Maria Montessori Quotes

Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.

Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence.

It is not enough for the teacher to love the child. She must first love and understand the universe. She must prepare herself, and truly work at it.

Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.

The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist.

Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.

Within the child lies the fate of the future.

No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child

Of all things love is the most potent.

Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.

Do not erase the designs the child makes in the soft wax of his inner life.

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.

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.

Preventing war is the work of politicians, establishing peace is the work of educationists.

The things he sees are not just remembered; they form a part of his soul.

Respect all the reasonable forms of activity in which the child engages and try to understand them.

To stimulate life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself--that is the first duty of the educator.

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

If salvation and help are to come, it is through the child ; for the child is the constructor of man.

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.

Such prizes and punishments are, if I may be allowed the expression, the bench of the soul, the instrument of slavery for the spirit.

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

The essence of independence is to be able to do something for one’s self.

We shall walk together on this path of life, for all things are part of the universe and are connected with each other to form one whole unity.

It is true that we cannot make a genius. We can only give to teach child the chance to fulfil his potential possibilities.

Great tact and delicacy is necessary for the care of the mind of a child from three to six years, and an adult can have very little of it.

The best instruction is that which uses the least words sufficient for the task.

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!

Needless help is an actual hindrance to the development of natural forces.

A method of schooling founded by the Italian educator Maria Montessori that emphasizes collaborative, explorative learning, and whose alumni include Google’s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page; Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales; video-game designer Will Wright; Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos; chef Julia Child; and rap impresario Sean Combs.

Children become like the things they love.

Đứa bé chọn một mảnh giấy từ một đống rác, và nó bắt đầu đọc một câu chuyện. Thế là cuối cùng các em hiểu ra ý nghĩa của sách vở và sau đó, sách trở thành món có nhu cầu cao. Tuy nhiên nhiều đứa trẻ, khi thấy cái gì lý thú trong sách, chúng bèn xé trang đó ra và mang đi.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nhà giáo không nên tưởng tượng rằng chỉ đơn thuần bằng việc học tập và trở thành con người có văn hóa là họ đã được chuẩn bị đầy đủ cho nhiệm vụ của mình. Trước hết, họ phải trau dồi một số kỹ năng đạo đức cho bản thân.

you do not exist, you cannot hope to grow. That is the tremendous step the child takes, the step that goes from nothing to something.

The environment acts more strongly upon the individual life the less fixed and strong this individual life may be.

We serve the future by protecting the present.

Let the children be free; encourage them; let them run outside when it is raining; let them remove their shoes when they find a puddle of water; and, when the grass of the meadows is damp with dew, let them run on it and trample it with their bare feet; let them rest peacefully when a tree invites them to sleep beneath its shade; let them shout and laugh when the sun wakes them in the morning as it wakes every living creature that divides its day between waking and sleeping.” —Dr. Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child

If the child shows through its conversation that the educational work of the school is being undermined by the attitude taken in his home, he will be sent back to his parents, to teach them thus how to take advantage of their good opportunities.

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Montessori Schools. Dr. Maria Montessori developed the Montessori method of teaching in the early 1900s after observing children’s natural curiosity and innate desire to learn.

Chúng ta phải hoàn hảo trong tư tưởng, bởi vì tư tưởng của chúng ta biến thành lời nói, và lời nói thành hành động, và hành động thành thói quen và thói quen thành cá tính; và trong cuộc đời này, tất cả cái ta có là cá tính bởi chính cá tính quyết định vận mệnh của chúng ta.

The purpose of life is to obey the hidden command which ensures harmony among all and creates an ever better world. We are not created only to enjoy the world, we are created in order to evolve the cosmos.

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.

A second birth,” Maria Montessori called it, when a child can move away from his mother on his own. And indeed Owen does seem like a new child, rarely crying, constantly at work on getting himself somewhere else.

As a rule, however, we do not respect our children. We try to force them to follow us without regard to their special needs. We are overbearing with them, and above all, rude; and then we expect them to be submissive and well-behaved, knowing all the time how strong is their instinct of imitation and how touching their faith in and admiration of us.

I succeeded in teaching a number of the idiots from the asylums both to read and to write so well that I was able to present them at a public school for an examination together with normal children. And they passed the examination successfully.

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

A teacher simply assists him at the beginning to get his bearings among so many different things and teaches him the precise use of each of them; that is to say, she introduces him to the ordered and active life of the environment. But then she leaves him free in the choice and execution of his work.

We give the name scientist to the type of man who has felt experiment to be a means guiding him to search out the deep truth of life, to lift a veil from its fascinating secrets, and who, in this pursuit, has felt arising within him a love for the mysteries of nature, so passionate as to annihilate the thought of himself.

The true basis of the imagination is reality

nor can we expect exactly similar results from children whose heredity and experience make them at once more sensitive, more active, and less amenable to

From the child itself he will learn how to perfect himself as an educator.

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

We call an individual disciplined when he is master of himself, and can, therefore, regulate his own conduct when it shall be necessary to follow some rule of life. Such

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.

When the teacher shall have touched, in this way, soul for soul, each one of her pupils, awakening and inspiring the life within them as if she were an invisible spirit, she will then possess each soul, and a sign, a single word from her shall suffice; for each one will feel her in a living and vital way, will recognise her and will listen to her. There will come a day when the directress herself shall be filled with wonder to see that all the children obey her with gentleness and affection, not only ready, but intent, at a sign from her. They will look toward her who has made them live, and will hope and desire to receive from her, new life.

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.

I withdrew from active work among deficients, and began a more thorough study of the works of Itard and Séguin. I felt the need of meditation. I did a thing which I had not done before, and which perhaps few students have been willing to do,—I translated into Italian and copied out with my own hand, the writings of these men, from beginning to end, making for myself books as the old Benedictines used to do before the diffusion of printing.

In our system, she must become a passive, much more than an active, influence, and her passivity shall be composed of anxious scientific curiosity, and of absolute respect for the phenomenon which she wishes to observe. The

Maria Montessori, the famous educator, said, “We send children to school, and we think they’re cups; we want them to fill up the cup. The truth is, the cups are already full.” All the knowledge, all the power, there ever was or ever will be is omnipresent. You’ve already got all the knowledge and power you’ll ever need. You don’t get energy, you release it, and you release it to desire. When you’ve got a desire, you’ve got the energy to do it.

While everyone was admiring the progress of my idiots, I was searching for the reasons which could keep the happy healthy children of the common schools on so low a plane that they could be equalled in tests of intelligence by my unfortunate pupils!

The moral degradation of the slave is, above all things, the weight that opposes the progress of humanity - humanity striving to rise and held back by this great burden. The cry of redemption speaks far more clearly for the souls of men than for their bodies.

Others, after having studied children carefully, have come to the conclusion that the first two years are the most important of life. Education during this period must be intended as a help to the development of the psychic powers inherent in the human individual.

the fundamental phrase which sums up Séguin's whole method,—"to lead the child, as it were, by the hand, from the education of the muscular system, to that of the nervous system, and of the senses." It was thus that Séguin taught the idiots how to walk, how to maintain their equilibrium in the most difficult movements of the body—such as going up stairs, jumping, etc., and finally, to feel, beginning the education of the muscular sensations by touching, and reading the difference of temperature, and ending with the education of the particular senses.

If discipline is founded upon liberty, the discipline itself must necessarily be active. 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.

There does exist, however, an external prize for man; when, for example, the orator sees the faces of his listeners change with the emotions he has awakened, he experiences something so great that it can only be likened to the intense joy with which one discovers that he is loved. Our joy is to touch, and conquer souls, and this is the one prize which can bring us a true compensation. Sometimes there is given to us a moment when we fancy ourselves to be among the great ones of the world. These are moments of happiness given to man that he may continue his existence in peace.

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

The little fellow had been about to feel himself a conqueror, and he found himself held within two imprisoning arms, impotent. The expression of joy, anxiety, and hope, which had interested me so much faded from his face and left on it the stupid expression of the child who knows that others will act for him.

Don’t you begin to see in this behavior that animals sacrifice themselves for the welfare of other types of life, instead of trying to eat as much as possible merely for their own existence or upkeep? The more one studies the behavior of animals and of plants, the more clearly one sees that they have a task to perform for the welfare of the whole.

This is what is intended by education as a help to life; an education from birth that brings about a revolution: a revolution that eliminates every violence, a revolution in which everyone will be attracted towards a common center. Mothers, fathers, statesmen all will be centered upon respecting and aiding this delicate construction which is carried on in psychic mystery following the guide of an inner teacher. This is the new shining hope for humanity. It is not so much a reconstruction, as an aid to the construction carried out by the human soul as it is meant to be, developed in all the immense potentialities with which the new-born child is endowed.

Childhood is now considered by psychologists as a very important period because they realize that if we wish to give new ideas to the people, if we wish to alter the habits and customs of the country, or if we wish to accentuate more vigorously the characteristics belonging to a people, we must take as our instrument the child, as very little can be done by acting upon adults. If one has really a vision of better conditions, of greater enlightenment for people, it is only the child that one can look upon in order to bring about the desired results. If there are people who think that their customs are degenerate, or others who want to revive old ones, the only individual with whom they can work is the child.

The educator must be as one inspired by a deep worship of life, and must, through this reverence, respect, while he observes with human interest, the development of the child life. Now, child life is not an abstraction; it is the life of individual children. There exists only one real biological manifestation: the living individual; and toward single individuals, one by one observed, education must direct itself. By education must be understood the active help given to the normal expansion of the life of the child. The child is a body which grows, and a soul which de- develops,–these two forms, physiological and psychic, have one eternal font, life itself. We must neither mar nor stifle the mysterious powers which lie within these two forms of growth, but we must await from them the manifestations which we know will succeed one another.

This is specially so in the first years of life. It is true that afterwards differences arise in the individuals but it is not we who cause these differences; we cannot even provoke them. There is an inner individuality, an ego which develops spontaneously, independently of us and we cannot do anything about it. We cannot make, for instance, a genius, or a general or an artist. We can only help that individual who is to be a general or a leader to realize his potentialities. No matter what they are, if they are leaders or poets or artists or geniuses, or merely common men, they must pass through these stages: embryonic stages before birth, psycho-embryonic stages after birth, in order to realize their mysterious future self. What we can do is merely to remove the obstacles so that the mysterious being that each individual is to realize can be achieved, because by removing those obstacles, the work can be done better.

   Æsthetic and moral education are closely related to this sensory education. Multiply the sensations, and develop the capacity of appreciating fine differences in stimuli and we refine the sensibility and multiply man’s pleasures.    Beauty lies in harmony, not in contrast; and harmony is refinement; therefore, there must be a fineness of the senses if we are to appreciate harmony. The æsthetic harmony of nature is lost upon him who has coarse senses. The world to him is narrow and barren. In life about us, there exist inexhaustible fonts of æsthetic enjoyment, before which men pass as insensible as the brutes seeking their enjoyment in those sensations which are crude and showy, since they are the only ones accessible to them.    Now, from the enjoyment of gross pleasures, vicious habits very often spring. Strong stimuli, indeed, do not render acute, but blunt the senses, so that they require stimuli more and more accentuated and more and more gross.

The functions to be established by the child fall into two groups: (1) the motor functions by which he is to secure his balance and learn to walk, and to coordinate his movements; (2) the sensory functions through which, receiving sensations from his environment, he lays the foundations of his intelligence by a continual exercise of observation, 7 comparison and judgment. In this way he gradually comes to be acquainted with his environment and to develop his intelligence. At the same time he is learning a language, and he is faced not only with the motor difficulties of articulation, sounds and words, but also with the difficulty of gaining an intelligent understanding of names and of the syntactical composition of the language.

We weep in front of the dead and we aspire towards saving humanity from destruction, but it is not the salvation from dangers, it is the elevation that is the destiny of everyone of us which should stand before our mind’s eye. It is not death, but the lost paradise that should afflict us.

he should examine himself, and purge himself of his sins of tyranny, he must tear down that ancient complex of pride and anger that unconsciously encrusts his heart; strip himself of pride and anger and become humble; this first of all; then clothe himself in charity. These are the spiritual qualities he has to acquire. This is the central point of balance without which it is impossible to proceed. This is his “training”, its starting point, and its goal.

Maria alerta sobre el exceso de estímulos, porque considera que demasiado material puede confundir. No le gustan los juguetes, que le parecen desorientadores, porque sugieren que el niño ha de distraerse, y en cambio ella quiere facilitar la concentración.

El desarrollo no se puede enseñar, explica Maria, y nadie puede crecer en lugar del niño. «Quien crea al niño desde luego no somos nosotros»,[53] afirmará años después, con una de sus frases fulminantes. Los adultos pueden facilitar, eliminar los obstáculos. A partir de ahí, el niño, si está en la situación adecuada, actúa por sí mismo.

Education is to guide activity, not repress it. Environment cannot create human power, but only give it scope and material, direct it, or at most but call it forth; and the teacher's task is first to nourish and assist, to watch, encourage, guide, induce, rather than to interfere, prescribe, or restrict

The preparation our method demands of the educator is that he should examine himself, and purge himself of his sins of tyranny, he must tear down that ancient complex of pride and anger that unconsciously encrusts his heart; strip himself of pride and anger and become humble; this first of all; then clothe himself in charity. These are the spiritual qualities he has to acquire. This is the central point of balance without which it is impossible to proceed. This is his “training”, its starting point, and its goal.

All human victories, all human progress, stand upon the inner force.

Now the educator, or in general anyone, wishing to educate children must purge himself of that state of error that puts him in a position of falsity towards the child. The prevalent defect must be clearly defined; and here we are speaking not of one sin, but of a combination of two mortal sins closely allied: pride and anger.

With a mixture of respect and love, of sacred curiosity and of a desire to achieve this spiritual greatness, he sets himself to observe every manifestation of this little child.

Those things which we call encouragement, comfort, love, respect, are drawn from the soul of man, and the more freely we give of them, the more do we renew and reinvigorate the life about us.

After this study of the methods in use throughout Europe I concluded my experiments upon the deficients of Rome, and taught them throughout two years. I followed Séguin's book, and also derived much help from the remarkable experiments of Itard. Guided by the work of these two men, I had manufactured a great variety of didactic material. These materials, which I have never seen complete in any institution, became in the hands of those who knew how to apply them, a most remarkable and efficient means, but unless rightly presented, they failed to attract the attention of the deficients.

It was near the end of the year 1906, and I had just returned from Milan, where I had been one of a committee at the International Exhibition for the assignment of prizes in the subjects of Scientific Pedagogy and Experimental Psychology. A great opportunity came to me, for I was invited by Edoardo Talamo, the Director General of the Roman Association for Good Building, to undertake the organisation of infant schools in its model tenements. It was Signor Talamo's happy idea to gather together in a large room all the little ones between the ages of three and seven belonging to the families living in the tenement. The play and work of these children was to be carried on under the guidance of a teacher who should have her own apartment in the tenement house. It was intended that every house should have its school, and as the Association for Good Building already owned more than 400 tenements in Rome the work seemed to offer tremendous possibilities of development. The first school was to be established in January, 1907, in a large tenement house in the Quarter of San Lorenzo. In the same Quarter the Association already owned fifty-eight buildings, and according to Signor Talamo's plans we should soon be able to open sixteen of these "schools within the house.

of more than six hundred pages, published in Paris in 1846,

The regulations say that the mother must go at least once a week, to confer with the directress, giving an account of her child, and accepting any helpful advice which the directress may be able to give.

suggestion than hers. If we are to make practical application of the Montessori scheme we must not neglect to consider the modifications of it which differing social conditions may render necessary.

work with deficient children (1898 to 1900)

Thus prepared, I was able to proceed to new experiments on my own account. This is not the place for a report of these experiments, and I will only note that at this time I attempted an original method for the teaching of reading and writing, a part of the education of the child which was most imperfectly treated in the works of both Itard and Séguin.

Whatever the anxiety is based upon, one of the best ways to minimize the anxiety of change—or any other anxiety—is to actively participate in the process of that change, i.e., to do something.” She declared it is necessary to become actively involved in the change rather than passively accepting and accommodating it.7 By

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.

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.