Introduction
Some time ago I was saying how much I like the Congress letter paper, with its watermarked background of cities and dates in pale blue. Belonging to three different continents and linked to dates spanning a period of almost seventy years, these cities recall all the congresses held by our Montessori movement and they bear historical testimony to the work carried out on behalf of the child and in favour of peace, a work which began in 1907 with the founding of the very first Casa dei Bambini or Children’s House.
Over the last fifty years, this is the third time that we are publicly honouring Maria Montessori in this magnificent city of Paris. In 1953, the 10th International Congress was held here (the first to be held after Maria Montessori’s death); then, in 1970, UNESCO celebrated the centenary of Maria Montessori’s birth; now, thirty years on, the 24th Congress is being held here, the first congress of the new millennium.
The theme of this congress is close to that of the first congress held in Paris: the theme then was ‘How to help the child to adapt to our times’; this time it is ‘Education as an aid to life’. The close similarity of theme is significant because it demonstrates the continuity of our work, and the theme itself highlights Maria Montessori’s life work for the child, and encapsulates the aims and work of the Association Montessori Internationale, the organisation founded by Maria Montessori herself in 1929.
Cosmic Vision, Plan and Education
By 1935 Maria Montessori’s cosmic vision, her thinking in relation to a cosmic plan, her ideas of cosmic education, had all started to take on a definite form, had started to crystallise. But what about these three expressions that all share the great qualifier ‘cosmic’? In reality they all represent different aspects of a single mode of thinking.
The first aspect, that of ‘vision’, has to do with a way of seeing, a way of understanding the world; and Montessori’s own grandeur has to do with her way of looking at the world and at the human being.
The second aspect is that of the ‘cosmic plan’. Looking at the world with grandeur of vision, with a cosmic vision, we find order at the level of nature, at the level of creation. For such a cosmic order to exist, and for the upkeep and continuation of creation in general, we find many agents at work and among them we find human beings. Virtually all of these agents of creation, or cosmic agents, act and work unconsciously: humanity alone has the potential to act consciously.
The third aspect, that of ‘cosmic education’, can be looked on as the operational aspect: becoming aware of the different kinds of cosmic work carried out by the various agents and of the interdependencies and interrelationships involved, and thereby developing one’s own cosmic vision; becoming conscious active participants ourselves and thereby participating more fully in the cosmic plan or cosmic organisation of work.
Incidentally, at this point we can understand that, unlike what many people believe, ‘cosmic’ in no way implies contestation or rebellion or breaking free of given patterns of behaviour for the purpose of self-expression at all cost. It does not imply adopting transgression as a way of life. On the contrary, ‘cosmic’ (1) implies order, the world as universe and unity, the beauty of universal order as opposed to the disorder of chaos. This linking of order - unity - beauty lends depth of meaning to the expression chosen and used by Montessori herself.
Cosmic Vision
The Montessori vision of the world has a cosmic dimension because it is all-inclusive: Montessori looks at the world, sees the world, on a very grand scale, that is, at the level of the universe with all of its interrelationships. There is the inorganic world which is ecologically linked in innumerable ways with the biosphere which, in turn, is linked with human beings or the psychosphere.
Montessori’s vision is also cosmic because she looks at the whole of humanity throughout time: she sees human beings as being guided by finality from the time of their appearance; she sees humanity as both adult and child; she sees the individual both in his unity or oneness and in his developmental differences during the diverse stages or “seasons of life”.
It is this vision of an indivisible unity made up of energy, of sky, of rocks, of water, of life, of humans as adults and humans as children, that lends a sense of the cosmic to Montessori’s thinking.
This cosmic sense pervades all of Montessori’s work, both her thinking and her educational approach for all of the different planes or stages of development of the human being: from birth without violence, to the infant community, to the Casa dei Bambini, to the elementary school, to the Erdkinder community for adolescents.
Quite clearly, then, this cosmic vision belongs by right to the whole of the Montessori movement: it is indeed the key which gives us all a shared direction and a common goal in our work. In stark contrast to this, there is cosmic education which is for the second plane of education only, destined only for six to twelve year old children. Indeed cosmic education responds to the specific developmental characteristics and needs of the human being during the second plane of development: for example, using the imagination to understand reality, realities beyond the reach of the physical senses; striving for mental and moral independence; exploring the vastness of culture; forming a particular kind of society; and so on.
The Great Cosmic Plan
In her book, What You Should Know About Your Child (a book which was first published in India in 1948), Montessori herself speaks about the cosmic plan as follows:
“There is a plan to which the whole universe is subject. All things, animate and inanimate, are subordinated to that plan. There are also patterns for all species of living and non-living things. These patterns fall in line with the universal plan.
Everything in nature, according to its own laws of development, approximates to the pattern of perfection applicable to itself. There is an urge in every individual of every species to fit into the appropriate pattern. There is also an inevitableness with which all patterns fit into the great plan.
From the seed to the full grown tree, from the egg to the adult hen, from the embryo to the man of maturity, the striving to embody a pattern is perceptible.
It wants a loftier vision to understand and appreciate how all creatures and all things evolve into infinite varieties of patterns with a magnificent impulse to subordinate themselves to the central plan of the universe.
It is certain that the urge to protect the offspring and to conserve the species is among the strongest urges of all nature. But there is a purpose higher than the protection of the offspring or the preservation of the species. This purpose is something beyond mere growing according to pattern or living according to instincts. This higher purpose is to conform to a master plan towards which all things are moving.” (2)
This “higher purpose” can be understood more clearly if we think of the world as a great household, a cosmic household, where all the jobs involved in running the household have been divided up and shared out. Understood in this way, expressed in this way, the cosmic plan actually consists of an integrated structure or cosmic organisation where all that exists have tasks to fulfil, their cosmic work to accomplish.
Examining the cosmic workers at the very grandest scale, we see inorganic agents such as the Sun (the prime source of energy), the Land (but also the rocks and the earth or soil), the Water and the Air, all of which act and “work” according to the cosmic laws of their being, that is, according to their inherent nature. (Incidentally, in the thinking of Empedocles these would constitute the roots or sources of all and everything.) Then there are the great organic cosmic agents, plants and animals who, with their sensitivities and instincts, also act and “work” according to their cosmic laws or inherent nature. Lastly, there is the human being, always in his two manifestations: the adult and the child, the child and the adult.
Cosmic Agents
All around us there are cosmic agents, of whom we also form part, and these constitute the living and non-living world.
There is energy, the Sun’s light and heat. There is the lithosphere: the very ground on which we stand and where we build our homes; the earth or soil with which we dirty our hands, in which the seeds of plants can take root, and to which, on dying, we return; the land which is also the great vessel or container for the seas and oceans. There is water, the hydrosphere: the great constituent or element of the surface of our planet and also of our own bodies; the very source of life. There is the atmosphere, air: the very breath of life.
Then too, there is the sphere of life: plants, animals and human beings -- the cosmic agents in organic form, those that make up the biosphere. Then, with mankind and with mankind alone, do we have the psychosphere, for “something new came into the world with man, a psychic energy of life, different from any that had yet been expressed”, a “new cosmic energy”. (3)
Montessori says all cosmic agents are guided by a universal intelligence which uses the horme (4), that impulse, urge or drive, albeit unconscious, toward evolution, self-functioning, and full self-realisation. If this is so, then the Montessori idea of finality and syntropic phenomena (where we see a process leading from what is simple, from the homogeneous, to the complex and the differentiated and therefore to what is ever more highly ordered) also involves the non-living world. And all this reminds me, in a certain way, of yet another outstanding individual; it reminds me of Teilhard de Chardin’s powerful vision of the world.
Cosmic Task and Cosmic Work
Each agent, great and small, has its own mandate or mission to carry out. This constitutes its own particular function in the cosmic plan, its specific cosmic task that has to be carried out uninterruptedly and unceasingly. However, the possibility of doing this depends also on the work of other agents. In other words, there is a cosmic organisation of work which necessarily involves specialisation or division of labour, a collaboration amongst all the workers or agents, and therefore innumerable relationships of interdependency.
With Montessori’s cosmic fable, God Who Has No Hands, we see the coming of the great inorganic, non-living, cosmic agents as well as the laws of their being. In the work and activities that follow on from the fable, we see how these agents interact and function together in all their possible combinations and relationships, from the Sun with its energy and the planet Earth as a whole, to the cycle or game played out by Water with the help of the Sun, Air and Land. The endless activity and unceasing toil of these agents explain so many of the phenomena with which we are familiar: day and night, summer and winter, rain and wind, snow and ice. But their work and toil also explain the seemingly changeless features of our globe where all, in reality, is endless change: where wind and water and ice constantly carve and sculpt the land; where the land is worn down and built up only to be worn down again, in endless cycles; and where the frontiers of land and water are ever changing. And in all of this unceasing toil, these agents behave, can only behave, according to their nature, according to their cosmic laws, the laws they were given. To express it in terms of Montessori’s first cosmic fable, it is as though these agents respond to the call of God, God who has no hands, and each one, Sun, Air, Land and Water, whispers: “I hear my Lord, Thy will be done. I obey.”
With Montessori’s second cosmic fable, the Story of Life, we see the coming of Life which has its own laws. We see how Life appears to save and preserve the order and harmony of the world since, left to themselves, the non-living agents cannot maintain cosmic order and threaten to bring about chaos.
Montessori regards the sphere of life, the biosphere, as an intimate part of the Earth’s body; and Life’s function is to grow with the Earth, to work not just for itself but also for Earth’s upkeep and transformation. Thus Life too is one of the creative forces of the world, an energy with its own special laws.
The great agent of Life includes, of course, many many beings, both plant and animal, and Montessori refers to these living agents as “engines of God”, for such they are.
Take for example the diatoms. These microscopic (unicellular or colonial) algae extract silica from the water to build their “shells”. The layer of glass-like silica deposited on the cell wall forms sculptured designs that vary from one species to another; and there are thousands and thousands of these species! Minute as they are, these shells of silica are found in layers, hundreds of feet thick, on lands formerly covered by shallow seas, and vast deposits form diatom oozes covering large parts of the ocean bed.
Take for example the corals. These extract calcium carbonate from the water and, tiny as they are, they build up new land and they also protect mainlands from the sea. How much calcium carbonate was extracted by this army of tiny workers to build the Great Barrier Reef (of Australia) which stretches for about 2000 kilometres (1250 miles)?
And what about the green plants that constantly purify the air we breathe through their endless work of photosynthesis?
The cow, says Montessori, is one of the most important land animals, for its one duty in the cosmic plan is the maintenance of grasslands and meadows in good condition, and this it does: cutting the grass, pressing down the ground and fertilising it, all at the same time.
And what about the vultures? Faithful to their function of cleaning the Earth of things dangerous to other beings, they eat carrion and corpses in putrefaction.
And what about the earthworm? It sinks into the earth and works away as “God’s little plough” (to use Darwin’s expression), aerating the soil and also leaving it more fertile.
We could go on, and on, and on. But enough has been said to understand what Montessori means when she says: “all things in nature have a pattern to which they conform and all of them adhere to a plan into which they weave themselves to form a universe in equilibrium. They function for the preservation of the totality according to a plan and for the preservation of the species according to a pattern; thus are brought about the order and harmony in nature.” (2)
Cosmic Task of Human Beings
When it comes to human beings, the prime spiritual agent, and the cosmic task of human beings, Montessori distinguishes between the adult and the child since their tasks are very different and consequently, so is their work.
The child’s cosmic task is to construct the human being itself, construct a man who will build peace, a man who is adapted to the world in which he lives. The greatest onus of this task lies on the child of the earliest years; and the greatest work ever accomplished during any lifetime is that which takes the human being from the helpless state of the newborn babe to the child who, not only manifests the characteristics of his species, but clearly belongs to his own human group and is also his own individual self.
Such an enormous work of creation and construction, one which is beyond the powers of any other age, is only possible with the power of what Montessori calls the absorbent mind; with the guidance of those irresistible attractions of limited duration, that Montessori calls the sensitive periods; and with the drive of incredible creative energy. Using his hands, that marvellous human gift, the child explores his world, develops his mental powers, and constructs his very self and, ultimately, the adult human being. We are each one, as Montessori says, “the child of the child” that we once were; a variation, if you like, of Wordsworth’s line of verse: “The Child is father of the Man”. (5)
The adult, on the other hand, whose cosmic task is one of contributing to the upkeep and development of the Earth, of creation, modifies and transforms the environment, building a world which is always new, “a supranature, a civilised environment” which goes above and beyond primordial nature. In other words, the adults build a civilisation which is in constant evolution and which involves a continual modification and enrichment of their “spiritual territory”.
Thus, in some as yet unpublished lectures that Montessori gave in 1950 (6), she writes this: “Man’s arrival has created a psychosphere on Earth. What is his task in it? For we must understand that mankind, too, has a task with regard to the Earth on which it lives. The coming of mankind meant a new force, whose function it is to further the progress of evolution. We notice that man possesses certain capacities which may stimulate progress on Earth. His scientific work gradually discloses the secrets of Nature and, moreover, makes use of them, thus creating new possibilities. His technical skill has harnessed the forces of nature in order to build the most complicated machinery. Man’s toil has developed agricultural products which were unknown in primitive nature. Obviously, man too has an active task on Earth (...)”
And she continues by saying:
“So far, however, man has failed to see that there is a field to be explored in mankind itself. We have now arrived at a stage where we must cultivate human energy. Until now we have devoted our attention chiefly to the inventions of mankind and their workings. Now we have once more to connect these things with man, who invented them. Man must take a central place in life.”
Montessori concludes with the importance of the child and the child’s education for the advancement of humanity and the evolution of civilisation:
“This we can effect through the child. But the child cannot do it by himself, he can only acquire a higher form of character with adult assistance. The child has no fixed form of behaviour, and therefore he needs a guide so that he will not go astray.”
But now it is no longer enough to consider only the child of the earliest years, we must also take into consideration the older child, the six to twelve year old child who is in the second plane of his development. And this is what Montessori says:
“We can make the human race better by assisting the child in building his character and acquiring his moral freedom.
One of the means to this end is a cosmic education, which gives the child an orientation and a guidance in life. For this education wants to prepare the growing child for the task awaiting him in adult life, so that he will feel at ease in his own environment, in which he will later have to live as an independent being.”
Cosmic Education
All that I have said so far, about a cosmic vision; about the cosmic plan or cosmic organisation; about the cosmic agents with their variety and diversity of tasks and work, all of which lead to a cosmic order; and about man’s special place and role in the cosmos for creation; all of this is involved in cosmic education. Very gradually, and without any need for direct teaching and preaching, the children are led to see, to understand, and to appreciate much of what I have already discussed, and much more besides.
Cosmic education has many aspects and facets and (also for reasons of time) I shall limit myself to indicating and highlighting some of these.
Cosmic education helps the children to acquire a cosmic vision of the world, a vision of the unity and finality of the world, a vision which gives a sense of meaning and purpose. This vision encompasses both space and time; in other words, the children learn to understand the world both in its evolutionary development and in its ecological functioning.
Cosmic education gives the children the opportunity and the freedom to explore, study and acquire knowledge of the universe not only in its globality but also in its complexity; and they learn to appreciate how the various cosmic forces, following the laws of nature, work and interact such that our universe is one of structure and order. In other words, the children are helped to become aware of what is only too often taken for granted and not seen: the natural or cosmic laws that bring about the order and harmony in nature, a cosmic order and harmony.
Cosmic education enables the children to discover many kinds of interrelationships that exist in the world and that explain how our world functions. These are sometimes relationships of dependency but, above all, they embody interdependency: be this the interdependency of various cosmic forces or the interdependencies within the context of a single force. With these kinds of discoveries, the children come to understand and appreciate the importance of collaboration at a cosmic level.
Cosmic education helps the children to become aware of cosmic tasks and cosmic work, be these carried out consciously or unconsciously (as is usually the case). In this way, the children reach a deeper understanding of the full functioning and role of each of the cosmic agents, living or non-living. Consequently, the children become more and more aware, not only of the importance of work, but also of the importance of work that benefits others, that contributes to the well-being of others; and they come to see how much they too have received and continue to receive. Mario Montessori recounts how, once they became conscious of cosmic work: “the children sought eagerly the cosmic task of whatever came under their observation and, penetrating into these tasks, they came to acquire a feeling of gratitude towards God for the nature he had provided, and towards mankind for having created, starting from natural conditions, a supranatural world in which each individual could perform his own task and provide himself with all he needed from what had been produced by the work of other men.” (7)
Cosmic education results in creative attempts to lead a new and different kind of human life, with responsible participation in all natural and human phenomena. Let me illustrate this with one small but telling example. When Maria and Mario Montessori were in India, some of the children in the school heard about the great problem of adult illiteracy there. Quite spontaneously, they decided to play their part in alleviating this problem and, with permission, they borrowed some materials from the school and taught some such adults in a nearby village, to read and write. What an example for all of us!
Cosmic education also means a very different kind of approach to culture. With this approach, we pass from the whole to the detail; each detail is, or could be, referred to the whole; the whole is made up of ordered parts; and, lastly, specialisation of knowledge and interdisciplinarity, developing simultaneously, integrate and complete one another. “In the cosmic plan of culture,” wrote Montessori in 1949 (8), “all the sciences (branches of learning) can be linked like rays springing from a single brilliant centre of interest which clarifies, facilitates, and furthers all knowledge.” And one year later, she says: “Thus the way leads from the whole via the parts back to the whole. In this way the child learns to appreciate the unity and regularity of cosmic events. When this vision is opened up he will be fascinated to such an extent that he will value the cosmic laws and their correlation more than any simple fact. Thus the child will develop a kind of philosophy, which teaches him the unity of the universe. This is the very thing to organise his intelligence and to give him a better insight into his own place and task in the world, at the same time presenting a chance for the development of his creative energy.” (6)
La Nazione Unica dell’Umanità
I could stop here for I have examined all the three aspects of Montessori’s thinking that I was asked to address. However, I should like to take a little more time to examine further that very special agent of creation, humanity, that has its own glorious, as well as inglorious, history. Throughout their history, human beings have always organized themselves into different human groups, and the contact between groups has varied from peaceful trade and exchange right through to open conflict and warfare. What does Montessori have to say when it comes to the future of humanity?
In her lectures of 1950 (6), she says this:
“Every human group has a form of its own. Now we find that these groups have a tendency to unite; not because the individual members have grown to love each other -- for how can one love such a huge number of people that one does not even know? -- but because obviously the next step in evolution is the unity of mankind. In the psychosphere there should now only be one civilisation.”
Even earlier, in 1937 (9), Montessori was saying: “All mankind forms a single organism, (...) a single, indivisible unit -- a single nation.” For Montessori, in other words, a single nation of humanity already existed decades and decades ago.
There are others who have expressed similar though not identical ideas: for example Marshall McLuhan with his “global village”; and Gorbachov with his “common home” when speaking of Europe. (10)
In any case, sixty-five years ago, when the League of Nations was still in existence and the United Nations still lay in the future, Maria Montessori had widened the limited concept of a ‘nation’ (meaning, for example, “an ethnic unity conscious of its cultural distinctness and autonomy”) and extended it to embrace the whole of humanity. Ethnic unity, then, is determined by all of Earth’s human inhabitants belonging equally to the human species and, as for the different human groups, Montessori says: “A single interest unites them and causes them to function as a single living organism. No phenomenon can affect one human group without affecting others as a consequence. To put it a better way, the interest of any one group is the interest of all.” (9)
Even the new economic process of globalisation, understood as the unifying of world markets and therefore human work, seems to be, at least to my way of thinking, anticipated in Maria Montessori’s writings. Montessori, however, always links the international economic reality to human or social solidarity, as we can read in a very well-known lecture she gave in 1949 in San Remo, a lecture which she even called ‘Human Solidarity in Time and Space’. (11)
Universal union, says Montessori, already exists, and therefore all that is needed is that we should become aware of this reality and “replace the idea of the necessity of bringing about union among men, by the recognition of the real and profound existence of these bonds of interdependence and social solidarity among the peoples of the whole world”.
And also:
“This solidarity between human beings, which projects itself into the future and is sunk in the remotest ages of the past (....) is a wonderful thing.”
“The living idea of the solidarity of all men (...) closely united by so many bonds, generates a warm feeling of sharing in something great which even surpasses one’s feeling for one’s country.”
We can note in passing that Montessori’s idea of La Nazione Unica, in the guise of world unity, was also shared by H.G. Wells and by Julian Huxley.
This idea of human solidarity throughout time and space, and therefore the concept of a single nation of humanity, also form part of Montessori’s cosmic education; and the children come to grasp these ideas, not through mere words and little sermons, but through the exploration and study of humanity, both past and present.
We have seen, however briefly, that Montessori’s education is education as a help to life and an education for peace; it is an integral part of an anthropological and sociological vision of the child and of humanity, with its ecological and spiritual role in the context of the Universe with all of its history.
Conclusion
During the two years following Montessori’s return to Europe after her second Indian sojourn and the Sanremo Congress, that is, during the years 1950 and 1951, Maria Montessori became involved with UNESCO.
She was a member of the Italian delegation to the UNESCO General Assembly, held in Florence, in May 1950; during the same month, at UNESCO in Paris, she was welcomed “as one of the founders and inspirers of that revolutionary movement known by the name of the New Education.” On this same occasion, when she was asked by UNESCO’s Department of Education to give “her vision of how to reach a better international understanding”, Dr. Montessori listed six points and one of these centred on cosmic education.
Lastly, in December 1951, on the occasion of the third anniversary of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, UNESCO invited Montessori “to send a message to the world in order to emphasise the highly idealistic value of the event”. This is how Dr. Montessori came to write The Forgotten Citizen, her last important contribution, for she died four months later.
Relations with UNESCO have been maintained to the present day, since the Association Montessori Internationale, under whose auspices this congress has been organized, is an NGO, or Non-Governmental Organisation, in operational relations with UNESCO.
“To contribute to the maintenance of peace by means of education” is the main aim of the organisation hosting our congress. Therefore I should like to conclude by recalling how, in 1950 in Florence, the poet Jaime Torres Bodet, who was the Director General of UNESCO at the time, welcomed Maria Montessori by saying: “In our midst we have someone who has become the symbol of our great expectations for education and world peace”.
After fifty years, education and world peace still remain humanity’s great hope.
©Camillo Grazzini 2001. All rights reserved. No part of this paper may be reproduced without the advance, written permission of the author.
I wish to thank Baiba Krumins G. for her help in preparing this contribution.
NOTES
(1) Cosmos comes from the Greek ‘kosmos’ meaning order, world, universe; and the etymological meaning has nothing to do with hair, despite what was said by other speakers during the Congress. Comet, on the other hand, comes from the Greek ‘kometes’ meaning long-haired (and this in turn comes from ‘kome’ which is the Greek word for hair). Etymologically speaking therefore, a comet is a long-haired star. Obviously cosmic or cosmos on the one hand, and comet on the other, are totally different concepts and must not be confused.
(2) MARIA MONTESSORI. What You Should Know about Your Child. Kalakshetra Publications. Adyar, Madras, India, 1st edition 1948. This book is presently in print in the original English edition and in Japanese. In 1995 it was also available in Greek and in Chinese.
(3) MARIA MONTESSORI. To Educate the Human Potential. Kalakshetra Publications. Adyar, Madras, India, 1st edition 1948.
(4) Horme comes from the Greek ‘horme’ meaning impulse, and this is related to the Greek ‘hormao’ which means to excite. The dictionary meaning of horme is “vital energy as an urge to purposive activity” and this is how Montessori uses the term inThe Absorbent Mind. (The Theosophical Publishing House. Adyar, Madras, India, 1st edition 1949). The term was first suggested (though apparently not adopted) by C. G. Jung, and developed and used by Sir Percy Nunn whom Montessori cites in her book. (PERCY NUNN. Education - Its Data and First Principles. Edward Arnold Publishers Ltd. London, Great Britain, 3rd edition 1945. Reprinted 1970)
(5) WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850), English romantic poet. In Poems in Two Volumes (1807), see ‘My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold’, seventh line of verse: “The Child is father of the Man”.
(6) International Montessori Conference. Amsterdam, The Netherlands, April 1950. Unpublished Proceedings.
(7) MARIO M. MONTESSORI. Keys to the World. In AMI Communications 1998/4.
(8) MARIA MONTESSORI. Educazione cosmica. Manuscript published in the form of an anastatic reproduction in Il quaderno Montessori . No. 29, Spring 1991. Castellanza (VA), Italy.
(9) Lecture given on December 29th, 1937 at the “Internationale School voor Wijsbegeerte” (International School of Philosophy). Amersfoort, The Netherlands. Published in Education and Peace. Translated by Helen R. Lane. Henry Regnery Company. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., 1st English edition 1972.
(10) HERBERT MARSHALL McLUHAN - BRUCE R. POWERS. The Global Village. Oxford University Press, Inc. MIKHAIL S. GORBACHOV. La casa comune europea. Mondadori editore. Milano, 1989. Also, Perestrojka. - Il nuovo pensiero per il nostro Paese e il mondo. Mondadori editore. Milano, 1987.
(11) In La formazione dell’uomo nella ricostruzione mondiale. Proceedings of the 8th International Montessori Congress. Sanremo (IM), Italy, August 1949. Published by Ente Opera Montessori. Rome, 1950.
© 2001 Camillo Grazzini
