Best 282 quotes of Maria Montessori on MyQuotes

The prize and punishments are incentives toward unnatural or forced effort, and, therefore we certainly cannot speak of the natural development of the child in connection with them.

The real preparation for education is a study of one's self. The training of the teacher...is something far more than a 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.

There are many things which no teacher can convey to a child of three, but a child of five can do it with ease.

There are many who hold, as I do, that the most important part of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six. For that is the time when a man's intelligence itself, his greatest implement, is being formed. But not only his intelligence; the full totality of his psychic powers.

There can be no substitute for work, neither affection nor physical well-being can replace it.

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.

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.

There is in the child a special kind of sensitivity which leads him to absorb everything about him, and it is this work of observing and absorbing that alone enables him to adapt himself to life

There is no description, no image in any book that is capable of replacing the sight of real trees, and all of the life to be found around them in a real forest.

There must be provision for the child to have contact with nature; to understand and appreciate the order, the harmony and the beauty in nature.

There should be music in the child's environment, just as there does exist in the child's environment spoken speech. In the social environment the child should be considered and music should be provided.

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 social rights of children must be recognized so that a world suited to their needs may be constructed for them. The greatest crime that society commits is that of wasting the money which it should use for children on things that will destroy them and society itself as well.

The study of love and its utilization will lead us to the source from which it springs, The Child.

The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility, and evil with activity, as often happens in old-time discipline . . . A room in which all the children move about usefully, intelligently, and voluntarily, without committing any rough or rude act, would seem to me a classroom very well disciplined indeed.

The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.

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.

The teacher’s first duty is to watch over the environment, and this takes precedence over all the rest. It’s influence is indirect, but unless it be well done there will be no effective and permanent results of any kind, physical, intellectual or spiritual.

The teacher's task is not a small easy one! She has to prepare a huge amount of knowledge to satisfy the child's mental hunger. She is not like the ordinary teacher, limited by a syllabus. The needs of the child are clearly more difficult to answer.

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, when she begins work in our schools, must have a kind of faith that the child will reveal himself through work.

The undisciplined child enters into discipline by working in the company of others; not being told he is naughty.”  “Discipline is, therefore, primarily a learning experience and less a punitive experience if appropriately dealt with.

The unknown energy that can help humanity is that which lies hidden in the child.

The whole of mankind is one and only one, one race, one class and one society.

The word education must not be understood in the sense of teaching but of assisting the psychological development of the child.

The work of education is divided between the teacher and the environment.

The world of education is like an island where people cut off from the world are prepared for life by exclusion from it.

The activity of the child has always been looked upon as an expression of his vitality.

The environment itself will teach the child, if every error he makes is manifest to him, without the intervention of a parent of teacher, who should remain a quiet observer of all that happens.

The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences.

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.

This is the treasure we need today - helping the child become independent of us and make his way by himself, receiving in return his gifts of hope and light.

This system in which a child is constantly moving objects with his hands and actively exercising his senses, also takes into account a child's special aptitude for mathematics. When they leave the material, the children very easily reach the point where they wish to write out the operation. They can thus carryout an abstract mental operation and acquire a kind of natural and spontaneous inclination for mental calculations.

This then is the first duty of an educator: to stir up life but leave it free to develop.

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.

To aid life, leaving it free, however, that is the basic task of the educator.

To assist a child we must provide him with an environment which will enable him to develop freely.

To consider the school as a place where instruction is given is one point of view. But, to consider the school as a preparation for life is another. In the latter case, the school must satisfy all the needs of life.

To give a child liberty is not to abandon him to himself.

To have a vision of the cosmic plan, in which every form of life depends on directed movements which have effects beyond their conscious aim, is to understand the child's work and be able to guide it better.

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.

To teach details is to bring confusion; to establish the relationship between things is to bring knowledge.

Two things are necessary, the development of individuality and the participation of the individual in a truly social life.

Under the urge of nature and according to the laws of development, though not understood by the adult, the child is obliged to be serious about two fundamental things ... the first is the love of activity... The second fundamental thing is independence.

Watch the unending activity of the flowing stream or the growing tree. See the breakers of the ocean, the unceasing movements of the earth, the planets, the sun and the stars. All creation is life, movement, work.

We are the sowers - our children are those who reap. We labor so that future generations will be better and nobler than we are.

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.

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.