Dr. Maria Montessori who introduced Montessori System of Education
Maria Montessori was born in Chiaravalle (Ancona), Italy to Alessandro Montessori, and Renilde Stoppani. Montessori was the first woman to graduate from the University of Rome La Sapienza Medical School. She was a member of the University's Psychiatric Clinic and became intrigued with trying to educate the "mentally retarded" and the "uneducable" in Rome. In 1898, she gave a lecture at the Educational Congress in Torino about the training of the disabled. The Italian Minister of Education was in attendance, and was impressed by her arguments sufficiently to appoint her the same year as director of the Scuola Ortofrenica, an institution devoted to the care and education of the mentally retarded. She accepted, in order to put her theories to proof. Her first notable success was to have several of her 8 year old students apply to take the State examinations for reading and writing. The "defective" children not only passed, but had above-average scores, an achievement described as "the first Montessori miracle."
Because of her success with these children, she was asked to start a school for children in a housing project in Rome, which opened on January 6, 1907, and which she called "Casa dei Bambini" or Children's House. Children's House was a child care center in an apartment building in the poor neighborhood of Rome. She was focused on teaching the students ways to develop their own skills at a pace they set, which was a principle Montessori called "spontaneous self-development". The success of this school sparked the opening of many more, and a worldwide interest in Montessori's methods of education.
After the 1907 establishment of Montessori's first school in Rome, by 1913 there was an intense interest in her method in North America, which later waned. (Nancy McCormick Rambusch revived the method in America by establishing the American Montessori Society in 1960). Montessori was exiled by Mussolini mostly because she refused to compromise her principles and make the children into soldiers. She moved to Spain and lived there until 1936 when the Spanish Civil War broke out. She then moved to the Netherlands until 1939.
In the year 1939, the Theosophical Society of India extended an invitation asking Maria Montessori to visit India. She accepted the invitation and reached India the very same year accompanied by her only son, Mario Montessori Sr. This heralded the beginning of her special relationship with India. She made Adyar, Chennai her home. However the war forced her to extend her stay in India. With the help of her son, Mario, she conducted sixteen batches of courses called the Indian Montessori Training Courses. These courses laid a strong foundation for the Montessori Movement in India. In 1949 when she left for The Netherlands she appointed Albert Max Joosten as her personal representative, and assigned him the responsibility of conducting the Indian Montessori Training Courses. Joosten along with Swamy S R, another disciple of Dr. Maria Montessori, continued the good work and ensured that the Montessori Movement in India was on a sound footing.
During a teachers conference in India she was interned by the authorities and lived there for the duration of the war. Montessori lived out the remainder of her life in the Netherlands, which now hosts the headquarters of the AMI, or Association Montessori Internationale. She died in Noordwijk aan Zee. Her son Mario headed the AMI until his death in 1982. A commemorative stamp on Dr. Maria Montessori was issued by India Post on 31 August 1970.
Dr. Radhakrishnan Centenary - Date of Issue : 5 September 1989
Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (September 5, 1888 – April 17, 1975), was an Indian philosopher and statesman. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (Sarvepalli is his family name, and Radhakrishnan his given name) was born into a Telugu Brahmin family at Tiruttani, a town in Tamil Nadu. One of the foremost scholars of comparative religion and philosophy, he built a bridge between Eastern and Western thought showing each to be comprehensible within the terms of the other. He introduced Western idealism into Indian philosophy and was the first scholar of importance to provide a comprehensive exegesis of India's religious and philosophical literature to English speaking people.
In 1921, he was appointed as a philosophy professor to occupy the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta. Radhakrishnan represented the University of Calcutta at the Congress of the Universities of the British Empire in June 1926 and the International Congress of Philosophy at Harvard University in September 1926. In 1929, Radhakrishnan was invited to take the post vacated by Principal J. Estlin Carpenter in Manchester College, Oxford. This gave him the opportunity to lecture to the students of the University of Oxford on Comparative Religion. He was knighted in 1931, but did not use the title in personal life. He was the Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University from 1931 to 1936. In 1936, Radhakrishnan was named Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at the University of Oxford, and was elected a Fellow of All Souls College. When India became independent in 1947, Radhakrishnan represented India at UNESCO, and was later India's first ambassador in Moscow. He was also elected to the Constituent Assembly of India.
Radhakrishnan was elected the first Vice President of India in 1952. He was elected as the second President of India (1962-1967). When he became President, some of his students and friends requested him to allow them to celebrate his birthday, September 5. He replied, "Instead of celebrating my birthday, it would be my proud privilege if 5 September is observed as Teachers' Day." His birthday has since been celebrated as Teachers' Day in India. He has been commemorated on two postage stamps issued by India Post on 5 September 1967 & 1989.
Birth : September 5, 1907 - Death : August 30, 1981
1. Full name of J.P. Naik 2. What is the Building shown on the stamp ??
Please post your answers in comments. The answers to above questions are not mentioned in Brochure of this commemorative issue. So just find out the answers.
J. P. Naik, the founder of the Indian Institute of Education, has been placed by UNESCO in the honour roll of 100 World Educators. A reformer, scholar, unconventional administrator and passionate advocate of education, he established the Institute in Bombay in 1948 to help develop education in free India, as an instrument of social justice and equality. Having deeply felt poverty as a rural child, he strived for the education of the poor all his life.
Prof. Naik maintained an extremely simple lifestyle. He worked in several high positions in the education sector of Government of India, on a nominal salary of one rupee per month. He wrote innumerable well-researched articles, books and numerous reports of commissions and committees. He was Member Secretary of the Indian Education Commission (1964-1966) and the chief author of its insightful report. He was Educational Adviser to the Government of India. As the founder Member-Secretary of the Indian Council for Social Science Research, he gave new dimensions to the work of Indian social scientists. He helped establish NCERT and NIEPA. He was the chief author of UNESCO’s Karachi Plan and Addis Ababa Plan of universal primary education. Education for All and Health for All were his main concerns as basic for India’s development . He authored the policy defining report on ‘Health for All by the year 2000’, under the aegis of the ICSSR and Indian Council for Medical Research.
From Se-tenant Album of Shrikant Parikh
Theme - Literature
Exponents of Modern Hindi Literature
1. Mahadevi Verma 2. Jai Shankar Prasad
Date of Issue: 16 September 1991
Ajoy Kumar Mukherjee & Matangini Hazara
Date of Issue : 17 December 2002
Jnanpith Award Winners
1.G. Samkara Kurup (Malyalam Poet) 2. S.K. Pottekkett (Writer & Traveller) 3. T. S. Pillai (Rustic Story Writer)
Date of Issue : 9 October 2003
