María Montessori y Giuseppina Pizzigoni: vestales en la renovación pedagógica italiana

This article highlights two women important for pedagogy. María Montessori was a medical doctor who initially carried out research to alleviate the tensions generated by the poor sanitary conditions the children of this society experienced and under which they were educated through traditional strategies that had to be changed. Giuseppina Pizzigoni was a teacher who imagined a new school where children, the offspring of a brutally industrialized society, could be happy while learning. For both women the children’s education, being the task of adults, parents and teachers alike, should be carried out with responsibility and new methodologies they themselves constructed and proposed. For them, the future of humanity lies in the success of this task. Comparing Giuseppina Pizzigoni to Maria Montessori will allow us to point out some differences and similarities between the two schools of thought that go back to the contemporary Italian pedagogy of “new schools”.