Reminiscing my training in Maria Montessori's country

(Part I)

In every age, there are to be found certain representative men, who in a special way express the spirit of their age. What others feel vaguely or in disconnected fragments, they see steadily and as a whole. By the fire of their genius they start new movements. As Aristotle summed up the knowledge of the ancient world, so Thomas Aquinas and Dante were the spirits of the Middle Ages. In spiritual dimension, both St. Francis and St. Dominic, sensitive to the needs of the times, created the Mendicant Orders just as St. Benedict, eight centuries before founded Monasticism. Charles Darwin discovered the idea of evolution.

Without doubt, Dr. Montesssori holds a place among these “representative persons” in world history as the “representative of the Century of the Child.” No one acquainted with the educational developments within the century would deny the paramount influence which she has exercised in every country.

Pilgrimage to Perugia

Preschool teachers from the whole world often seek to visit or train in Perugia, capital of Umbria, where Dottoressa Montessori conducted lectures. It is a major university town where Medicine, Law, Agriculture and Fine Arts are offered. Three hours away from Rome, students who train at the Centro Montessori Internazionale, have to take a train ride from the Stazione di Termini in Rome to reach it. I joined 500 participants in the 1998 International Montessori Congress “Science - An Instrument of Peace.” It commemorated the centenary year of Mario Montessori, the only child of Dr. Montessori who faithfully accompanied and assisted her in her teacher training courses and lectures in America, Europe and India.

For me, it was a sentimental journey to my hometown Perugia, where I took the 1966-1967 teacher training course for the three- to six-year-olds. Later in 1968-1969, another Italian borsa di studio allowed me to take up the training course to teach six- to 12-year-old children in Bergamo north of Italy. For convenience of the foreign participants, the huge blue Sulga bus took us straight from Leonardo da Vinci International Airport to Perugia, the heart of Rome. The three-hour drive cut across through the Coliseum, Roman Forum, Caracalla Baths, etc. We drove through Strade del Sole (the highway of the sun) past other lovely hill towns; Oriveto, Spoleto, Todi, Assisi. It’s autumn and the graceful rolling hills were covered by yellow, orange and reddish autumn foliage.

The city where the popes went into exile

The bus climbed midway on the historical hill of Perugia, where the popes in exile, once upon a time, used it as the small Vatican. We alighted at Piazza d’ Italia where Tess, my assistant and I, with our compact suitcases walked about a kilometer stretch of Corso Vannucci to the cathedral where Zharina Tirol, a new Filipina teacher trainee I helped enroll in my old training school was waiting to take us to her monolocale (a private apartment) across Teatro Morlacchi, the conference site.

Our kababayan

Behold a cluster of Filipinos chatting at the piazza park look at us curiously. I greeted them in Italian and they were confused since I was wearing a dark suit with matching velour hat. “Pilipino ba kayo?” they queried in disbelief mixed with pleasure.

Yes, Perugia has completely changed with the presence of these young Filipinos, now numbering about 500, mostly from Batangas and Ilocos. They are either cooks or gardeners of rich industrialists and famous soccer players of the city.

Perugia is most memorable in my whole Montessori life. It became my second hometown where I spoke, ate and lived the Italian way with an Italian family. I almost “touched” Dr. Maria Montessori in the person of Signorina Antonietta Paolini, then retired from directing the Montessori training center, but still her old gracious, enthusiastic, noble lady, who recalled in her Congress talk “Tribute to Maria Montessori,” how the Dottoressa changed her life.

King Umberto’s governess

Sig. na Antonietta Paolini recalled that King Umberto’s children were all grown up so her days as their governess had to end. Dr. Montessori was giving a lecture at the universita and her words held Antonietta spellbound. Dr. Montessori then invited her to take the teacher training course. Later she was also asked to head the AMI - Centro Montessori Internationale teacher training school of Perugia. She passed away right after our conference.

Even our examiner from Rome, Marsilla Palocci joined the conference and inspired us with her talk on “Cosmic Education, Responsibility and Peace.”

Usually, in such a Congress, I would have met Mario Montessori, the only son of the Dottoressa, but he passed away in 1982. Instead, I met for the third time, Renilde Montessori, his youngest daughter, who now heads the AMI from the Amsterdam headquarters. I first met her in 1994, in the International Montessori Congress in Nara, Japan. I met her again in 1996 at the American Montessori Congress in Seattle

She was together with my special mentor, Hilda Pattell of the AMI-Maria Montessori Teacher Training Center at Lyndhurst Gardens, London who gave me a one-on-one training in English Language for the preschool level as arranged by Mario. The Perugia training was fully conducted in Italian.

Science - an instrument for peace

A major speaker in the Congress, Carmello Grazzini was my mentor in Bergamo, the AMI Montessori Center for training elementary school teachers. As a close collaborator with Mario on Math, Geometry, and Science researches, his Tribute to Mario recounted how he had been traveling often with him as his “personal secretary” besides being an assistant. He has passed away. The son of the late Elenora Honegger, director of the Bergamo Center, now heads the Bergamo Elementary School.

Cited by the Times as the most interesting woman in Europe in 1930, when she was featured on its cover, “Discoverer of the New Child”, Dr. Maria Montessori established a scientific system of conditioning children to become independent. Although Dr. Montessori’s interest was focused on development rather than mere learning, she did not remain limited to the preschool age of three to six. Her researches first discovered that retarded children could learn and pass the national examination better than normal children. Normal children at the San Lorenzo laborers’ district following her system were miraculously transformed into the “new children,” who loved work and order. Later, this led her in two directions: forward towards adolescence; and backward towards the newly born child.

A leaven for the whole sphere of education from preschool to college

Seeing that her method for small children was not the end of the movement but only its beginning, she prophesied, “My discovery would act like a leaven, which would in due time, permeate the whole sphere of education right up to university age.”

I blushed when my old buddy and classmate Giacometta Zucconi exclaimed and announced to her colleagues from Rome, Bologna and Milano, “I thought my beautiful Montessori Casa dei Bambini in a palazzo right beside the Terme de Caracalla was quite an achievement. But you Preciosa, you even have an elementary school, scuola professionale and a college. What more a ristorante Italiano at that!!! Now I feel that I have done nothing in these past 32 years.”

Other participants, especially Montessori school owners from America and even Taiwan where Montessori monthly tuition fee is not less than $300-$400, are surprised to know that we charge less than $1,000 a year! They also think it is incredible for me to have eight outreach preschools in laborers’ districts where a child pays $100 for the whole year.

Today, this outreach program has been adapted in more than 150 schools in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

This perhaps is why Renilde Montessori spoke of the comprehensive activities of the Operation Brotherhood Montessori Center... “as an admirable work on behalf of the Filipino children.”

(Erratum in last week’s column: 1986 President Aquino’s governance, instead of 1996)