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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.
Oct 2, 2025
To assist a child we must provide him with an environment which will enable him to develop freely.
Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.
A man is not what he is because of the teachers he has had, but because of what he has done
The child will reveal himself through work.
Growth comes from activity, not from intellectual understanding.
The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind.
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.
The essential thing is to arouse such an interest that it engages the child’s whole personality.
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?
The observation of the way in which the children pass from the first disordered movements to those which are spontaneous and ordered -- this is the book of the teacher; this is the book which must inspire her actions . . .
Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.
We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.
Education should no longer be most imparting of knowledge, but must take a new path, seeking the release of human potentialities.
The human hand allows the mind to reveal itself.
The child’s parents are not his makers but his guardians.
The greatness of the human personality begins at the hour of birth.
Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.
Free choice is one of the highest of all the mental processes.
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.
The secret of good teaching is to regard the child's intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination.
The senses, being the explorers of the world, open the way to knowledge.
The essence of independence is to be able to do something for one’s self.
We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master.
Times have changed, and science has made great progress, and so has our work; but our principles have only been confirmed, and along with them our conviction that mankind can hope for a solution to its problems, among which the most urgent are those of peace and unity, only by turning its attention and energies to the discovery of the child and to the development of the great potentialities of the human personality in the course of its formation.
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.
For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind?
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.
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.
The first essential for the child’s development is concentration. The child who concentrates is immensely happy.
Play is the work of the child.
One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.
In roughly the last century, important experiments have been launched by such charismatic educators as Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, Shinichi Suzuki, John Dewey, and A. S. Neil. These approaches have enjoyed considerable success[...] Yet they have had relatively little impact on the mainstream of education throughout the contemporary world.
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.
Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence.
I was in a Montessori school. There was a drum circle with all the kids passing around a little bongo drum. I was the last person in the circle, and when it got to me I played 'Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits' - in front of all the parents. Blew the crowd away at five years old.
To let the child do as he likes when he has not yet developed any powers of control is to betray the idea of freedom.
The children are now working as if I did not exist.
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."
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.
The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!
I do not believe there is a method better than Montessori for making children sensitive to the beauties of the world and awakening their curiosity regarding the secrets of life.
Imitation is the first instinct of the awakening mind.
Personally, I had a great education. My mum was a trained teacher, a Montessori teacher, and I know that I could not have written 'Eragon' if I had gone into a public school system because I would have just been too busy attending classes and doing homework - I wouldn't have had the time to write.
There is a great sense of community within the Montessori classroom, where children of differing ages work together in an atmosphere of cooperation rather than competitiveness. There is respect for the environment and for the individuals within it, which comes through experience of freedom within the community.
The child, in fact, once he feels sure of himself, will no longer seek the approval of authority after every step.
Of all things love is the most potent.
This is education, understood as a help to life; an education from birth, which feeds a peaceful revolution and unites all in a common aim, attracting them as to a single centre. Mothers, fathers, politicians: all must combine in their respect and help for this delicate work of formation, which the little child carries on in the depth of a profound psychological mystery, under the tutelage of an inner guide. This is the bright new hope for mankind.
The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and evil.
Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.