EVENT
Casa dei Bambini
The <em>Children's House</em> that opened in the San Lorenzo slums of Rome on January 6, 1907 — where Montessori's materials met children previously considered difficult, and a century of pedagogy was reorganized.
The Casa dei Bambini — the Children's House — opened on January 6, 1907, in a tenement in the San Lorenzo district of Rome. The district was among the poorest in the city, and the children placed in Montessori's care were, by every conventional measure, difficult: restless, aggressive, unfocused, resistant to instruction, prone to disruption. Montessori did not punish. She did not lecture. She did not impose behavioral regimes. She prepared an environment with child-sized furniture, provided the materials she had refined during her work with intellectually disabled children, gave the children freedom to choose their own work, and observed. What followed was a transformation so profound she initially doubted her own perception. Children who had been restless became concentrated. Children who had been aggressive became gentle. Children who had been unfocused became absorbed in work for periods far beyond what anyone predicted. The transformation occurred through no mechanism conventional education employed — not instruction, reward, punishment, or coercion. It occurred through engagement with