The consciousness of knowing how to make oneself useful, how to help mankind in many ways, fills the soul with noble confidence, almost religious dignity.
MARIA MONTESSORIThe consciousness of knowing how to make oneself useful, how to help mankind in many ways, fills the soul with noble confidence, almost religious dignity.
MARIA MONTESSORIThe ancient superficial idea of the uniform and progressive growth of the human personality has remained unaltered, and the erroneous belief has persisted that it is the duty of the adult to fashion the child according to the pattern required by society.
MARIA MONTESSORIThere is need to realize the value of work in all its forms whether manual or intellectual, to be called ‘mate,’ to have sympathetic understanding of all forms of activity.
MARIA MONTESSORITravel stories teach geography; insect stories lead the child into natural science; and so on.
MARIA MONTESSORIWhen the child begins to think and to make use of the written language to express his rudimentary thinking, he is ready for elementary work; and this fitness is a question not of age or other incidental circumstance but of mental maturity.
MARIA MONTESSORIThe child who concentrates is immensely happy.
MARIA MONTESSORIThe child’s mind is not the type of mind we adults possess. If we call our type of mind the conscious type, that of the child is an unconscious mind. Now an unconscious mind does not mean an inferior mind.
MARIA MONTESSORIIndeed there are powers in the small child that are far greater than is generally realized, because it is in this period that the construction, the building-up, of man takes place, for at birth, psychically speaking, there is nothing at all – zero!
MARIA MONTESSORIIf education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man’s future. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual’s total development lags behind?
MARIA MONTESSORINow, what really makes a teacher is love for the human child; for it is love that transforms the social duty of the educator into the higher consciousness of a mission.
MARIA MONTESSORIThe child, merely by going on with his life, learns to speak the language belonging to his race. It is like a mental chemistry that takes place in the child.
MARIA MONTESSORIEarly childhood education is the key to the betterment of society.
MARIA MONTESSORIIt is fortunate, I think, that nature is not bounded by human reason and by laboratory work and experimentation, for by the laws of pure reason and by microscopic investigation, it might easily have been proved, long before this, that children could not be born.
MARIA MONTESSORIThrough machinery, man can exert tremendous powers almost as fantastic as if he were the hero of a fairy tale. Through machinery, man can travel with an ever increasing velocity; he can fly through the air and go beneath the surface of the ocean.
MARIA MONTESSORIPersonal health is related to self-control and to the worship of life in all its natural beauty – self-control bringing with it happiness, renewed youth, and long life.
MARIA MONTESSORIIf an educational act is to be efficacious, it will be only that one which tends to help toward the complete unfolding of life. To be thus helpful it is necessary rigorously to avoid the arrest of spontaneous movements and the imposition of arbitrary tasks.
MARIA MONTESSORI