Education is a work of self-organization by which man adapts himself to the conditions of life.
MARIA MONTESSORIEducation is a work of self-organization by which man adapts himself to the conditions of life.
MARIA MONTESSORIIf help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.
MARIA MONTESSORIThe adolescent must never be treated as a child, for that is a stage of life that he has surpassed.
MARIA MONTESSORIWhen you have solved the problem of controlling the attention of the child, you have solved the entire problem of its education.
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 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 MONTESSORIWoman was always the custodian of human sentiment, morality and honour, and in these respects, man always has yielded woman the palm.
MARIA MONTESSORIThe first idea the child must acquire is that of the difference between good and evil.
MARIA MONTESSORIIf intelligence is the triumph of life, the spoken word is the marvellous means by which this intelligence is manifested.
MARIA MONTESSORIIf the ways of the Almighty are not humanly logical, it is not the fault of the Almighty but of the limitations of human logic.
MARIA MONTESSORIIt is better to treat an adolescent as if he had greater value than he actually shows than as if he had less and let him feel that his merits and self-respect are disregarded.
MARIA MONTESSORIThe task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.
MARIA MONTESSORIThe possibility of observing the developments of the psychical life of the child as natural phenomena and experimental reactions transforms the school itself in action into a kind of scientific laboratory for the psychogenetic study of man.
MARIA MONTESSORIBooks are mute as far as sound is concerned. It follows that reading aloud is a combination of two distinct operations, of two ‘languages.’ It is something far more complex than speaking and reading taken separately by themselves.
MARIA MONTESSORIThere are two ‘faiths’ which can uphold humans: faith in God and faith in oneself. And these two faiths should exist side by side: the first belongs to one’s inner life, the second to one’s life in society.
MARIA MONTESSORIWe await the successsive births in the soul of the child. We give all possible material, that nothing may lack to the groping soul, and then we watch for the perfect faculty to come, safeguarding the child from interruption so that it may carry its efforts through.
MARIA MONTESSORI