Madam, the representative of UNESCO's Director General,
Madam, the President of the Association Montessori Internationale,
Madam, the President of the French Montessori Association, also President of the Congress Organizing Committee,
Madam, the Director of the Institut Supérieur Maria Montessori,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
First, I would like to tell you very sincerely how happy and moved I am to speak today at the inaugural session of your 24th International Montessori Congress at the UNESCO headquarters, this respected place of culture, humanism, solidarity and peace, in the name of Jack Lang, the Minister of Education.
The Minister would have liked to participate personally in your work, to share with you himself his consideration and appreciation for all that Maria Montessori and your entire movement have contributed since its inception to the cause of a true pedagogy, i.e., a pedagogy centered in priority and absolutely on the child as a person. It is also centered on a humanistic concept of Man, i.e., a Human Being who, because he is autonomous, is truly adapted to his environment and his time, a lucid Human Being, involved and in solidarity with others.
Retained by other events that couldn't be postponed, he asked me to present his apologies and represent him at your congress.
A few moments ago I was explaining how honored I feel this morning. I am aware that the last time the city of Paris was chosen to host your work was almost fifty years ago, in 1953, when André Marie was Minister of Education in France. And that was just one year after Maria Montessori left us.
Finding you here again today at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, one must first congratulate you for the tremendous distance you have covered over the past fifty years and, while doing so, the one you have enabled pedagogy around the world to travel. Yes, we're pleased to find your organization in good health. The fact that 550 people have come together today from 32 nationalities is an outstanding accomplishment that testifies, fifty years after her death, to the wonderful modernity of Maria Montessori's thought and to the widespread vitality of your movement.
In a period of profound social and cultural transformations that are affecting our basic institutions, both the family and the school, traditional lifestyles are challenged increasingly by the renewal of knowledge and the globalization of economies. These transformations are also expressed as a risk that cultures become globalized. It is certainly an encouraging sign that a movement like yours is alive and developing, pointedly to raise the question, "What should we transmit to our children and what is the best way to do it?" We well know that these are the most fundamental questions, because their scope includes the future of pedagogy and as well as the future of our democracies.
In that regard, great progress has been made over the past fifty years. And of course, we ourselves cannot avoid recognizing the impact, the trace, the influence of certain ideas and principles dear to Maria Montessori within our own educational system. Allow me simply to mention four influences during the most recent period:
1. Clearly, the first influence is the radical change introduced in the way we conceive the role of our educational system, as defined in the last major law on education, the law of 10 July 1989, entitled "The Law of Orientation." This law stipulates that what should be placed at the center of the educational system is not knowledge, nor the teacher, nor the structures, but above all, the pupil. As the beautiful title of your congress indicates, education is meaningful only insofar as it can be a help to life, and thus only to the extent it places the pupil as a person permanently at the heart of its preoccupations.
2. There is a second idea our Minister wouldn't hesitate to recognize as sharing in common with Maria Montessori, although perhaps not as a direct influence. As you know, last year our Minister decided to revisit the elementary school programs. One main principle underlying this renewal was affirmed and repeated by the Minister when he stated that the mission of schooling should be to nourish and develop all forms of intelligence, and not merely one form alone. In addition to conceptual, verbal, rational forms of intelligence, no doubt primordial and essential, other forms also need to be developed, such as concrete intelligence that knows how to understand and follow plant development and how to question the physical world, as well as the sensitive kinds of intelligence that are revealed in art, creation and various forms of expression. Our educational tradition has been strongly intellectualistic. However, being a well-balanced person implies that no dimensions of the person be neglected. This is why, among other measures introduced, significant funds have been allocated and many training programs established to help teachers successfully create and carry out scientific and artistic educational programs of high quality.
3. The third idea relates to the way our educational methods have evolved.
Without any doubt, here too we have drawn inspiration from Maria Montessori's thought. The importance of a warm, positive relationship between the teacher and the pupil is now more familiar to us.
Also, the classroom ambiance increasingly appears to be an essential motivating factor for pupils, as it is very true that a happy class is predisposed to learn whereas a bored class, ill at ease, has little chance of succeeding.
4. Finally, I would like to say a few words about a theme we are specifically working on now, together with many other countries around the world: school violence and, more globally, citizenship. Of course, to educate for life also means to educate for life with others. Besides the fact that this theme is indispensable to creating good and fruitful working conditions, this is why it is also dear to us. Maria Montessori has a phrase I consider exemplary in this regard and which indicates the path we need to follow. In her book, The Child, Maria Montessori says, "to allow a child who has not developed his will to do whatever he wants is to betray the meaning of liberty." We share this conviction: undoubtedly, to educate is also to respect, to develop, to cultivate children's will, but, above all, it is to teach them to develop it.
Here, ladies and gentlemen, are some major changes that mark our current educational system where Maria Montessori's positive and still pertinent influence can truly be found. This is why, in the name of the Minister, I assure you that we will follow your work attentively and, in his name, I wish you an excellent congress.
Thank you.
