Fanart: Nasce Il Metodo Montessori

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Title: "Nasce Il Metodo Montessori"
Author: J.J.
Warning: None
Notes: This takes part to the Italian project: 150 fanart per l'Italia.
Disclaimer:
"Axis Powers Hetalia" belong to Himaruya Hidekaz. I'm merely using his characters because I love them...
Summary: Maria Montessori and the children at whom she taught.




Extra note:
For who's interested to know...

History:

Maria Montessori (Chiaravalle, 31 August 1870 - Noordwijk aan Zee, 6 May 1952) was an Italian physician and educator, a noted humanitarian and devout Catholic. She was the first woman who managed to get a degree and become a doctor in Italy (1886) but she's best known for the philosophy of education which bears her name, the Montessori method who's still in use today in public as well as private schools throughout the world.

In 1896, she gave a lecture at the Educational Congress in Torino about the training of the disabled impressing the Italian Minister of Education who appointed her as director of the Scuola Ortofrenica, an institution devoted to the care and education of the mentally retarded. Her first notable success was to have several of her 8 year old students apply to take the State examinations for reading and writing. They passed with an above-average scores, an achievement described as "the first Montessori miracle."

On January 6, 1907, she was asked to start a school for children in a housing project in the poor neighborhood of Rome, and which she called "Casa dei Bambini" (Children's House), a place that, for the first time, was built exactly to fit the children's needs. Here she sperimented her method on normal children (which is why some consider this date as the 'birth of the method Montessori') enabling them to learn to read and write much more quickly and with greater facility than has otherwise been possible.

By 1917 there was an intense interest in her method in North America.

Mussolini, who heard England knew only two things about Italy, the Montessori's Method and the Marconi radio telegraph system, wanted her to open more school through Italy however, due to a disagreement with Mussolini's ideas she was exiled and moved to Spain, living there until Spanish Civil War broke out (1936). She then moved to the Netherlands until 1939 when she went to visit India where she began to teach her method. However, due to the war, she was kept prisonier there like al the other Italians (India being an English colony) although it seems she got a special treatment.

In 1949 she returned to the Netherlands where she lived until his death in 1982.

Her success in Italy led to international recognition, and for over 40 years she traveled all over the world, lecturing, writing and establishing training programs. In later years, 'Educate for Peace' became a guiding principle, which underpinned her work.

Just so you know no, not all the school in Italy use the Montessori's methods. Each school is free to use the method it prefers.

Maria Montessori's picture had been printed in the Italian 1'000 Lire banknote, untill the Lira was replaced by the Euro.

Maria Montessori's live had been turned into a 2 episodes tv series, 'Maria Montessori - Una vita per i bambini' (Maria Montessori - A life For Children) made and transmitted in tv for the first time in 2007.

Techinically, in the fanart, all the countries should be of adult age. I've represented them as children to represent how they had been taught by Maria Montessori. Romano is the older because she began teaching in Rome and so he was the first to experience the benefits of her methods. Then, with the spreading of her schools the methods reached Veneziano. Later Spain hosted her and had her teaching directly to him (it's said during civil war her ex-students, now soldiers, wrote on her house with red painting something like 'don't touch this place because here resides a friend of children'), America and England were also fashinated by her method and studied it so they're in. Germany is also in but he's the smaller because, when she was exiled from Italy the Furher stopped her method from being used in Germany (and Austria but I didn't have enough space to draw Austria... or Holland for the matter). By the way you can see Veneziano as giving or receiving the letter 'M' as to mean either 'she taught him' or 'he put to use what she taught him, rethurning the benefits on her and society'.