Great Throughts Treasury

"Positive and scientific, because she has an exact task to perform, and it is necessary that she should put herself into immediate relation with the truth by means of rigorous observation..."

"Praise, help, or even a look, may be enough to interrupt him, or destroy the activity. It seems a strange thing to say, but this can happen even if the child merely becomes aware of being watched. After all, we too sometimes feel unable to go on working if someone comes to see what we are doing. The great principle which brings success to the teacher is this: as soon as concentration has begun, act as if the child does not exist. Naturally, one can see what he is doing with a quick glance, but without his being aware of it."

"Preventing conflicts is the work of politics: establishing peace is the work of education."

"Preventing war is the work of politicians, establishing peace is the work of educationists."

"Productive work and a wage that gives economic independence, or rather constitutes a first real attempt to achieve economic independence, could be made with advantage a general principle of social education for adolescents and young people."

"Psychologists interested in adolescent education think of it as a period of so much psychic transformation that it bears comparison with the first period from birth to six. The character is seldom stable at this age; there are signs of indiscipline and rebellion. Physical health is less stable and assured than before."

"Psychologists who have studied children's growth from birth to University age maintain that this can be divided into various and distinct periods."

"Real freedom is a consequence of development."

"Repetition is the secret of perfection, and this is why the exercises are connected with the common activities of daily life. If a child does not set a table for a group of people who are really going to eat, if he does not have real brushes for cleaning, and real carpets to sweep whenever they are used, if he does not himself have to wash and dry dishes and glasses he will never attain any real ability."

"Rewards and punishments, to speak frankly, are the desk of the soul, that is, a means of enslaving a child's spirit, and better suited to provoke than to prevent deformities."

"School cannot start too early to encourage the refinement of taste in children. To present for their learning the fine gradations between right and wrong, and to support their treasuring of a sense of the past."

"Schools as they are today are adapted neither to the needs of adolescence nor to the time in which we live."

"Scientific observation has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. The task of the teacher becomes that of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity, spread over a specially prepared environment, and then refraining from obtrusive interference. Human teachers can only help the great work that is being done, as servants help the master. Doing so, they will be witnesses to the unfolding of the human soul and to the rising of a New Man who will not be a victim of events, but will have the clarity of vision to direct and shape the future of human society."

"She must acquire a moral alertness which has not hitherto been demanded by any other system, and this is revealed in her tranquility, patience, charity, and humility. Not words, but virtues, are her main qualifications."

"Since adults have no concept of the importance of physical activity for the child, they put a damper on it as a cause of disturbance."

"Since it is through movement that the will realizes itself, we should assist a child in his attempts to put his will into action."

"So, from the age of three till six, being able to now to tackle his environment deliberately and consciously, he begins a period of real constructiveness."

"So, whether we go to the origins of human life, or follow the child in his work o growth, we always find the adult not far away."

"Sometimes very small children in a proper environment develop a skill and exactness in their work that can only surprise us."

"Spiritual, because it is to man that his powers of observation are to be applied, and because the characteristics of the creature who is to be his particular subject of observation are spiritual."

"Successive levels of education must correspond to the successive personalities of the child. Our methods are oriented not to any pre-established principles but rather to the inherent characteristics of the different ages. It follows that these characteristics themselves include several levels."

"Such experiences is not just play? It is work he must do in order to grow up."

"Supposing I said there was a planet without schools or teachers, study was unknown, and yet the inhabitants - doing nothing but living and walking about came to know all things, to carry in their minds the whole of learning: Would you not think I was romancing? Well just this, which seems so fanciful as to be nothing but the invention of a fertile imagination, is a reality. It is the child's way of learning. This is the path he follows. He learns everything without knowing he is learning it, and in doing so passes little from the unconscious to the conscious, treading always in the paths of joy and love."

"Swaddling clothes have for many centuries been considered necessary to the new-born babe, walking-chairs to the child who is learning to walk. So in the school, we still believe it necessary to have heavy desks and chairs fastened to the floor. All these things are based upon the idea that the child should grow in immobility, and upon the strange prejudice that, in order to execute any educational movement, we must maintain a special position of the body;?as we believe that we must assume a special position when we are about to pray."

"The activity of the child has always been looked upon as an expression of his vitality. But his activity is really the work he performs in building up the man he is to become. It is the incarnation of the human spirit."

"The adolescent must never be treated as a child, for that is a stage of life that he has surpassed. It is better to treat an adolescent as if he had greater value than he actually shows than as if he had less and let him feel that his merits and self-respect are disregarded."

"The adult has a mission to fulfill which has been so complicated and intensified that he finds it ever harder to suspend it as he must do if he is to follow the child, adapting himself to the child's rhythm and the psychological needs."

"The aim is not to create a cultural mind, but a spiritual soul based on reality. Therefore, history should not be taught as a collection of dates and places. But rather be approached to arouse gratitude and appreciation. This gratitude should be aroused first to the law and order of the universe and the preparation of the environment into which human beings came."

"The average intelligence of normal children is low compared to that of normalized children. Because their energies have been misdirected, they are like children with broken bones who have need of special care if they are to become physically fit again."

"The basic error is to suppose that a person?s will must necessarily be broken before it can obey."

"The best instruction is that which uses the least words sufficient for the task."

"The chief symptom of adolescence is a state of expectation, a tendency towards creative work and a need for the strengthening of self-confidence."

"The child becomes a person through work."

"The child begins to become conscious of right and wrong, this not only as regards his own actions, but also the actions of others? moral consciousness is being formed and this leads later to the social sense."

"The child builds his inmost self out of the deeply felt impressions he receives."

"The child can only develop fully by means of experience in his environment. We call such experience ?work?."

"The child has a different relation to his environment from ours... the child absorbs it. The things he sees are not just remembered; they form part of his soul. He incarnates in himself all in the world about him that his eyes see and his ears hear."

"The child has a mind able to absorb knowledge. He has the power to teach himself."

"The child has other powers than ours, and the creation he achieves is no small one; it is everything."

"The child has to acquire physical independence by being self-sufficient; he must become of independent will be using in freedom his own power of choice; he must become capable of independent thought by working alone without interruption. The child?s development follows a path of successive stages of independence."

"The child in the postnatal (or psychological) period of his embryonic life, absorbs from the world about him the distinctive patterns to which the social life of his group conforms?.He absorbs in short, the mathematical part?..the little child?s need for order is one of the most powerful incentives to dominate his early life."

"The child is an enigma? He has the highest potentialities, but we do not know what he will be."

"The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind."

"The child is by nature a worker, and when, by working in this special fashion, which is according to his nature, he can accomplish a great deal of work without ever feeling fatigue. When he works in this way he shows himself to be happy and by working in this way he also becomes cured of certain psychic anomalies that he had, and by curing himself of these he enters into a more natural form of life."

"The child is capable of developing and giving us tangible proof of the possibility of a better humanity. He has shown us the true process of construction of the human being. We have seen children totally change as they acquire a love for things and as their sense of order, discipline, and self-control develops within them... The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind."

"The child is essentially alien to this society of men and might express his position in the words of the Gospel: My kingdom is not of this world."

"The child is much more spiritually elevated than is usually supposed. He often suffers, not from too much work, but from work that is unworthy of him."

"The child is the spiritual builder of mankind, and obstacles to his free development are the stones in the wall by which the soul of man has become imprisoned."

"The child is truly a miraculous being, and this should be felt deeply by the educator."

"The child must always be able to finish the cycle of activity on which his heart is set."