Maria Montessori Quotes
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Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.
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We shall walk together on this path of life, for all things are part of the universe and are connected with each other to form one whole unity.
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... the first thing his education demands is the provision of an environment in which he can develop the powers given him by nature. This does not mean just to amuse him and let him do what he likes. But it does mean that we have to adjust our minds to doing a work of collaboration with nature, to being obedient to one of her laws, the law which decrees that development comes from environmental experience.
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Children have an anxious concern for living beings, and the satisfaction of this instinct fills them with delight. It is therefore easy to interest them in taking care of plants and especially of animals. Nothing awakens foresight in a small child such as this. When he knows that animals have need of him, that little plants will dry up if he does not water them, he binds together with a new thread of love today's passing moments with those of the morrow.
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The child is endowed with unknown powers, which can guide us to a radiant future. If what we really want is a new world, then education must take as its aim the development of these hidden possibilities.
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The ancient saying, "There is nothing in the intellect which was not first in some way in the senses," and senses being explorers of the world, opens the way to knowledge.
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A teacher, therefore, who would think that he could prepare himself for his mission through study alone would be mistaken. The first thing required of a teacher is that he be rightly disposed for his task.
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Freedom in intellectual work is found to be the basis of internal discipline.
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Within the child lies the fate of the future.
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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.
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A child is mysterious and powerful; And contains within himself the secret of human nature.
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Environment is undoubtedly a secondary factor in the phenomena of life; it can modify in that it can help or hinder, but it can never create.
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The child is truly a miraculous being, and this should be felt deeply by the educator.
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Adults look upon a child as something empty that is to be filled through their own efforts, as something inert and helpless for which they must do everything, as something lacking an inner guide and in constant need of inner direction. . . . An adult who acts in this way, even though he may be convinced that he is filled with zeal, love, and a spirit of sacrifice on behalf of his child, unconsciously suppresses the development of the child's own personality.
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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.
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The child seeks for independence by means of work; an independence of body and mind.
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Do not tell them how to do it. Show them how to do it and do not say a word. If you tell them, they will watch your lips move. If you show them, they will want to do it themselves.
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What we need is a world full of miracles, like the miracle of seeing the young child seeking work and independence, and manifesting a wealth of enthusiasm and love.
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It follows that at the beginning of his life the individual can accomplish wonders without effort and quite unconsciously.
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Work is necessary; it can be nothing less than a passion; a person is happy in accomplishment.
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The ‘absorbent mind’ welcomes everything, puts its hope in everything, accepts poverty equally with wealth, adopts any religion and the prejudices and habits of its countrymen, incarnating all in itself. This is the child!
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Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.
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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.
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Free choice is one of the highest of all the mental processes.
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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.
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Culture and education have no bounds or limits; now man is in a phase in which he must decide for himself how far he can proceed in the culture that belongs to the whole of humanity.
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Two things are necessary, the development of individuality and the participation of the individual in a truly social life.
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The teacher’s first duty is to watch over the environment, and this takes precedence over all the rest. It’s influence is indirect, but unless it be well done there will be no effective and permanent results of any kind, physical, intellectual or spiritual.
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Within the child lies the fate of the future. Whoever wishes to confer some benefit on society must preserve him from deviations and observe his natural ways of acting. A child is mysterious and powerful and contains within himself the secret of human nature.
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The teacher, when she begins work in our schools, must have a kind of faith that the child will reveal himself through work.
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