tents of a school programme, but enhancing a freer organization of knowledge on the part of the pupil, in order to supply him with useful instruments to better face the world, instead of a mass of fragmentary and disarticulated information, learnt in a mnemonic way.
Maria Montessori
ginalized and degraded neighbourhoods of the capital, where she found herself having to face extremely complex pedagogical and didactic issues, which required a civic and social, besides educational, renewal. Maria Montessori used psychology, psychiatry, medicine, biology and cultural anthrogressive and gradual use of pre-structured elementary material, through which the child
that the activities and the relationship with the child had to be stimulated starting from his needs and interests, which implies, in contradiction with empiricism and Positivism, that the child is born with his own peculiar traits. Also, the child must feel free, and learn to become autonomous; it cannot get used to passivity, he must be given material structured according to his needs and skills, and allowed to choose, operate and engage freely. Montessori was extremely critical of parents who ruin their children by letting them simply play, imposing the presence of an adult who resolves any of their problems, even only picking up an object or opening a door, dren dependent and passive, instead of active, free and autonomous. In order to be selfto educate himself to reach his own autonomy. It is therefore paramount to start education from scratch: to build a new type of nursery and using a new method, accompanied by new structured didactic material. Everything will be child size, i.e. in miniature, to enable the child to do everything by himself: opengoing to the bathroom, etc. Everything must be available to him, it being understood that educators will supervise them to make sure they keep themselves safe. Without having to depend on an adult, the child will engage in working with pleasure and productivity. educated to beauty, to an ordered aesthetic. School life is also group life, and is therefore a good thing that children get organized, form groups, work in pair and get respected by adults, who must try not to interfere with
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