Review of Maria Montessori: una vita per i bambini

I was very moved by this film. Of course I'd heard of Maria Montessori - anybody who has any interest in education really must know about her, because she was a pathfinder and inspiration to educators all over the world. Even the fascists of her time wanted to pervert her methods to further their own ends. What I found so nice about the film was the way it showed how her method evolved from her own experiences, including some very bitter personal ones. As a woman - imagine, back in the late 19th/early 20th century - she found herself battling prejudice every step of the way, both against her gender and against the assumed inferiority of the people she was trying to help. But Maria was full of love, strength and determination and she had a fertile imagination that, allied with her instinctive gift of finding the right thing to do, got her through situation after situation and even helped her recover from the biggest disappointment of her life. Indeed it is very sad to see such a wonderful person having to face so much difficulty, but it is also inspiring to see how she kept going and overcame all the challenges in the end. One of the best moments was when the education ministry man compared the test results of her supposedly retarded children with those of the average students across the country and found them to be significantly superior! But at least they applied the test honestly, took the results seriously, embraced her ideas and put them into practice (though many other countries caught on much quicker and made a better job of applying them). She had an impressive way of being able to persuade others to do the right thing that was quite charming, though it caused resentment (even among the persuaded, who often considered her too pushy). There were political entanglements - the film ends with her challenging Italian fascism and there are tense moments (I did not know if she and her son survived, as she'd already done more than enough to cement her immortality, but they both lived on long after Mussolini dangled from a lamp post), but her integrity always shone through and in addition to the wiser heads who were convinced to suipport her, there is another encouraging thing about a long-lived educator - they will come across admiring former pupils in the most unexpected places and often at the most perfect moments! If every parent and school adopted her 10 basic principles, the world would become a much better place remarkably quickly, I suspect.