Maria Montessori International Centre
PH © TAO ZEMZEMI
Story of the School
In 2002 Professor Luciano Mazzetti, together with the Montessori International Centre, has opened the Bilingual School in Perugia, going from nursery to high school, where children, kids, and teenagers receive education on life with an international feeling that will make them become citizens of the world.
Professor Luciano Mazzetti, educationalist of international fame, and university teacher, has always directed his attention, studies and papers, towards the complex universe of children’s psychology.
Luciano Mazzetti has a deep relationship with Perugia, where he was born and where he has always come back from his travels in all continents to hold conferences and training courses for teachers.
Right in Perugia, he has received the Baiocco d’oro on November 24th of 1981, as a recognition for his work as a teacher.
Mazzetti was the President of the Opera Nazionale Montessori. He has always had a deep relationship with Maria Montessori, she as well a “citizen of the world” but deeply tied to Perugia. He has been committed to position the real and ideal image of the child and the teenager Maria Montessori had outlined in the complexity of modern society.
In the field of education and teachers’ training he has cooperated for years with Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and with Rai-Dipartimento Scuola ed Educazione (Rai’s Department of School and Education).
Today the schools of the Centre welcome Italian students interested in a bilingual education, but they are also a reference pint for families (particularly English speaking ones) who move from abroad. This allows children and teenagers to live in an international environment at 360° degrees and to experiment bilingualism, not only with teachers but also with their own peers. Today the school is supervised by Doctor Valeria Mazzetti who, together with the irreplaceable staff of the Centre, is bringing forward with effort and competence the path traced in the last twenty years and the wonderful work already started under the guidance of the very beloved “PROF.” Luciano Mazzetti.
In life, the steps you make are not important, nor the shoes you use, but the footprints you leave behind.
Values of the School
From many years, a poster with the poem “Value” written on is affixed on the entrance of the school and, every beginning of the school year, a small parchment with the same poem is given to each student, from younger to older ones, as a wish and viaticum of the path they are starting.
I value every life form, the snow, the strawberry, the fly.
I value the mineral kingdom, the stars assembly.
I value wine until the meal lasts, an involuntary smile, tiredness of those who do not spare themselves, two old people loving each other.
I value what tomorrow will have no value and what today still has little value.
I value every wound.
I value saving water, fixing a pair of shoes, falling silent in time, running to someone screaming, asking before sitting down,
feeling grateful without remembering why.
I value knowing where the North is while standing in a room,
what is the name of the wind that is drying up the laundry.
I value the homeless’ travel, the seclusion of the nun,
the patience of the sentenced,
whatever the fault is.
I value the use of the verb to love and the hypothesis that a creator exists.
Many of these values I have not known.
Erri De Luca, Opera sull’acqua e altre poesie (Einaudi, 2002)
Educational line
Montessori’s manifesto
Montessori school and traditional school
