When my father was a boy, he used to play with Mario Montessori. Mario Montessori was the only son of Maria Montessori, the Italian doctor who reformed education with her belief that children do not learn by obeying rules and reproducing behavior, but by discovering and exercising their own strengths and abilities in an environment suited to that self-determination.
Shortly before World War I, Maria Montessori came to Berlin, where my grandfather, P. Johannes Müller, had founded a company making school furniture. My grandmother went to hear Maria Montessori’s first lecture at Berlin University and, soon afterward, my grandfather became the sole producer of Montessori teaching aids for the German market. He and my grandmother became supporters of Maria Montessori’s vision, and she was a frequent visitor at their home. She always traveled with her son and, even though Mario was five or six years older than my father, they would play together and Mario would instruct my father on how to use Montessori materials.
Mario went on to work with his mother on advancing the Montessori way, and my father went on to take over my grandfather’s company, VS Furniture, of which I am now CEO. Today we manufacture a wide range of furniture for schools, guided by our conviction that the learning environment can bring the student and the teacher together into a relaxed and positive atmosphere for learning. According to Maria Montessori and her fellow Italian educator Loris Malaguzzi, whose writing inspired the title of this book, everything that is material affects the child’s temperament and development. In a conducive environment, a child can learn many things without being taught in traditional ways.
In the early years of the 20th century, VS worked with a number of notable architects and designers, including members of the Bauhaus, on schools where the entire environment — from doors and windows to desks and lighting — was approached as a single project to support learning and development. But in later decades, the environmental, ergonomic, and pedagogical factors of school design were neglected in favor of the logistical, budgetary, and bureaucratic.
Enough time has passed for us to have seen what happens when we lose sight of the real project of schools. That is why we are ready to embrace again the vision that motivated my grandparents, the vision of schoolhouse and classroom as one material world centered on the child.