S1 E4 – All about Dr Montessori’s life, family and work in conversation with Carolina Montessori, her great granddaughter

Today we get into the woman behind the Montessori approach – yes, Dr Montessori herself in a lovely conversation with her great granddaughter, Carolina Montessori. Listen to this conversation and learn about:

• Dr Montessori’s years working in psychiatric hospitals and anthropology before working in education
• Her work as a feminist
• How she became so well-known in an era before the internet and instagram
• An insight into her relationship with her own son, Mario, who was born out of wedlock
• Carolina’s work in the AMI archives including books of letters from her great-grandmother to her family
• What it is like to grow up in the Montessori family and how Carolina raised her own children in a Montessori way
• Carolina’s own beautiful story being married to the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq and Minister of Finance
• a visit to a school in Kurdistan
• and problems getting Montessori into the public system

Simone also talks about a Montessori approach to food and answers another listener question.

This week’s listener question

This week’s question is from Laura about my parent-child classes in Amsterdam at Jacaranda Tree Montessori:

How is a day in your room with the parents? Do they just observe or are they with you or with the kids all the time?… Gracias!!

Links

• Dr Montessori’s link to Itard and Seguin
• Lombroso, anthropology
• Maria Montessori Sails to America, a private diary, 1913
• Maria Montessori writes to her father, letters from California, 1915
• Maria Montessori Speaks to Parents
• Listing of Montessori Playgroups prepared by Studio June here
• Jacaranda Tree Montessori, my Montessori playgroup in Amsterdam
• Setting up a Montessori Playgroup 2-week bootcamp
• Submit your listener question here

Photos from the school Carolina visited in Kurdistan

Carolina wrote, “It was a school in the poorest part of northern Iraq. There wasn’t much money, as you can see the rooms are quite bare. For the younger children there were no tables at all. The teachers made the sandpaper letters themselves. It probably was not a perfect Montessori school, but for Iraq it was a miracle. Schools are still very traditional, you know, all the children sitting and listening to the teacher, working on the same thing. No individual work. Even clean (squat) toilets are a miracle in that country.”