Maria Montessori
The child's conquests of independence are the basic steps in what is called his 'natural development'.Collection: Children
When a child is given a little leeway, he will at once shout, "I want to do it!" But in our schools, which have an environment adapted to children's needs, they say, "Help me to do it alone." And these words reveal their inner needs.Collection: Children
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 old-time discipline . . . A room in which all the children move about usefully, intelligently, and voluntarily, without committing any rough or rude act, would seem to me a classroom very well disciplined indeed.Collection: Children
The development of the individual can be described as a succession of new births at consecutively higher levels.Collection: Growth
Bring the child to the consciousness of his own dignity, and he will be free. We see no limit to what should be offered to the child, for his will be an immense field of chosen activity.Collection: Children
Supposing I said there was a planet without schools or teachers, where study was unknown, and yet the inhabitants -- doing nothing but live and walk 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.Collection: Teacher
The word education must not be understood in the sense of teaching but of assisting the psychological development of the child.Collection: Children
In the vivid description of the Gospel, it would seem that we must help the Christ hidden in every poor man, in every prisioner, in every sufferer. But if we paraphrased the marvelous scene and applied it to the child, we should find that Christ goes to help all men in the form of the child.Collection: Children
A child in his earliest years, when he is only two or a little more, is capable of tremendous achievements simply through his unconscious power of absorption, though he is himself still immobile. After the age of three he is able to acquire a great number of concepts through his own efforts in exploring his surroundings. In this period he lays hold of things through his own activity and assimilates them into his mind.Collection: Children
Concentration is a part of life. It is not the consequence of a method of education.Collection: Method
A man is not what he is because of the teachers he has had, but because of what he has doneCollection: Teacher
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.Collection: Children
There are many who hold, as I do, that the most important part 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 a man's intelligence itself, his greatest implement, is being formed. But not only his intelligence; the full totality of his psychic powers.Collection: Men
The children are now working as if I did not exist.Collection: Education
If help and salvation are to come they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.Collection: Children
If the idea of the universe is presented to the child in the right way, it will do more for him than just arouse his interest, for it will create in him admiration and wonder, a feeling loftier than any interest and more satisfying.Collection: Children
Love and the hope of it are not things one can learn; they are a part of life's heritage.Collection: Heritage
Beauty lies in harmony, not in contrast; and harmony is refinement; therefore, there must be a fineness of the senses if we are to appreciate harmony.Collection: Lying
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.Collection: Children
A child is mysterious and powerful; And contains within himself the secret of human nature.Collection: Children
The exercises of practical life are formative activities, a work of adaptation to the environment. Such adaptation to the environment and efficient functioning therein is the very essence of a useful education.Collection: Exercise
An interesting piece of work, freely chosen, which has the virtue of inducing concentration rather than fatigue, adds to the child's energies and mental capacities, and leads him to self-mastery.Collection: Children
It is true that we cannot make a genius. We can only give to teach child the chance to fulfil his potential possibilities.Collection: Children
There can be no substitute for work, neither affection nor physical well-being can replace it.Collection: Work
Never help a child with a task that they feel they can complete themselves.Collection: Children
We shall walk together on this path of life, for all things are a part of the universe, and are connected with each other to form one whole unity. This idea helps the mind of the child to become fixed, to stop wandering in an aimless quest for knowledge. He is satisfied, having found the universal centre of himself with all things.Collection: Children
It is the child who makes the man, and no man exists who was not made by the child he once was.Collection: Children
The essence of independence is to be able to do something for one’s self.Collection: Self
The development of the child during the first three years after birth is unequaled in intensity and importance by any period that precedes or follows in the whole life of the child.Collection: Children
The greatest triumph of our educational method should always be this: to bring about the spontaneous progress of the child.Collection: Children
The work of education is divided between the teacher and the environment.Collection: Teacher
Sometimes very small children in a proper environment develop a skill and exactness in their work that can only surprise us.Collection: Children
The child builds his inmost self out of the deeply held impressions he receives.Collection: Children
An education capable of saving humanity is no small undertaking; it involves the spiritual development of man, the enhancement of his value as an individual, and the preparation of young people to understand the times in which they live.Collection: Spiritual
Order is one of the needs of life which, when it is satisfied, produces a real happinessCollection: Real
Concentration is the key that opens up to the child the latent treasures within him.Collection: Children
The environment itself will teach the child, if every error he makes is manifest to him, without the intervention of a parent of teacher, who should remain a quiet observer of all that happens.Collection: Teacher
Work is necessary; it can be nothing less than a passion; a person is happy in accomplishment.Collection: Passion
When the child goes out, it is the world itself that offers itself to him. Let us take the child out to show him real things instead of making objects which represent ideas and closing them up in cupboards.Collection: Children
All our handling of the child will bear fruit, not only at the moment, but in the adult they are destined to become.Collection: Children
A vital force is active in every individual and leads it towards its own evolution.Collection: Evolution
Childhood constitutes the most important element in an adult's life, for it is in his early years that a man is made.Collection: Men
Movement, or physical activity, is thus an essential factor in intellectual growth, which depends upon the impressions received from outside. Through movement we come in contact with external reality, and it is through these contacts that we eventually acquire even abstract ideas.Collection: Reality
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.Collection: Teacher
The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence.Collection: Men
If education recognizes the intrinsic value of the child's personality and provides an environment suited to spiritual growth, we have the revelation of an entirely new child whose astonishing characteristics can eventually contribute to the betterment of the world.Collection: Spiritual
The child has other powers than ours, and the creation he achieves is no small one; it is everything.Collection: Children
It is not enough for the teacher to love the child. She must first love and understand the universe. She must prepare herself, and truly work at it.Collection: Teacher
We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child's spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.Collection: Religious