Quote: There is in every child a painstaking teacher, so skilful 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! [Maria Montessori]
Quote: An educational method that shall have liberty as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of liberty. That is to say, his training must be such as shall help him to diminish as much as possible the social bonds which limit his activity. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: If we can, when we have established individual discipline, arrange the children, sending each one to his own place, in order, trying to make them understand the idea that thus placed they look well, and that it is a good thing to be thus placed in order, that it is a good and pleasing arrangement in the room, this ordered and tranquil adjustment of theirs -- then their remaining in their places, quiet and silent, is the result of a species of lesson, not an imposition. To make them understand the idea, without calling their attention too forcibly to the practice, to have them assimilate a principle of collective order -- that is the important thing. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and evil; and the task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility, and evil with activity. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. In our system, she must become a passive, much more than an active, influence, and her passivity shall be composed of anxious scientific curiosity and of absolute respect for the phenomenon which she wishes to observe. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: Discipline must come through liberty. We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: If help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: If 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]
Quote: We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: Establishing lasting peace is the work of education all politics can do is keep us out of war. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: If 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 Montessori]
Quote: We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: We cannot create observers by saying 'observe,' but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything! [Maria Montessori]
Quote: The greatest sign of success for a teacher... is to be able to say, 'The children are now working as if I did not exist.' [Maria Montessori]
Quote: 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. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: We cannot create observers by saying "observe," but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses [Maria Montessori]
Quote: If help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: Scientific observation then has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: The principal agent is the object itself and not the instruction given by the teacher. It is the child who uses the objects; it is the child who is active, and not the teacher. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: Of all things love is the most potent. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: Children must grow not only in the body but in the spirit, and the mother longs to follow the mysterious spiritual journey of the beloved one who to-morrow will be the intelligent, divine creation, man. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: The children are now working as if I did not exist. [Maria Montessori]
Quote: 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 teaches them anything. [Maria Montessori]