Child Is the Teacher

<b>A fresh comprehensive biography of the pioneering educator and activist who changed the way we look at children's minds from the author of <i>Oriana Fallaci</i>.</b> <p/>Born in 1870 in Chiaravalle Italy Maria Montessori would grow up to embody almost every trait men of her era detested in the fairer sex. She was self-confident strong-willed and had a fiery temper at a time when women were supposed to be soft and pliable. She studied until she became a doctor at a time when female graduates in Italy provoked outright scandal. She never wanted to marry or have children--the accepted destiny for all women of her milieu in late nineteenth-century bourgeois Rome--and when she became pregnant by a colleague of hers she gave up her son to continue pursuing her career.<br> At around age thirty Montessori was struck by the condition of children in the slums of Rome's San Lorenzo neighborhood and realized what she wanted to do with her life: change the school and therefore the world through a new approach to the child's mind. In spite of the resistance she faced from all sides--scientists accused her of being too mystical and the clergy of being too scientific traditionalists of giving children too much freedom and anarchists of giving them too much structure--she would garner acclaim and establish the influential Montessori method which is now practiced throughout the world.<br> A thorough nuanced portrait of this often controversial woman <i>The Child Is the Teacher</i> offers an unbiased perspective from an author who is not a member of the Montessori movement but who has been granted access to original letters diaries notes and texts written by Montessori herself including an array of previously unpublished material.