L’educazione come progetto di pace; Maria Montessori e Jane Addams

This parallel between Addams and Montessori focuses on their common way of considering the issue of peace, connected to the vital processes of the human being: social and, above all, educational ones. For both thinkers there is a close connection between the free and broad realisation of every individual and the construction of a better world, between means and ends, between education and fair society, between moral and spiritual development and a real, profound, experience of freeedoom. Both this two women were founders of alternative structures - Hull House and the Children's Home - where the "users" could have a broader and deeper human experience addressing a new curiosity to all levels of human life and that shows it has strong moral foundations rather than intellectual ones, as Addams asserted. And as montessori wrote: "we have seen children who completely changed, acquiring the love for things, while the sense of order, discipline and self control develop in them as an expression of perfect freedoom. We have seen them work steadly, ehancing their energy in their work". The idea of peace from both, Montessori and Addams,is depply connected with this freedoom and energy: for this it cannot derive from pacifist propaganda or from mere intellectualistic reasons, but can only be the fruit of a series of vital and psychic processes to be built up gradually and scientifically through education.