Enjoy These Quotes from
Dr. Maria Montessori
We must support as much as possible
the child's desires for activity; not wait on him, but educate him to
be independent.
Respect all the reasonable forms of activity in which the child engages
and try to understand them.
It is almost possible to say that there is a mathematical relationship
between the beauty of his surroundings and the activity of the child;
he will make discoveries more voluntarily in a gracious setting than in
an ugly one.
The more the capacity to concentrate is developed, the more often the
profound tranquility in work is achieved and then the clearer will be
the manifestation of discipline within the child.
The most difficult thing to make clear to the new teacher is that
because the child progresses, she must restrain herself and avoid
giving directions, even if at first they are expected; all her faith
must repose in his latent powers.
The child is both hope and a promise for mankind.
The child is truly a miraculous being, and this should be felt deeply
by the educator.
Aesthetic and moral education are also closely connected with the
training of the senses. By multiplying sense experiences and developing
the ability to evaluate the smallest differences in various stimuli,
ones sensibilities are refined and ones pleasures increased.
Writing is a key to a double gain. It enables the hand to master a
vital skill like that of speaking and to create a second means of
communication that reflects the spoken word in all its details. Writing
is thus dependent upon mind and hand.
The essential thing is to arouse such an interest that it engages the
child's whole personality.
The training of the teacher who is to help life is something far more
than the learning of ideas. It includes the training of character; it
is a preparation of the spirit.
The real preparation for education is the study of one's self.
The first duty of an education is to stir up life, but leave it free to
develop.
And so 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.
The teacher's task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series
of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the
child.
The teacher's first duty is to watch over the environment, and this
takes precedence over all the rest. Its influence is indirect, but
unless it is well done there will be no effective and permanent results
of any kind, physical, intellectual or spiritual.
Our care of the children should be governed not by the desire to 'make
them learn things', but by the endeavor always to keep burning within
them the light which is called intelligence.
Education is a natural process carried out by the human individual, and
is acquired not by listening to words, but by experiences in the
environment.
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.
Whoever touches the life of the child touches the most sensitive point
of a whole which has roots in the most distant past and climbs toward
the infinite future.
If we could say, "We are respectful and courteous in our dealing with
children, we treat them as we should like to be treated ourselves," we
should have mastered a great educational principle and be setting an
example of good education.
It is well to cultivate a friendly feeling towards error, to treat it
as a companion inseparable from our lives, as something having a
purpose, which it truly has.
Since adults have no concept of the importance of physical activity for
the child, they put a damper on it as a cause of disturbance.
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.
We are here to offer to this child's life, which came into the world by
itself, the means necessary for its development, and having done that
we must await this development with respect.
|
