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.'
From Maria Montessori
Observation, very general and wide-spread, has shown that small children are endowed with a special psychic nature. This shows us a new way of imparting education!
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 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.
If help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.
Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.
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. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind?
The child who concentrates is immensely happy.
The consciousness of knowing how to make oneself useful, how to help mankind in many ways, fills the soul with noble confidence, almost religious dignity.
To aid life, leaving it free, however, that is the basic task of the educator.
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