The Child Is the Teacher

November 22, 2021
Journalist and literary scout De Stefano (Oriana Fallaci) focuses this episodic biography on childhood education pioneer Maria Montessori’s tumultuous personal life and prickly personality rather than her pedagogical theory. De Stefano sketches Montessori’s childhood interest in acting, the obstacles she overcame to enter medical school and practice as a physician, her outspoken support for women’s suffrage, and her “clandestine union” with fellow physician Giuseppe Montesano, with whom she had a son out of wedlock. De Stefano also delves into the inspiration Montessori (1870–1952) took from Édouard Séguin’s methods of educating intellectually disabled children, and the breakthroughs she made as director of a kindergarten program in the San Lorenzo neighborhood of Rome. Drawing from Montessori’s personal writings, De Stefano paints a portrait of a charismatic yet difficult woman who was devoted to her family, in love with her own celebrity, prone to making collaborators into enemies, and willing to seek Mussolini’s support for her cause. Unfolding the story as a series of vignettes and writing in the present tense, De Stefano occasionally sacrifices coherence for a sense of immediacy. Still, readers of feminist history will savor this evenhanded profile of a groundbreaking educator and businesswoman.

January 1, 2022

Many have written on Maria Montessori's pedagogical method of individualized learning; following five years of research, De Stefano (Oriana Fallaci: The Journalist, the Agitator, the Legend) focuses instead on Montessori's remarkable life. Born in Italy in 1870, Montessori defied her times, and De Stefano describes how a determined Montessori, despite the misogyny of the time, became a doctor. While working at the Orthophrenic School, Montessori began to teach children with intellectual disabilities. From observing these children, she developed her pedagogical methods by expanding upon the theories of special education expert �douard S�guin. When Montessori discovered she was pregnant, she refused to marry and left her son with others to focus on her work (eventually, mother and son reunited). To establish her schools and find disciples who would promote her teachings, Montessori used every opportunity available to her, De Stefano says, such as attracting patrons, writing books, appealing to the Catholic Church, and even requesting financial assistance from Mussolini. She trusted very few and found herself torn between her ideals and ambition, the author contends. VERDICT De Stefano presents a balanced, well-written, and clear-eyed portrait of a complex, trailblazing woman who fought hard to change how children were perceived and taught.--Jacqueline Snider

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2022
A chronicle of the life and enduring legacy of the innovative Italian educator. For five years, journalist De Stefano mined published and archival sources in search of "the real person beyond the global trademark" of Maria Montessori (1870-1952). Written in the present tense, this well-researched narrative bears witness to determination, setbacks, sorrow, and overwhelming success. Montessori trained as a physician at a time when few women were admitted to study medicine. Researching her thesis in psychiatry, she was disturbed by what she saw in the children's section of an asylum. "Considered incurable, and therefore committed for life, dressed in burlap aprons, dirty, unruly, they are perhaps the most horrifying element of that terrible place," writes the author. Immersing herself in everything she could find about the education of intellectually disabled children, Montessori discovered the pedagogy of 19th-century educator �douard S�guin and became "a passionate disciple." In 1899, she founded the National League for the Protection of Mentally Deficient Children and, in 1900, a school for the training of special education teachers. Within the next decade, she expanded her purview to include children who were economically deprived, inaugurating a kindergarten in a poor section of Italy. Montessori's pedagogy--privileging the needs and desires of children and using specially constructed materials--attracted appreciative notice throughout Europe and America and grew after her books were published and translated. Montessori was so passionate about her method she seemed to some a prophetess; a devout Catholic, she devoted herself to education "in the same way that others join a religious order." A lifelong feminist, she was an early supporter of "community education, female suffrage, a law for the determination of paternity, equal pay for men and women." De Stefano reveals Montessori's complicated personal life: an overbearing mother, recurring ill health and bouts of loneliness, and keeping secret the existence of a son born out of wedlock. A complicated personality, as well, she could be authoritarian, "ornery," and selfishly opportunistic. A nuanced portrait of an educational pioneer.

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February 15, 2022
The Montessori method is designed to give young children power over their own bodies. Montessori schools are designed with open spaces that encourage self-directed play; Montessori beds allow babies to move freely, unconstrained by the bars of a crib; Montessori toys invite toddlers to experiment and develop their own conception of the world. Presented in short, spry chapters written in the present tense, de Stefano's (Oriana Fallaci, 2017) biography of the woman behind the educational model tracks the pioneering physician's life and anchors her pedagogical innovations in personal experiences, such as her own hatred of primary school, and cultural transformations in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Italy. Basing her work on that of Frenchman Edouard S�guin half a century before her, Montessori viewed the classroom as a laboratory in which she sought to free children, "butterflies," she called them, who were "stuck with pins, fixed in their places" by traditional education. Drawing from Montessori's own writings as well as recent works, de Stefano presents the pioneer as a strong-willed firecracker who understood that the world could be different, if only children were allowed to create it for themselves.

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