The Montessorian training courses in Milan in the years 1911-1918: reflections on the lecturers’ reports published in La Coltura Popolare.

Abstract

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the fruitful meeting between Maria Montessori and the Umanitaria Society of Milan allowed the realization of the first Children’s Houses in this city and as a result, it placed the problem of teacher training as a matter of urgency. At the same time, the debate on this issue was also very lively at the national level: in fact, there were proposals for reform of the Normal School and there was a comparison between different positions on the method practiced in primary schools and childhood. In this context, the Umanitaria Society and Montessori organized some training courses that involved significant personalities of the pedagogical and scientific culture of the time.

The contribution aims to reconstruct some aspects of these training courses (contents, teachers, coordination) from documents published on the pages of the journal La Coltura Popolare in the years between 1911 and 1918.