PEDAGOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Pedagogical Anthropology is a method that systematises the positive study of the pupil for pedagogic purposes and with a view to establishing philosophic principles of education. As soon as anthropology annexes the adjective, “pedagogical,” it should base its scope upon the fundamental conception of a possible amelioration of man, founded upon the positive knowledge of the laws of human life. In contrast to general anthropology which, starting from a basis of positive data founded on observation, mounts toward philosophic problems regarding the origin of man, pedagogic anthropology, starting from an analogous basis of observation and research, must rise to philosophic conceptions regarding the future destiny of man from the biological point of view. The study of congenital anomalies and of their biological and social origin, must undoubtedly form a part of pedagogical anthropology, in order to afford a positive basis for a universal human hygiene, whose sole filed of action must be the school; but an even greater importance is assumed by the study of defects of growth in the normal man; because the battle against these evidently constitutes the practical avenue for a wider regeneration of mankind.

Maria Montessori, Italian physician and educationist, born in Rome, the first women in Italy to receive a medical degree (1894), dedicated to her life to learning how best to educate children – particularly the poorest, most challenged children – during their vulnerable beginnings.