Quote

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.

Maria Montessori

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Maria Montessori
Age: 81 †
Born: 1870
Born: August 31
Died: 1952
Died: May 6
Inventor
Lecturer
Mathematician
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Physician
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
Teacher
Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori
Child
Coercion
Means
Construct
Easy
Constructs
Done
Suggestions
Right
Substitute
Children
Substitutes
Mean
Personality
Robbed
Greatest
Suggestion

More quotes by Maria Montessori

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The child is truly a miraculous being, and this should be felt deeply by the educator.
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The instructions of the teacher consist then merely in a hint, a touch-enough to give a start to the child. The rest develops of itself.
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A teacher, therefore, who would think that he could prepare himself for his mission through study alone would be mistaken. The first thing required of a teacher is that he be rightly disposed for his task.
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But if for the physical life it is necessary to have the child exposed to the vivifying forces of nature, it is also necessary for his psychical life to place the soul of the child in contact with creation.
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Growth and psychic development are therefore guided by: the absorbent mind, the nebulae and the sensitive periods, with their respective mechanisms. It is these that are hereditary and characteristic of the human species. But the promise they hold can only be fulfilled through the experience of free activity conducted in the environment.
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As soon as children find something that interests them they lose their instability and learn to concentrate.
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Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.
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We are the sowers - our children are those who reap. We labor so that future generations will be better and nobler than we are.
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It follows that at the beginning of his life the individual can accomplish wonders without effort and quite unconsciously.
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Do not erase the designs the child makes in the soft wax of his inner life.
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We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master.
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By the age of three, the child has already laid down the foundations of his personality as a human being, and only then does he need the help of special scholastic influences. So great are the conquests he has made that one may well say: the child who goes to school at three is already a little man.
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The child’s parents are not his makers but his guardians.
Maria Montessori
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Movement, or physical activity, is thus an essential factor in intellectual growth, which depends upon the impressions received from outside. Through movement we come in contact with external reality, and it is through these contacts that we eventually acquire even abstract ideas.
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All our handling of the child will bear fruit, not only at the moment, but in the adult they are destined to become.
Maria Montessori
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The child has a different relation to his environment from ours... the child absorbs it. The things he sees are not just remembered they form part of his soul. He incarnates in himself all in the world about him that his eyes see and his ears hear.
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A child's work is to create the person she/he will become.
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No one who has ever done anything really great or successful has ever done it simply because he was attracted by what we call a 'reward' or by the fear of what we call a 'punishment.'
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The child who has felt a strong love for his surroundings and for all living creatures, who has discovered joy and enthusiasm in work, gives us reason to hope that humanity can develop in a new direction.
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The child is the spiritual builder of mankind, and obstacles to his free development are the stones in the wall by which the soul of man has become imprisoned.
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