| J 0 u
Camillo Grazzini:
Celebrating Fifty
Years of
Montessori
Service
Special Edition |
| WHAT Is NAMTA?
The North American Montessori Teachers' Association
provides a medium of study, interpretation, and im-… |
| THE NAMTAJOURNAL
VoL. 29, No. 1 • WINTER 2004
CAMILLO GRAZZINI: CELEBRATING FIFrY
YEARS OF MONTESSORI SERVICE
In… |
| CAMILLO GRAZZINI: CELEBRATING FIFrY y EARS
OF MONTESSORI SERVICE
CAMILLO GRAZZINI: lNNOVATION WITHIN MONTESSORI THEORY AND… |
| MARIA MoNTESsoRr's CosM1c Vrs10N, CosM1c PLAN, AND CosM1c
EDUCATION… |
| ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A special thank you to Renilde Montessori, Baiba
Krumins, and Barbara Kahn for their editorial assis-
tance… |
| Bergamo, Italy |
| CAMILLO G RAZZINI:
INNOVATION WITHIN MONTESSORI THEORY
AND METHODOLOGY
by David Kahn
Visiting Bergamo, Italy, last summer… |
| • The sequences of teacher training unfold step by step, showing
how theory shapes methodology and methodology requires
the… |
| My interview with Camillo Grazzini hardly represents the depth
of his life's work. But it does represent the integration… |
| that if you invented your project without Montessori parameters, your
result would not be a Montessori original but a banal… |
| BERGAMO HARVEST
"Tit is is our destiny to sow! To sow everywhere, wit/tout ceasing, never to
harvest."
-… |
| So we went to Bergamo,
so we remember well,
the soul of all humanity,
the flow of civilization,
the song of God Who Has No… |
| Piazza Vecchia, Bergamo, Italy
The NAMTA Journal
7 |
| Camillo Grazzini with David Kahn, 2002
8
The NAMTA Journal • Vol. 29, No. 1 • Winter 2004 |
| AN INTERVIEW WITH CAMILLO GRAZZINI:
CELEBRATING FIFTY YEARS OF
MONTESSORI WORK
Camillo Grazzini is without a doubt Mario… |
| Camillo, being the veritable Montessorian he is-for the above and
many other reasons- will find it highly irksome to see… |
| tants to 1nfancy, Children's House, Cosmic Education, and Erdkinder.
That is the technical part of the Montessori idea.… |
| both a renewed awareness of, and a practical initiative in harmony
with, Maria Montessori's cosmic vision. EsF should be… |
| Paolini had a real interest in the sensorial materials. She even
corresponded with Piaget about sensorial experiments such as… |
| of childhood." We realized that everything we were learning con-
trasted strongly with our traditional state training… |
| Montessori Congress, held in Edinburgh in 1938.) The Four Planes ( or
phases) of Development or Education constitute that… |
| context provided by the psychological planes of development, it was
easier to see the materials as part of a whole rather than… |
| In 1961 I was still teaching at the school in Brescia as well as
lecturing at the Centre later in the day. I helped to give… |
| Mario had "pearls," which still today remain inaccessible and
incomplete. One such item was "an… |
| Over four consecutive years both a Casa Dei
Bambini and four elementary classes were
opened, and by 1952 the school was… |
| Starting in the 1950s and continuing throughout the 1960s and the
first half of the 1970s, AMI organized elementary study… |
| But this cosmic vision belonged not only to Maria Montessori; it
belongs to the whole of our Montessori movement. It imparts a… |
| Maximum effort finds its origin with the power of the absorbent mind,
the acquisition of language, the order of the… |
| ees need to understand fully the principles of geology, biology, and
history. They need a good general background so that by… |
| instruction but to give future generations a richer culture, a culture of
a vast kind, far more than that which young people… |
| from the perspective of the details, which lend a depth of understand-
ing to the whole. This threefold integration ensures… |
| Lena Gitter and Camillo Grazzini
26
The NAMTA Journal • Vol. 29, No. I • Winter 2004 |
| THE FOUR PLANES OF DEVELOPMENT
by Camillo Grazzini
Camillo Grazzini presents two charts designed by Maria Montessori to… |
| developing human being, 1 and it explains and justifies the constant
Montessori idea of the importance of education as a &… |
| only because it is presented in the Bergamo courses. The second chart,
the second pictorial representation devised by Maria… |
| I. The Triangles: Montessori's Geometric Image of the
Rhythm of Development
In a manuscript written by Montessori about… |
| triangle represents the closing of a stage of life, in preparation for the
opening of a new stage of development with its new… |
| The "Red Plane" of Infancy
The plane of infancy, zero to six, is the one of fundamental
importance for the… |
| Thus, during the first three years of life, a part of life which is
forgotten by the very individual who experienced it, the… |
| The child's hands, guided by his intelligence, begin to do jobs of
a definitely human type. This child is always busy… |
| three to six years of age as the" embryonic period for the formation of
character" (The Absorbent Mind).… |
| The planes of development are
necessarily also interdepen-
dent, for the human being is
always a unity. An earlier plane… |
| This is the time, says Montessori, "when the social man is created
but has not yet reached full development"… |
| The Four Planes
We have seen how the old idea of linear development, according
to which there is no change of form but only a… |
| and normal process of development with its spontaneous manifesta-
tions that have to be respected if the goal is to be reached… |
| I THE 4 PLANES OF DEVELOPMENT!
I THE <BULB> I
~ iFINAUTYI 18 ~ 11AHJ
~ ~~;:::::::==:;:::!::=:=lccc::9… |
| tion, traditional teaching, where the teacher is the "cause" and the
educated child is the "effect… |
| and the bottom drawing illustrates what society has to offer the
developing individual.
I. The Bulb: Montessori's… |
| that for maturity proceeds horizontally. This brings us to another
observation about Montessori's second representation:… |
| will develop into a perfect individual but that remain hidden from
sight, insofar as a bulb is typically subterranean. A bulb… |
| The "Energies" of Infancy
In the lecture that Montessori gave with the help of this second
chart (Second… |
| period (mainly colored red but already showing a transition to green)
as the "construction of the conscious mind&… |
| But what about that "man"? What kind of "man" is he? Not
necessarily the kind of… |
| tional void" for the first plane of development (First lecture), for those
years that are so vital for the… |
| Discontinuity, however, is to be found not only in relation to the
education provided by the state or public sector, but also… |
| were new methods, part of all those new methods which, to use
Montessori's words, "continue to crop up."… |
| In her 1951 lecture, Montessori expresses it thus:
No one believes that the forces within the child can act
alone, such that… |
| Philosophy of the Winnetka Curriculum, 1926); and those of two of
Montessori's pupils: Makinden (Individual Work System)… |
| 1929); Edouard Claparede (with "individualized" education, 1921);
Roger Cousin et (with the teamwork method… |
| The Geneva group, intent as they were on putting forward their own
methods, excluded Montessori more and more. The result was… |
| of the method and excluding others meant distorting the very nature
of the method. 10 The final result was that, as Montessori… |
| "The world of official education too put our work aside" (The Formation
of Man).
NATURE AND SUPRANATURE… |
| Moreover, "the human per-
sonality is essentially one dur-
ing the successive stages of
development," and… |
| The X, in other words, represents "Man the Unknown." 12 The
child, and therefore the adult that the child… |