101 Inspirational Maria Montessori Quotes To Celebrate Education
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Step into the mind of Dr. Maria Montessori, a trailblazer in education whose principles still influence Montessori schools worldwide, with these inspirational Maria Montessori quotes. Maria Montessori quotes offer timeless wisdom, from fostering independence to cherishing each child’s natural development.
Explore our favorite Maria Montessori quotes that guide student learning and growth.
Free activity makes children happy. We can see how happy they are, but it is not the fact that they are happy that is important; the important thing is that a child can construct a man through this free activity.
Democracy begins at birth. The child must know what is going to happen to him, that he will not be seized suddenly, that his permission will be asked first.
My vision of the future is no longer of people taking exams and proceeding from secondary school to University but of passing from one stage of independence to a higher, by means of their own activity and effort of will.
The child should love everything that he learns, for his mental and emotional growths are linked. Whatever is presented to him must be made beautiful and clear, striking his imagination. Once this love has been kindled, all problems confronting the educationalist will disappear.
In giving freedom and independence to the child, we free a worker who is impelled to act and who cannot live except by his activity, because this is the form of existence of all living beings.
Do not tell them how to do it. Show them how to do it and do not say a word. If you tell them, they will watch your lips move. If you show them, they will want to do it themselves.
There are many who hold, as I do, that 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.
The word education must not be understood in the sense of teaching but of assisting the psychological development of the child.
It is exactly in the repetition of the exercises that the education of the senses exists; not that the child shall know colors, forms or qualities, but that he refine his senses through an exercise of attention, comparison and judgment.
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 environment itself will teach the child, if every error he makes is manifest to him, without the intervention of a parent or teacher, who should remain a quiet observer of all that happens.
The first duty of the educator, whether he is involved with the newborn infant or the older child, is to recognize the human personality of the young being and respect it.
Infancy is a period of true importance, because, when we want to infuse new ideas, to modify or better the habits and customs of a people, to breathe new vigor into its national traits, we must use the child as our vehicle; for little can be accomplished with adults.
The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and evil; and the task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility, and evil with activity.
It is easy to substitute our will for that of the child by means of suggestion or coercion; but when we have done this we have robbed him of his greatest right, the right to construct his own personality.
Discipline is born when the child concentrates his attention on some object that attracts him and which provides him not only with a useful exercise but with a control of error. Thanks to these exercises, a wonderful integration takes place in the infant soul, as a result of which the child becomes calm, radiantly happy, busy, forgetful of himself and, in consequence, indifferent to prizes or material, rewards.
Adults have not understood children or adolescents and they are, as a consequence, in continual conflict with them. … The adult must find within himself the still unknown error that prevents him from seeing the child as he is.
We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master. We then become witnesses to the development of the human soul; the emergence of the New Man who will no longer be the victim of events but, thanks to his clarity of vision, will become able to direct and to mold the future of mankind.
We make learning difficult for children by trying to teach them by means of grown-up methods; the natural and happy way for children to learn, however, is by touching and moving solid objects, not by trying to memorize rules.
Let these quotes inspire you to foster a learning environment where every student thrives and is fueled by curiosity, independence, and a love for lifelong learning.