Dante gives excellent advice to teachers when he says, "Let thy words be counted." The more carefully we cut away useless words, the more perfect will become the lesson. And.
No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child.
Do not erase the designs the child makes in the soft wax of his inner life.
It might be said that the same thing is true of every form of education; a man is not what he is because of the teachers he has had, but because of what he has done.
The system of prizes may turn an individual aside from this vocation, may make him choose a false road, for him a vain one, and forced to follow it, the natural activity of a human being may be warped, lessened, even annihilated.
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.
Noble ideas, great sentiments have always existed and have always been transmitted, but wars have never ceased.
It behooves us to think of what may happen to the spirit of the child who is condemned to grow in conditions so artificial that his very bones may become deformed.
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.
The child is not an empty being who owes whatever he knows to us who have filled him up with it. No, the child is the builder of man. There is no man existing who has not been formed by the child he once was.
Teach by teaching, not by correcting.
But the love of man for man is a far more tender thing, and so simple that it is universal. To love in this way is not the privilege of any especially prepared intellectual class, but lies within the reach of all men.
For a man is not only a biological but a social product, and the social environment of individuals in the process of education, is the home. Scientific pedagogy will seek in vain to better the new generation if it does not succeed in influencing also the environment within which this new generation grows! I.
Dr. Montessori believes in liberty for the pupil because she thinks of life "as a superb goddess, ever advancing to new conquests." Submission, loyalty, self-sacrifice seem to her, apparently, only incidental necessities of life, not essential elements of its eternal form.
Here it is enough to say that one should proceed from few stimuli strongly contrasting, to many stimuli in gradual differentiation always more fine and imperceptible.
Books are mute as far as sound is concerned. It follows that reading aloud is a combination of two distinct operations, of two 'languages.' It is something far more complex than speaking and reading taken separately by themselves.
It is surprising to notice that even from the earliest age, man finds the greatest satisfaction in feeling independent. The exalting feeling of being sufficient to oneself comes as a revelation.
Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world.
Establishing lasting peace is the work of education all politics can do is keep us out of war.
The person who is developing freely and naturally arrives at a spiritual equilibrium in which he is master of his actions, just as one who has acquired physical poise can move freely.
But, above all it is the education of adolescents that is important, because adolescence is the time when the child enters on the state of [adult]hood and becomes a member of society.
Dependence is not patriotism. A man does not love his mother if he hangs about her to the point of burdening her with a weak, feckless son.
We all know the sense of comfort of which we are conscious when a good half of the floor space in a room is unencumbered; this seems to offer us the agreeable possibility of moving about freely.
All work is noble; the only ignoble thing is to live without working. There is need to realize the value of work in all its forms whether manual or intellectual, to be called 'mate,' to have sympathetic understanding of all forms of activity.
We habitually serve children; and this is not only an act of servility toward them, but it is dangerous, since it tends to suffocate their useful, spontaneous activity.
The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences.
Even so those who teach little children too often have the idea that they are educating babies and seek to place themselves on the child's level by approaching him with games, and often with foolish stories. Instead of all this, we must know how to call to the man which lies dormant within the soul of the child.
The school must permit the free, natural manifestations of the child if in the school scientific pedagogy is to be born. This is the essential reform. No one may affirm that such a.
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.
The environment acts more strongly upon the individual life the less fixed and strong this individual life may be.
It would be so simple to allow children, when tired of sitting, to rise, and when tired of writing, to desist, and then their bones would not be twisted.
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 task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.
What is generally known as discipline in traditional schools is not activity, but immobility and silence. It is not discipline, but something that festers inside a child, arousing his rebellious feelings.
The most important period of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six.
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.
Preventing war is the work of politicians, establishing peace is the work of educationists.
Education is a work of self-organization by which man adapts himself to the conditions of life.
My system is to be considered a system leading up, in a general way, to education. It can be followed not only in the education of little children from three to six years of age, but can be extended to children up to ten years of age.
I was more than an elementary teacher, for I was present, or directly taught the children, from eight in the morning to seven in the evening without interruption. These two years of practice are my first and indeed my true degree in pedagogy. From the very beginning of my.
The study of expression ought to form a part of the study of psychology, but it also comes within the province of anthropology because the habitual, life-long expressions of the face determine the wrinkles of old age, which are distinctly an anthropological characteristic.
When you have solved the problem of controlling the attention of the child, you have solved the entire problem of its education.
In their simplicity they asked of Him, "Master, tell us who shall be greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?" To which Christ, caressing the head of a little child who, with reverent, wondering eyes, looked into His face, replied, "Whosoever shall become as one of these little ones, he shall be greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven." Now.
We wish the old things because we cannot understand the new, and we are always seeking after that gorgeousness which belongs to things already on the decline, without recognising in the humble simplicity of new ideas the germ which shall develop in the future.
Our work is not to teach, but to help the absorbent mind in its work of development. How marvelous it would be if by our help, if by an intelligent treatment of the child, if by understanding the needs of his physical life and by feeding his intellect, we could prolong the period of functioning of the absorbent mind!
Indeed there are powers in the small child that are far greater than is generally realized, because it is in this period that the construction, the building-up, of man takes place, for at birth, psychically speaking, there is nothing at all - zero!
Only through freedom and environmental experience is it practically possible for human development to occur.
To assist a child we must provide him with an environment which will enable him to develop freely.
Woman was always the custodian of human sentiment, morality and honour, and in these respects, man always has yielded woman the palm.
