Education Montessori Quotes & Sayings

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. — Maria Montessori

Education should therefore include the two forms of work, manual and intellectual, for the same person, and thus make it understood by practical experience that these two kinds complete each other and are equally essential to a civilized existence. — Maria Montessori

Red RodsBefore elaborating any system of education, we must therefore create a favorable environment that will encourage the flowering of a child's natural gifts. All that is needed is to remove the obstacles. And this should be the basis of, and point of departure for, all future education. The first thing to be done, therefore, is to discover the true nature of a child and then assist him in his normal development. — Maria Montessori

Education should no longer be most imparting of knowledge, but must take a new path, seeking the release of human potentialities. — Maria Montessori

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. — Maria Montessori

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

Moral Education is the source of that spiritual equilibrium on which everything else depends and which may be compared to that physical equilibrium or sense of balance, without which it is impossible to stand upright or to move into any other position. — Maria Montessori

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

The aim of education should not be to teach how to use human energies to improve the environment, for we are finally beginning to realize that the cornerstone of education is the development of the human personality, and that in this regard education is of immediate importance for the salvation of mankind. — Maria Montessori

Every one in the world ought to do the things for which he is specially adapted. It is the part of wisdom to recognize what each one of us is best fitted for, and it is the part of education to perfect and utilize such predispositions. Because education can direct and aid nature but can never transform her. — Maria Montessori

The first thing his education demands is the provision of an environment in which he can develop the powers given him by nature. This does not mean just to amuse him and let him do what he likes. But it does mean that we have to adjust our minds to doing a work of collaboration with nature, to being obedient to one of her laws, the law which decrees that development comes from environmental experience. — Maria Montessori

Early childhood education is the key to the betterment of society. — Maria Montessori

Education must start from birth. — Maria Montessori

The child is endowed with unknown powers, which can guide us to a radiant future. If what we really want is a new world, then education must take as its aim the development of these hidden possibilities. — Maria Montessori

First the education of the senses, then the education of the intellect. — Maria Montessori

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

The concept of an education centered upon the care of the living being alters all previous ideas. Resting no longer on a curriculum, or a timetable, education must conform to the facts of human life. — Maria Montessori

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. — Maria Montessori

There will come a time when the proper education of children, by a glorified system of spontaneous education of choice, similar to the Montessori System, will be made possible. — R. Buckminster Fuller

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 — Maria Montessori

We recommend for the training of teachers not only a considerable artistic education in general but special attention to the art of reading. — Maria Montessori

Only when the child is able to identify its own center with the center of the universe does education really begin. — Maria Montessori

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. — Maria Montessori

Culture and education have no bounds or limits; now man is in a phase in which he must decide for himself how far he can proceed in the culture that belongs to the whole of humanity. — Maria Montessori

The education of even a small child, therefore, does not aim at preparing him for school, but for life. — Maria Montessori

A new education from birth onwards must be built up. Education must be reconstructed and based on the law of nature and not on the preconceived notions and prejudices of adult society. — Maria Montessori

Freedom without organization of work would be useless. The child left free without means of work would go to waste, just as a new-born baby, if left free without nourishment, would die of starvation.The organization of the work, therefore, is the cornerstone of this new structure of goodness [in education], but even that organization would be in vain without the liberty to make use of it. — Maria Montessori

If education recognizes the intrinsic value of the child's personality and provides an environment suited to spiritual growth, we have the revelation of an entirely new child whose astonishing characteristics can eventually contribute to the betterment of the world. — Maria Montessori

Personally, I had a great education. My mum was a trained teacher, a Montessori teacher, and I know that I could not have written 'Eragon' if I had gone into a public school system because I would have just been too busy attending classes and doing homework - I wouldn't have had the time to write. — Christopher Paolini

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. — Maria Montessori

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

The role of education is to interest the child profoundly in an external activity to which he will give all his potential — Maria Montessori

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

Concentration is a part of life. It is not the consequence of a method of education. — Maria Montessori

My system is to be considered a system leading up, in a general way, to education. It can be followed not only in the education of little children from three to six years of age, but can be extended to children up to ten years of age. — Maria Montessori

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. — Maria Montessori

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

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. — Maria Montessori

The education of the senses has, as its aim, the refinement of the differential perception of stimuli by means of repeated exercises. — Maria Montessori

Today, however, those things which occupy us in the field of education are the interests of humanity at large and of civilization, and before such great forces we can recognize only one country-the entire world. — Maria Montessori

The exercises of practical life are formative activities, a work of adaptation to the environment. Such adaptation to the environment and efficient functioning therein is the very essence of a useful education. — Maria Montessori

Aesthetic 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 aesthetic 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 aesthetic 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. — Montessori Maria

An education capable of saving humanity is no small undertaking; it involves the spiritual development of man, the enhancement of his value as an individual, and the preparation of young people to understand the times in which they live. — Maria Montessori

Happiness is not the whole aim of education. A man must be independent in his powers and character; able to work and assert his mastery over all that depends on him. — Maria Montessori

When you have solved the problem of controlling the attention of the child, you have solved the entire problem of its education. — Maria Montessori

If education is protection to life, you will realize that it is necessary that education accompany life during its whole course. — Maria Montessori

At three years of age, the child has already laid the foundations of the human personality and needs the special help of education in the school. The acquisitions he has made are such that we can say the child who enters school at three is an old man. — Maria Montessori

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. — Maria Montessori

The fundamental basis of education must always remain that one must act for oneself. That is clear. One must act for him or herself. — Maria Montessori

We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. — Maria Montessori

Education is a work of self-organization by which man adapts himself to the conditions of life. — Maria Montessori

Education demands, then, only this: the utilization of the inner powers of the child for his own instruction. — Maria Montessori

The goal of early childhood education should be to activate the child's own natural desire to learn. — Maria Montessori

Education, as conceived today, is something separated both from biological and social life. — Maria Montessori

In roughly the last century, important experiments have been launched by such charismatic educators as Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, Shinichi Suzuki, John Dewey, and A. S. Neil. These approaches have enjoyed considerable success[ ... ] Yet they have had relatively little impact on the mainstream of education throughout the contemporary world. — Howard Gardner

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. — Maria Montessori

Parents in the early half of the twentieth century were primarily concerned with the development of character in their children. They wanted to be certain that their children were ready to cope with adversity, for it was surely coming to them one day whether in personal or national life. The development of character involves self-discipline and often sacrifice of one's own desires for the good of self and others. Montessori education, developed in this historical period, reflects this emphasis on the formation of the child's character. However, parents today are more likely to say their primary wish for their children is that they be happy. In pursuit of this goal they indulge their children, often unconsciously, to a degree that is startling to previous generations. All parents need to remember that true happiness comes through having character and discipline, and living a life of meaningful contribution -- not by having and doing whatever you wish. — Paula Polk Lillard

Education today, in this particular social period, is assuming truly unlimited importance. And the increased emphasis on its practical value can be summed up in one sentence: education is the best weapon for peace. — Maria Montessori