Dear Maria Montessori,
Millions of people are walking the earth leading better lives of peace and fulfillment because you came along in 1870 and then later dared to pursue your dream to pierce the armor of a men only club that deprived women of the right to become medical doctors.1 Lesser humans might have stopped there, but you possessed the power of imagination. As we know, the power to imagine makes us infinite and you imagined a world at peace because you listened to what the child was telling you.
You started with women’s rights barely a month after graduating from medical school and you were lecturing the establishment about the inhumane conditions in which most women lived and attached to those conditions were the corollary condition of children. By elevating women to a higher status, you elevated the position of children. You stunned audiences in 1896 at an International Women’s Congress in Berlin2 that was convened to call attention to the condition of women and to call for reforms. You offered at that congress a proposal for all delegates to press their individual countries to obtain for women equal pay for equal work in 1896.
The opinions expressed in Montessori Life are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of AMS.