Great Throughts Treasury

"The greatness of the human personality begins at the hour of birth."

"The greatness of the human personality begins at the hour of birth. From this almost mystic affirmation there comes what may seem a strange conclusion: that education must start from birth."

"The hands are the instruments of man?s intelligence."

"The human hand allows the mind to reveal itself."

"The infant in arms has far greater mental energies than are usually imagined."

"The land is where our roots are. The children must be taught to feel and live in harmony with the Earth."

"The life of the spirit prepares the dynamic power for daily life, and, on its side, daily life encourages thought by means of ordinary work."

"The little child?s first movements were instinctive. Now, he acts consciously and voluntarily, and with this comes an awakening of his spirit? Conscious will is a power which develops with use and activity. We must aim at cultivating the will? Its development is a slow process that evolves through a continuous activity in relationship with the environment."

"The material, in fact, do not offer to the child the content of the mind, but the order for that content."

"The mind of one who does not work for that which he needs, but commands it from others, grows heavy and sluggish."

"The mind takes some time to develop interest, to be set in motion, to get warmed up into a subject, to attain a state of profitable work. If at this time there is interruption, not only is a period of profitable work lost, but the interruption, produces an unpleasant sensation which is identical to fatigue. Fatigue also is caused by work unsuitable to the individual. Suitable work reduces fatigue on account of the pleasure derived from the work itself. Thus the two causes of fatigue are unsuitable work and premature interruption of work."

"The more the capacity to concentrate is developed, the more often the profound tranquility in work is achieved, then the clearer will be the manifestation of discipline within the child."

"The most difficult thing to make clear to the new teacher is that because the child progresses, she must restrain herself and avoid giving directions, even if at first they are expected; all her faith must repose in his latent powers."

"The most urgent task facing educators is to come to know this unknown child and to free it from all entanglements."

"The mother who feeds her child without making the least effort to teach him to hold the spoon for himself and to try to find his mouth with it, and who does not at least eat herself, inviting the child to look and see how she does it, is not a good mother. She offends the fundamental human dignity of her son,?she treats him as if he were a doll, when he is, instead, a man confided by nature to her care."

"The needs of mankind are universal. Our means of meeting them create the richness and diversity of the planet. The Montessori child should come to relish the texture of that diversity."

"The next period goes from six to twelve. It is a period of growth unaccompanied by other change. The child is calm and happy. Mentally, he is in a state of health, strength and assured stability."

"The novelty lies, perhaps, in my idea for the use of this open-air space, which is to be in direct communication with the schoolroom, so that the children may be free to go and come as they like, throughout the entire day."

"The objects that are used for practical life have no scientific purpose. They are the objects used where a child lives and which he sees employed in his own home, but they are especially made to a size that he can use. The number of these objects is not determined by our method, but depends upon the resources of a school, and especially upon the length of time that a child spends in the school each day. If the school has a garden attached to it, the care of the paths, the weeding of plants, or the gathering of ripe fruit, and so on, will make up part of a child's practical occupations. If the daily schedule is very long, dinner will also form a part of them. Of all the exercises of practical life this is the most difficult, exacting and interesting. It includes such things as setting the table with great care, serving the meals, eating properly, washing the cups and plates, and putting away pots and pans."

"The observation of the way in which the children pass from the first disordered movements to those which are spontaneous and ordered -- this is the book of the teacher; this is the book which must inspire her actions."

"The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!"

"The organization must be determined because it is necessary to develop the power of self-adjustment to the environment as it is found, and this adaptation results in cooperation and a happy social life that will facilitate individual progress. The environment must make the free choice of occupation easy, and therefore eliminate the waste of time and energy in following vague and uncertain preferences. From all this the result will be not only self-discipline but a proof that self-discipline is an aspect of individual liberty and the chief factor of success in life. A very important matter is the fundamental order in the succession of occupations during the day, and the times for the change-over. This should be experimental at first and develop into an established thing; necessities will arise and will have to be dealt with and this will tend to create an organization. But it is necessary to consider not only the active occupations but the need for solitude and quiet, which are essential for the development of the hidden treasures of the soul."

"The particular exercises of practical life which we should present to the children will vary according to circumstances, local and national. Whatever they may be, however, we can classify them broadly speaking under two heads: (a) those which have to do with care of the child's own person; and (b) those which are concerned with the care of the environment."

"The peril of servilism and dependence lies not only in that "useless consuming of life," which leads to helplessness, but in the development of individual traits which indicate all too plainly a regrettable perversion and degeneration of the normal man. I refer to the domineering and tyrannical behavior with examples of which we are all only too familiar. The domineering habit develops side by side with helplessness. It is the outward sign of the state of feeling of him who conquers through the work of others. Thus it often happens that the master is a tyrant toward his servant. It is the spirit of the task-master toward the slave."

"The reaction of the children may be described as a burst of independence of all unnecessary assistance that suppresses their activity and prevents them from demonstrating their own capacities. It is just these independent children of ours who learn to write at the age of four and a half years, who learn to read spontaneously, and who amaze everyone by their progress in arithmetic. These children seem to be precocious in their intellectual development and they demonstrate that while working harder than other children they do so without tiring themselves. These children reveal to us the most vital need of their development, saying: 'Help me to do it alone!'"

"The real preparation for education is a study of one's self. The training of the teacher... is something far more than a learning of ideas. It includes the training of character; it is a preparation of the spirit."

"The role of education is to interest the child profoundly in an external activity to which he will give all of this potential."

"The satisfaction which they find in their work has given them a grace and ease like that which comes from music."

"The school where the children live, or rather their country homes, can also give them the opportunity for social experience, for it is an institution organized on a larger scale and with greater freedom than the family. This organization could take the form of a private hotel as far as the management and control are concerned."

"The secret of good teaching is to regard the child?s intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination. Our aim therefore is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his inmost core."

"The secret of success is found to lie in the right use of imagination in awakening interest, and the stimulation of seeds of interest already sown by attractive literary and pictorial material, but all correlated to a central idea, of greatly ennobling inspiration ? the Cosmic Plan in which all, consciously or unconsciously, serve the Great Purpose of Life."

"The senses, being explorers of the world, open the way to knowledge. Our apparatus for educating the senses offers the child a key to guide his explorations of the world."

"The shop would also necessitate a genuine study of commerce and exchange, of the art of ascertaining the demand and being ready to meet it, of the strict and rigid rules of bookkeeping. But the thing that is important above everything else is that the adolescent should have a life of activity and variety, and that one occupation should act as a holiday from another occupation. The shop would be in respect to the studies of economics and politics an educational object, similar to the aquarium or terrarium in the case of the study of biology."

"The studies which have been made of early infancy leave no room for doubt: the first two years are important forever, because in that period, one passes from being nothing into being something."

"The study of love and its utilization will lead us to the source from which it springs, The Child."

"The study of the child? may have an infinitely wider influence, extending to all human questions. In the mind of the child we may find the key to progress."

"The task of teaching becomes easy, since we do not need to choose what we shall teach, but should place all before him for the satisfaction of his mental appetite. He must have absolute freedom of choice, and then he requires nothing but repeated experiences which will become increasingly marked by interest and serious attention, during his acquisition of some desired knowledge."

"The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity, as often happens in the case of the old-time discipline. And all this because our aim is to discipline for activity, for work, for good; not for immobility, not for passivity, not for obedience."

"The teacher has too thoroughly learned to be the one free activity of the school; it has for too long been virtually her duty to suffocate the activity of her pupils. When in the first days in one of the Children's Houses she does not obtain order and silence, she looks about her embarrassed as if asking the public to excuse her, and calling upon those present to testify her innocence. In vain do we repeat to her that the disorder of the first moment is necessary. And finally, when we oblige her to do nothing but watch, she asks if she had not better resign, since she is no longer a teacher."

"The teacher knows the fundamental symptoms and the obvious remedies - the theory, in fact, of treatment, and then it is she who does the rest. The good doctor, like the good teacher, is an individual, not merely a machine for administering medicine or applying educational methods. Details must be left to the judgment of the teacher who is taking her first steps on the new path, as for instance whether general disorder is best quelled by raising the voice, or whether it is best to whisper to a few of the children so as to rouse the curiosity of others and make them quiet."

"The teacher must bring not only the capacity, but the desire to observe."

"The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. In our system, she must become a passive, much more than an active, influence, and her passivity shall be composed of anxious scientific curiosity and of absolute respect for the phenomenon which she wishes to observe. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon."

"The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon."

"The teacher must have faith that the child will reveal himself through work."

"The teacher must not content herself with merely providing her school with an attractive environment; she must continuously think about this environment, because a large part of the result depends on it. The teacher, therefore, must: a) keep the didactic developmental material in perfect order. If this is not the case, the children will not take an interest in it and if they do not, the material becomes useless, as the entire Montessori method is based on the spontaneous activity of the child which is aroused precisely by the interest the child takes in the material. b) make sure that every object used by the children has a place of its own that is easily accessible to them."

"The teacher must not limit her action to observation, but must proceed to experiment?In this method the lesson corresponds to an experiment?The lessons? are individual, and brevity must be one of their chief characteristics?Another quality is its simplicity...The third quality of the lesson is its objectivity. The lesson must be presented in such a way that the personality of the teacher shall disappear. There shall remain in evidence only the object to which she wishes to call the attention of the child?The teacher shall observe whether the child interests himself in the object, how he is interested in it, for how long, etc., even noticing the expressions of his face. And she must take great care not to offend the principles of liberty?The essential thing is for the task to arouse such an interest that it engages the child?s whole personality."

"The teacher must take her materials from the school, and her principles from what she has learnt; and then she must face practically, for herself, the question of this recall. Only her own intelligence can solve the problem, which will be different in every individual case."

"The teacher of children up to six years of age knows that she has helped mankind in an essential part of its formation. She may know nothing of the children's circumstances, except what they have told her freely in conversation; possibly she takes no interest in their future: whether they will go on to secondary schools and the university, or end their studies sooner; but she is happy in the knowledge that in this formative period they were able to do what they had to do. She will be able to say: 'I have served the spirits of those children, and they have fulfilled their development, and I kept them company in their experiences.'"

"The teacher's first duty is to watch over the environment, and this takes precedence over all the rest. Its influence is indirect, but unless it is well done there will be no effective and permanent results of any kind, physical, intellectual or spiritual."

"The teacher's mission has for its aim something constant and exact, bearing in mind the words, "He must grow while I diminish.""