22 quotes
The children are now working as if I did not exist.
The Absorbent Mind (1949)
To stimulate life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself, that is the first duty of the educator.
The Discovery of the Child (1948)
If help and salvation are to come they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.
The Absorbent Mind (1949)
He is a serene and pleasant man where he is powerful through being efficient, but is domineering where he is served.
The Montessori Method (1912)
To prepare teachers in the method of the experimental sciences is not an easy matter.
The Montessori Method (1912)
The domineering habit develops side by side with helplessness.
The Montessori Method (1912)
This is our mission: to cast a ray of light and pass on.
The Discovery of the Child (1948)
The task of the educator of young children lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility, and evil with activity.
The Encarta Book of Quotations (2000)
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.
The Absorbent Mind (1949)
That which the educator must seek is to be able to see the child as Jesus saw him.
The child is truly a miraculous being, and this should be felt deeply by the educator.
The Absorbent Mind (1949)
The best instruction is that which uses the least words sufficient for the task.
The Discovery of the Child (1948)
Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.
Words of Wisdom (1990)
Rewards and punishments, to speak frankly, are the desk of the soul, that is, a means of enslaving a child's spirit, and better suited to provoke than to prevent deformities.
The Discovery of the Child (1948)
If a child finds no stimuli for the activities which would contribute to his development, he is attracted simply to 'things' and desires to possess them.
The Secret of Childhood (1936)
"The child is essentially alien to this society of men and might express his position in the words of the Gospel: My kingdom is not of this world"
We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master. We then become witnesses to the development of the human soul; the emergence of the New Man who will no longer be the victim of events but, thanks to his clarity of vision, will become able to direct and to mold the future of mankind.
The Absorbent Mind (1949)
* "In the vivid description of the Gospel, it would seem that we must help the Christ hidden in every poor man, in every prisioner, in every sufferer. But if we paraphrased the marvelous scene and applied it to the child, we should find that Christ goes to help all men in the form of the child."
One who has drunk at the fountain of spiritual happiness says good-by of his own accord to the satisfactions that come from a higher professional status … What is the greatest sign of success for a teacher thus transformed? It is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist."
The Absorbent Mind (1949)
"Freedom without organization of work would be useless. The child left free without means of work would go to waste, just as a new-born baby, if left free without nourishment, would die of starvation.The organization of the work, therefore, is the cornerstone of this new structure of goodness [in education], but even that organization would be in vain without the liberty to make use of it."
Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook: A short guide to her ideas and materials (1914)