensified investment in the Montessori Method. 1932 Six issues of Montessori, Rivista bimestrale dell’Opera Montessori are issued in Rome. The second Montessori congress in Nice in connection with the sixth NEF congress. A conference on peace education is organized in connection with the League of Nations’ disarmament conference in Geneva. Montessori participates with her lecture La paix et l’éducation. The Swiss Montessori society is founded. The fascist secret police place M. and teachers at the Montessori method school under surveillance. 1933 M. and Mario resign from the ONM. Montessori also resigns from the post as director of the method school. Piero Parini succeeds Bodrero as president of ONM.  The eighteenth international Montessori teacher training course in Barcelona where Montessori

300 Timeline

schools and the Montessori method are again favoured by the new republic. The nineteenth international Montessori teacher training course in London. The third Montessori congress in Amsterdam. The AMI head office has been moved there from Berlin. Persecution of Montessorians in Nazi Germany begins. 1934 Four issues of Opera Montessori, bolletino bimestrale are published in Rome. The fourth Montessori congress in Rome. The twentieth international Montessori teacher training course in Nice. Agazzi’s system is sanctioned as the official preschool method in Italy at a course organized by the Associazione Educatrice Italiana. Padellaro co-authors a fascist curriculum based on the Duce cult. 1935 The twenty-first international Montessori teacher training course in London. After Mario’s last letter to Mussolini, M. is informed that her services are no longer required by the fascist regime. The imperialistic war on Abyssinia is launched. 1936 L’Enfant is published in Paris. Essay collection focusing on the child’s psychopedagogical development. The fifth Montessori congress in Oxford, UK. Montessori participates at a peace congress in Brussels. The Montessori method is banned in Nazi Germany. The Italian Empire is proclaimed in May following the conquest of Abyssinia. The ONM is disbanded the following month and the Montessori experiments in Italian schools are closed down. The Spanish Civil War breaks out in May; Italian troops support Franco. Montessori leaves her home in Barcelona for exile in the Netherlands. Mario and Helen Christy separate. The German–Italian alliance is proclaimed in October.

 Timeline 

301

1937 The twenty-second Montessori teacher training course in London. The sixth Montessori congress in Copenhagen. Montessori proposes the foundation of a Social Party of the Child. 1938 The twenty-third Montessori teacher training course in Amsterdam. The seventh Montessori congress in Edinburgh. Il segreto dell’infanzia is published in Switzerland. Montessori schools in Austria are closed after Anschluss. Racist legislation adopted in Italy. 1939 The twenty-fourth Montessori teacher training course in London. Montessori participates at a peace conference in London. AMI publishes The Erdkinder, an account of Montessori’s experiment involving youth education at a school in Laren. Italy occupies Albania. World War II starts in September. M. and Mario travel to India in October where they are invited by the Theosophical Society to lead a teacher training course. 1940 In June Italy enters the war on Germany’s side. Because they are Italian citizens, M. and her son are prohibited from leaving India. Mario is held in custody for a few months, but is able to join his mother on her seventieth birthday. The first teacher training course in Madras (Chennai). 1941 The second teacher training course in India at Adyar. The Indian Montessori society is formed. Some ten teacher training courses are held in India, Pakistan and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) between 1940 and 1949.

302 Timeline

1943 Mussolini is ousted. The Allies land in Sicily. The Republic of Salò. 1944 Rome is liberated in June. 1945 Mussolini is arrested and executed. Germany capitulates. 1946 Victor Emmanuel III abdicates. The Republic of Italy. Montessori returns to Europe on 30 July. The twenty-seventh Montessori teacher training course in London. Education for a New World is published in Adyar. 1947 The twenty-eighth Montessori teacher training course in London. The Italian parliament pays homage to Montessori. ONM is re-­ established. Mario marries the Montessorian Ada Pierson who had been looking after his children during the war. India becomes independent. 1948 M. is back in India where she leads several courses. To Educate the Human Potential is published in Adyar and What You Should Know about Your Child in Colombo.

 Timeline 

303

1949 M. returns to Europe for good. The eighth Montessori congress in San Remo. M. is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Also nominated in 1950 and 1951. The Absorbent Mind is published in Madras (Chennai). Educazione e Pace is published in Milan as are Formazione dell’uomo and The Absorbent Mind. 1950 The twenty-ninth Montessori teacher training course in Perugia. Lecture tour of Sweden and Norway. Among several honours: honorary doctorate in Amsterdam, honorary citizen of Milan, Perugia and Ancona. 1951 The thirtieth Montessori teacher training course in Innsbruck. The ninth Montessori congress in London. 1952 Montessori dies on 6 May.

Index1

A

B

Adler, Alfred, 109, 110, 231 Agazzi, Carolina, 20 Agazzi, Rosa, 20–22, 148, 176, 197–200, 280, 281, 292, 295, 298, 300 Alessandrini, Alessandro, 279, 280 Amadori, Rosy, 8 Anile, Antonino, 161, 162, 296 Aporti, Ferrante, 16, 20, 22, 24, 197, 198, 279, 298 Aprile, Maria, 10 Arendt, Hannah, 38, 39 Assagioli, Roberto, 232 Augustinus, Aurelius, 195, 197 Augzell, Oscar, 270

Babini, Valeria, 55 Baker Eddy, Mary, 73 Balfour, Betty, 77, 78 Bang, C. A., 67, 77 Barbera, Mario, 150, 151, 233, 234, 280 Battistelli, Vincenzina, 147–149, 157, 187–189 Beatty, Herbert M., 78 Belluzzo, Giuseppe, 202, 204 Belsito Prini, Orazia, 259, 261, 268, 271 Benedict XV, 16, 142, 295 Benetti-Brunelli, Valeria, 149 Bentham, Jeremy, 35 Bergson, Henri, 72, 73, 154

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 C. Quarfood, The Montessori Movement in Interwar Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14072-3

305

306 Index

Bernabei, Mario, 245 Bernstein, Basil, 35, 36 Bertin, Giovanni Maria, 105 Bertolini, Pietro, 145 Bianchessi, Antonio, 196, 197, 205–207 Binet, Alfred, 79, 118 Biscottini, Umberto, 131, 132, 134, 282 Bodrero, Emilio, 140, 227, 228, 237, 238, 241, 257, 262, 264, 265, 299 Böhm, Winfried, 33 Boncompagni Ludovisi, Francesco, 221 Bone, Lucy, 86 Bonfigli, Clodomiro, 9 Bontempi, Teresina, 153, 265 Boschetti-Alberti, Maria, 189 Bourdieu, Pierre, 35 Bourneville, Desiré-Magloire, 10, 99 Bowlby, John, 72, 89n19, 115 Brandell, Georg, 54 Braun, Elise, 269 Bulwer-Lytton, Victor, 2nd Earl of Lytton, 65, 66 Burt, Cyril, 118 C

Calò, Giovanni, 268, 273–276 Cambi, Franco, 56, 250n12 Carr, Wildon, 73 Casotti, Mario, 149, 233, 279, 280 Castelli, Enrico, 241, 262, 263 Catarsi, Enzo, 34 Cavaletti, Sofia, 16

Chiari Allegretti, Gilda, 145, 150, 155, 156 Chiavolini, Alessandro, 258, 263 Christy, Helen, 71, 295, 300 Cionci, Dalma, 222 Cives, Giacomo, 34, 192 Claparède, Edouard, 74, 118, 178 Claremont, Claude Albert, 72, 77, 81–84, 98, 192 Clausewitz, Carl von, 244 Cohen, Sol, 74, 75 Comenius, Johan Amos, 194 Condulmari, Lola, 175, 177 Corda, Maria Grazia, 61 Costa Gnocchi, Adele, 263, 265 Cottone, Carmelo, 56 Credaro, Luigi, 13, 222, 223, 293 Crichton-Browne, James, 98 Crichton-Miller, Hugh, 68, 71, 73, 77 Croce, Benedetto, 132, 151, 158 Cromwell, Mary, 62 D

Darwin, Charles, 117 D’Azeglio, Massimo, 6 De Bartolomeis, Francesco, 105 De Felice, Renzo, 134, 185, 186, 240 De Lissa, Lillian, 77 De Sanctis, Sante, 8 De Vecchi di Val Cismon, Cesare Maria, 282 De Vries, Hugo, 12, 115–119, 122 Decroly, Ovide, 74, 99, 118 Déjerine, Joseph Jules, 72 Della Torre, Angelo, 269

 Index 

Della Valle, Guido, 145, 161, 283, 284 Depaepe, Marc, 119 Dewey, John, 14, 71, 74, 101 Di Piemonte, Maria, 271 Driesch, Hans, 118 Droogleever Fortuyn, Aemilius Bernardus, 118 Drummond, Margaret, 76 Dubois, Paul, 72 Durkheim, Emile, 35 E

Ellenberger, Henri F., 104 Ensor, Beatrice, 67 Ercole, Francesco, 258, 259, 269, 280 Evola, Julius, 277–279 F

Facta, Luigi, 170 Falchi, Marcella, 279 Fancello, Maria, 162 Fechner, Gustav, 80 Fedele, Pietro, 133, 144, 186–188, 202, 227 Fedeli, Anna, 31 Federzoni, Luigi, 133 Ferrari, Anita, 280 Ferrière, Adolphe, 188, 189, 260 Finazzi Sartor, Rosetta, 33 Fisher, Herbert, 67, 85 Formiggini Santamaria, Emilia, 190 Foucault, Michel, 35, 36, 57, 80 Franchetti Hallgarten, Alice, 13 Franchetti, Leopoldo, 13, 153

307

Franzoni, Andrea, 279, 280 Fredric the Great of Prussia, 244 Freud, Anna, 71, 89n19, 104, 105, 109, 226, 231 Freud, Sigmund, 104 Froebel, Friedrich, 12, 16–18, 20, 21, 24, 55, 58, 62, 69, 76, 153 G

Gallavresi, Giuseppe, 177 Galleppini Leoni, Fanny, 206–208 Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, 242 Geddes, Eric, 85 Gentile, Giovanni, 133–135, 137, 142–144, 149–155, 157–161, 169–191, 199, 205, 221, 222, 224, 226, 227, 237, 238, 250n12, 258, 297, 299 Gesell, Arnold, 115 Gianni, Niccolo, 224 Giolitti, Giovanni, 67, 158, 169, 223 Giuliano, Balbino, 221, 236 Godefroy, Joffrey, 95–97 Gonella, Guido, 130, 131 Grandi, Dino, 220 Grant, Cecil, 66 Graziani, Ettore, 161 Gueritte, Madeleine T. J., 193 Guerri, Mario, 269 Gutek, Gerald, 32 Gutek, Patricia, 32 H

Haecker, Valentin, 118 Hawker, Bertram, 66

308 Index

Heymans, Gerardus, 97 Holmes, Edmond, 66, 67, 75, 78, 81, 84 Honegger Fresco, Grazia, 133 Hunt, Harriet T., 72 Hutchinson, Lily, 66, 81, 86 I

Itard, Jean, 9, 17, 74 J

Jervolino, Maria, 129, 130 Jesus Christ, 232 Joosten-Chotzen, Rosy, 95 Jung, Carl Gustaf, 77

Lao-Tse, 193 Lawn, Martin, 87 Lawrence, H. E., 87 Le Bon, Gustave, 186 Leenders, Hélène, 139–144, 186, 190, 238, 240 Lepore, Francesco, 264, 265, 267, 268 Lino, Marcionetti, 177 Lo Preiato, Maria, 263 Lombardo Radice, Giuseppe, 137, 144, 152–154, 173, 174, 187, 189–191, 197–201, 279 Lombroso, Cesare, 10 Lorenz, Konrad, 115 M

K

Kerschensteiner, Georg, 101, 118 Key, Ellen, 18–20, 22–24, 58, 102 Kilpatrick, William Heard, 14–15, 69, 70, 151, 152 Kimmins, Charles Williams, 68, 81 Koch, Robert, 7 Krabbe, 234 Kramer, Rita, 4, 11, 32, 55, 68, 74–76, 95, 134–137, 139, 143, 184, 240 Krauss, Erwin, 109, 268, 275 L

Labriola, Arturo, 67, 156, 226, 296 Labriola, Nadia, 174 Lama, Luisa, 55, 184, 185 Lane, Homer, 74, 75 Lane, Marie E., 86

Maccheroni, Anna Maria, 13, 15, 32, 46, 88, 95, 192 Macià, Francesc, 266 Mackinder, Jessie, 83 MacMunn, Norman, 66, 74 Maraini Guerrieri Gonzaga, Maria, 13, 173 Marazzi, Giuliana, 139, 141 Marchetti, Maria Teresa, 261 Marconi, Guglielmo, 177, 237, 238 Marcucci, Alessandro, 177, 186, 188, 200, 206 Margherita of Savoy, 171 Martini, Ferdinando, 7 Mather, William, 65 Matteotti, Giacomo, 174, 189, 191, 297 Matthew St., 178, 233 Mazzoleni, Enrica, 208 McClure, Samuel Sidney, 142, 295 Metelli di Lallo, Carmela, 33, 34

 Index 

Migliavacca, Luigina, 206, 208 Mola, Maria Antonietta, 208 Montesano, Giuseppe Ferrucio, 9, 10, 292, 293 Montessori, Alessandro, 6 Montessori, Mario (junior), 295 Montessori, Mario M., 1, 98, 135, 193, 227, 236, 261, 262, 281 Montessori, Renilde, 6, 14, 129, 207, 294 Moretti, Angiola, 259, 268 Moretti, Giulio, 197 Moris, Maurizio Mario, 242 Mussolini, Anna Maria, 257 Mussolini, Arnaldo, 202, 267 Mussolini, Benito, 138, 162 Mussolini, Romano, 257

309

Nathan, Ernesto, 13, 146 Neill, Alexander S, 74, 75 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 22, 23, 131, 248 Nunn, Percy, 66

Palau Vera, Juan, 145 Paolini, Maria Antonietta, 259, 260 Parini, Piero, 263, 265, 267, 280, 299 Parkhurst, Helen, 31, 32, 84, 86 Pasquali, Pietro, 198 Paul St., 235, 236 Pavlov, Ivan, 98 Pestalozzi, Johann, 87, 270 Philip, Ruth, 53, 83, 87 Philippi, Cornelia S van Reesema, 94, 99 Piaget, Jean, 115, 245, 268, 274, 275 Pierson, Ada, 129, 302 Pinel, Philippe, 72 Pius XI, 233, 280, 298 Pizzigoni, Giuseppa, 176 Pizzoli, Ugo, 293 Polakow, Valerie, 39 Povegliano-Lorenzotti, V., 189 Prezzolini, Giuseppe, 151, 152, 154 Procacci, Giuliani, 170 Pyle, Adelia, 31

O

R

Oddone, Elisabetta, 269 Orano, Paolo, 237, 238, 299 Orestano, Francesco, 237, 264 Osimo, Augusto, 62, 177 Owen, Robert, 16, 55, 57

Radi, Goliardi, 208 Radice, Alfred Hutton, 79, 80 Radice, Sheila, 68–88, 154 Rank, Otto, 111 Rasputin, 246 Rennie, Belle, 77, 86 Resta, Raffaele, 161 Révész, Géza, 95, 96 Ricci, Renato, 227 Ridolfi, Mario, 269 Rivara, 264, 265, 268

N

P

Padellaro, Nazareno, 205, 223–227, 245, 283, 298–300 Pagano, Lucia, 268

310 Index

Rivera Primo de, Miguel, 297 Rocco, Alfredo, 175 Rocco, Silvia, 268 Rolland, Romain, 242 Rosenberg, Alfred, 267 Rosetto, Vittorio, 244 Rotten, Elisabeth, 245, 265 Roubiczek, Lili, 104 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 20, 33, 34, 58, 102, 115, 150, 153, 156, 194, 264, 278 S

Santoliquido, Angela, 188 Santucci, Giacomo, 133, 250n12 Schulz-Benesch, Günter, 33 Schuyten, Médard Carolus, 114–122 Schwegman, Marjan, 32, 139, 141, 184, 240 Scocchera, Augusto, 16, 32, 49n3, 137, 138, 142, 179, 235 Séguin, Edouard, 10, 12, 17, 23, 74, 99, 292 Selleck, Richard J. W., 75, 88 Sergi, Giuseppe, 10, 11, 18–20, 24, 31, 293 Solmi, Arrigo, 268 Solomon, 234–236 Sorel, Charles, 186 Sorge, Giuliana, 177, 192, 200–202, 205, 230, 231, 240, 241, 245, 246, 253n55, 257–266, 298 Spargella, Gianna, 267, 268, 271, 272 Spencer, Herbert, 19, 20 Spirito, Ugo, 154–158 Spranger, Eduard, 54

Standing, Edwin Mortimer, 16 Stern, William, 115 Swannell, Mildred, 83 T

Talamo, Edoardo, 11 Tarroni, Evelina, 131 Thörn, Håkan, 56, 57 Thorndike, Edward Lee, 15 Tolstoy, Leo, 153, 270 Tomasi, Tina, 56, 134, 137 Torre, 260, 269, 271–273 Trabalzini, Paola, 32, 49n3 Tromp, Caroline, 95 Tronconi, Angela Emilia, 206–208 Truffi, Riccardo, 177, 206 Turi, Gabriele, 143 V

Venino, Pier Gaetano, 177 Veratti, Luigi, 203, 204 Victor Emmanuel III, 170, 302 Villa, Sereno L., 244 W

Webb, Florence, 76, 83 White, Jessie, 66, 82–84, 87 Winship, Albert E., 53 Wundt, Wilhelm, 80 Z

Zagni, Amalia, 222 Zanzi, Carlo, 146–148, 161, 224 Zweig, Stefan, 14