Only practical work and experience lead the young to maturity.
The instructions of the teacher consist then merely in a hint, a touch-enough to give a start to the child. The rest develops of itself.
The fundamental basis of education must always remain that one must act for oneself. That is clear. One must act for him or herself.
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.
How often is the soul of man – especially in childhood – deprived because it is not allowed to come in contact with nature.
I have studied the child. I have taken what the child has given me and expressed it and that is what is called the Montessori method.
It is necessary, then, to give the child the possibility of developing according to the laws of his nature, so that he can become strong, and, having become strong, can do even more than we dared hope for him.
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.
We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master.
It is the child who makes the man, and no man exists who was not made by the child he once was.
The role of education is to interest the child profoundly in an external activity to which he will give all his potential.
We must support as much as possible the child’s desires for activity; not wait on him, but educate him to be independent.
My vision of the future is no longer of people taking exams and proceeding from secondary school to University but of passing from one stage of independence to a higher, by means of their own activity and effort of will.
Within the child lies the fate of the future.
A child starts from nothing and advances alone. It is the child’s reason about which the sensitive periods revolve. The reason provides the initial force and energy, and a child absorbs his first images to assist the reason and act on it.
The greatest source of discouragement is the conviction that one is unable to do something.
Education demands, then, only this: the utilization of the inner powers of the child for his own instruction.
There are many things which no teacher can convey to a child of three, but a child of five can do it with ease.
If the idea of the universe is presented to the child in the right way, it will do more for him than just arouse his interest, for it will create in him admiration and wonder, a feeling loftier than any interest and more satisfying.
The needs of mankind are universal. Our means of meeting them create the richness and diversity of the planet. The Montessori child should come to relish the texture of that diversity.