Great Throughts Treasury

"The teacher's task is no small or easy one! He as to prepare a huge amount of knowledge to satisfy the child's mental hunger, and he is not, like the ordinary teacher, limited by a syllabus."

"The teacher's task is not a small easy one! She has to prepare a huge amount of knowledge to satisfy the child's mental hunger. She is not like the ordinary teacher, limited by a syllabus. The needs of the child are clearly more difficult to answer."

"The things he sees are not just remembered; they form a part of his soul."

"The third period goes from twelve to eighteen, and it is a period of so much change as to remind one of the first. It can again be divided into two sub-phases: one from twelve to fifteen, and the other from fifteen to eighteen. There are physical changes also during this period, the body reaching its full maturity."

"The tiny child?s absorbent mind finds all its nutriment in its surroundings. Here it has to locate itself, and build itself up from what it takes in. Especially at the beginning of life must we, therefore, make the environment as interesting and attractive as we can. The child, as we have seen, passes through successive phases of development and in each of these his surroundings have an important ? though different ? part to play. In none have they more importance than immediately after birth."

"The undisciplined child enters into discipline by working in the company of others; not being told he is naughty.? ?Discipline is, therefore, primarily a learning experience and less a punitive experience if appropriately dealt with."

"The unknown energy that can help humanity is that which lies hidden in the child."

"The vision of the teacher should be at once precise like that of the scientist, and spiritual like that of the saint. The preparation for science and the preparation for sanctity should form a new soul, for the attitude of the teacher should be at once positive, scientific and spiritual."

"The word education must not be understood in the sense of teaching but of assisting the psychological development of the child."

"The work of the child is essential to all humanity; this work is the construction of the man or woman of tomorrow. She observed and identified the natural characteristics of young children: Spontaneous interest and deep concentration. Desire for purposeful movement. Love of repetition. Love of order. Desire for freedom of choice. Preference of work to play. Indifference to rewards or punishments. Love of silence. Sense of personal dignity. Early interest in reading and writing. Spontaneous self-discipline. Interest in the cosmos and the interrelation of all things. Education... is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. [paraphrased]"

"The work of the teacher is to guide the children to normalization, to concentration. She is like the sheepdog who goes after the sheep when they stray, who conducts all the sheep inside. The teacher has two tasks: to lead the children to concentration and to help them in their development afterwards. The fundamental help in development, especially with little children of three years of age, is not to interfere. Interference stops activity and stops concentration. But do not apply the rule of non-interference when the children are still the prey of all their different naughtinesses."

"The world of education is like an island where people, cut off from the world, are prepared for life by exclusion from it."

"There are many who hold, as I do, that the most important period of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six. For that is the time when man's intelligence itself, his greatest implement, is being formed. But not only his intelligence; the full totality of his psychic powers."

"There can be no substitute for work; neither affection nor physical well-being can replace it."

"There is a great sense of community within the Montessori classroom, where children of differing ages work together in an atmosphere of cooperation rather than competitiveness. There is respect for the environment and for the individuals within it, which comes through experience of freedom within the community."

"There is in every child a painstaking teacher, so skillful that he obtains identical results in all children in all parts of the world. The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!"

"There is in the child a special kind of sensitivity which leads him to absorb everything about him, and it is this work of observing and absorbing that alone enables him to adapt himself to life. He does it in virtue of an unconscious power that exists in childhood?.The first period of the child?s life is one of adaptation. It is the child?s special adaptability that makes the land into which he is born the only one in which he will ever want to live."

"There is in the soul of a child an impenetrable secret that is gradually revealed as it develops."

"There is no description, no image in any book that is capable of replacing the sight of real trees, and all of the life to be found around them in a real forest."

"There is no science and no art of greater importance than that which teaches seeing, which builds sensitivity and respect for the natural world."

"There is... in every child a painstaking teacher, so skillful that he obtains identical results in all children in all parts of the world. The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!"

"There was no method to be seen, what was seen was a child... acting according to its own nature."

"There would be all kinds of artistic occupations open to free choice both as to the time and the nature of the work. Some must be for the individual and some would require the cooperation of a group. They would involve artistic and linguistic ability and imagination."

"Therefore this work which has built up civilization and which has transformed the earth is at the very basis of life and is a fundamental part of it. So much so, that it is, as we say, even in the child. Work has existed in the nature of man as an instinct even from birth itself... The study of society will be held to be a study of the life of the child which shows us in an embryonic stage this profound tendency of humanity and the mechanism by which society is built up."

"Therefore work on the land is an introduction both to nature and to civilization and gives a limitless field for scientific and historic studies. If the produce can be used commercially this brings in the fundamental mechanism of society, that of production and exchange, on which economic life is based. This means that there is an opportunity to learn both academically and through actual experience what are the elements of social life. We have called these children the Erdkinder because they are learning about civilization through its origin in agriculture. They are the land-children."

"These conquerors of themselves have also attained freedom since they have rid themselves of those many disorderly and unconscious tendencies that necessarily place children under the strict and continuous control of adults."

"These results seemed almost miraculous to those who saw them. To me, however, the boys from the asylums had been able to compete with the normal children only because they had been taught in a different way. They had been helped in their psychic development, and the normal children had, instead, been suffocated, held back. I found myself thinking that if, some day, the special education which had developed these idiot children in such a marvelous fashion, could be applied to the development of normal children, the miracle of which my friends talked would no longer be possible. The abyss between the inferior mentality of the idiot and that of the normal brain can never be bridged if the normal child has reached his full development."

"These very children reveal to us the most vital need of their development, saying : 'Help me to do it alone!'"

"This art must accompany the scientific method, because the simplicity of our lessons bears a great resemblance to experiments in experimental psychology."

"This is our mission: to cast a ray of light and pass on. I compare the effects of these first lessons the impressions of a solitary wanderer who is walking serene and happy in a shady grove, meditating; that is leaving his inner thought free to wander. Suddenly a church bell pealing out nearby recalls to himself; then he feels more keenly that peaceful bliss which had already been born, though dormant, within him. To stimulate life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself, that is the first duty of the educator. For such a delicate mission great art is required to suggest the right moment and to limit intervention, last one should disturb or lead astray rather than help the soul which is coming to life and which will live by virtue of its own efforts."

"This is the treasure we need today - helping the child become independent of us and make his way by himself, receiving in return his gifts of hope and light."

"This kind of activity (climbing, carrying etc.), which serves no external purpose, gives children the practice they need for coordinating their movements? all the child does is to obey an inner impulse."

"This means that it is not enough to set. The child among objects in proportion to his size and strength; the adult who is to help him must have learned how to do so. If the adult, through a fatal misunderstanding, instead of helping the child to do things for himself, substitutes himself for the child, then that adult becomes the blindest and most powerful obstacle to the development of the child's psychic life. In this misunderstanding, in the excessive competition between adult work and child work, lies the first great drama of the struggle between man and his work, and perhaps the origin of all the dramas and struggles of mankind."

"This system in which a child is constantly moving objects with his hands and actively exercising his senses, also takes into account a child's special aptitude for mathematics. When they leave the material, the children very easily reach the point where they wish to write out the operation. They thus carry out an abstract mental operation and acquire a kind of natural and spontaneous inclination for mental calculations."

"Through practical exercises of this sort the children develop a true 'social feeling', for they are working in the environment of the community in which they live, without concerning themselves as to whether it is for their own, or for the common good."

"Thus it happens that at the age of three, life seems to begin again; for now consciousness shines forth in all its fullness and glory. Between these two periods, the unconscious period and the one which follows it of conscious development, there seems to be a well-marked boundary."

"Times have changed, and science has made great progress, and so has our work; but our principles have only been confirmed, and along with them our conviction that mankind can hope for a solution to its problems, among which the most urgent are those of peace and unity, only by turning its attention and energies to the discovery of the child and to the development of the great potentialities of the human personality in the course of its formation."

"To aid life, leaving it free, however, that is the basic task of the educator."

"To assist a child we must provide him with an environment, which will enable him to develop freely."

"To collect one's forces, even when they seem to be scattered, and when one's aim is only dimly perceived - this is a great action and will sooner or later bring forth fruit."

"This is education, understood as a help to life; an education from birth, which feeds a peaceful revolution and unites all in a common aim, attracting them as to a single center. Mothers, fathers, politicians: all must combine in their respect and help for this delicate work of formation, which the little child carries on in the depth of a profound psychological mystery, under the tutelage of an inner guide. This is the bright new hope for mankind."

"To do well, it is necessary to aim at giving the elementary age child an idea of all fields of study, not in precise detail, but on impression. The idea is to sow the seeds of knowledge at this age, when a sort of sensitive period for the imagination exists."

"To give a child liberty is not to abandon him to himself."

"To give the whole of modern culture has become an impossibility and so a need arises for a special method, whereby all factors of culture may be introduced to the six-year-old; not in a syllabus to be imposed on him, or with exactitude of detail, but in the broadcasting of the maximum number of seeds of interest. These will be held lightly in the mind, but will be capable of later germination, as the will becomes more directive, and thus he may become an individual suited to these expansive times."

"To have a vision of the cosmic plan, in which every form of life depends on directed movements which have effects beyond their conscious aim, is to understand the child's work and be able to guide it better."

"To keep alive enthusiasm is the secret of real guidance, and it will not prove a difficult task, provided that the attitude towards the child's acts be that of respect, calm, and waiting, and provided that he be left free in his movements and experiences."

"To make it clear whether or not a child has understood, we should see whether he can form a vision of it within the mind, whether he has gone beyond the level of mere understanding."

"To prepare teachers in the method of the experimental sciences is not an easy matter. When we shall have instructed them in anthropometry and psychometry in the most minute manner possible, we shall have only created machines, whose usefulness will be most doubtful. Indeed, if it is after this fashion that we are to initiate our teachers into experiment, we shall remain forever in the field of theory. The teachers of the old school, prepared according to the principles of metaphysical philosophy, understood the ideas of certain men regarded as authorities, and moved the muscles of speech in talking of them, and the muscles of the eye in reading their theories. Our scientific teachers, instead, are familiar with certain instruments and know how to move the muscles of the hand and arm in order to use these instruments; besides this, they have an intellectual preparation which consists of a series of typical tests, which they have, in a barren and mechanical way, learned how to apply. The difference is not substantial, for profound differences cannot exist in exterior technique alone, but lie rather within the inner man. Not with all our initiation into scientific experiment have we prepared new masters, for, after all, we have left them standing without the door of real experimental science; we have not admitted them to the noblest and most profound phase of such study, ? to that experience which makes real scientists."

"To stimulate life, - leaving it then free to develop, to unfold, - herein lies the first take to the educator. In such a delicate task, a great art must suggest the moment, and limit the intervention, in order that we shall arouse no perturbation, cause no deviation, but rather that we shall help the soul which is coming into the fullness of life, and which shall live from its own forces. This art must accompany the scientific method."

"Under the urge of nature and according to the laws of development, though not understood by the adult, the child is obliged to be serious about two fundamental things ? the first is the love of activity? The second fundamental thing is independence."