The+Absorbent+Mind,+Maria+Montessori

Key Passages
I, too, believe that the humanity is still far from that stage of maturity needed for the realization of its aspirations for the construction, that is, of a harmonious and peaceful society and the elimination of wars. Men are not yet ready to shape their own destinies to control and direct world events of which – instead - they become the victims. (3)

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. (7)

The teacher’s task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child. (8)

The education of our day is rich in methods, aims, and social end but one must still say that it takes no account of life itself. (10)

Only practical work and experience lead the young to maturity. (22)

How does it happen that children learn to speak? We say that he is blessed with hearing and listens to human voices. But, even admitting this, we must still ask how it is that, among the thousands of sounds and noises that surround him, he hears, and reproduces only those of a the human voice? (24)

Indeed, the found of modern embryology was obliged to live and die in exile. (35)

The first thing one sees on the mental plane is an accumulation of material, which may be compared to the multiplication of cells that we saw to occur on the physical plane. This is doneby what I have called the absorbent mind, and on this plane, also, we see the formation of psychic organs around about points of sensitivity, which appear in turn. (51)

The child’s conquest of independence begins with his first introduction to life. While he is developing, he perfects himself and overcomes every obstacle that he finds in his path. (83)

Truly it is nature which affords the child the opportunity to grow; it is nature which bestows independence upon him and guides him to success in achieving his freedom. (86)

Language, we may say, grows with human thought. (109)

It is often we who obstruct the child, and so become responsible for anomalies that last a life time. Always must our treatment be as gentle as possible, avoiding violence, for we easily fail to realize how violent and hard we a re being. (131)

The child loves to climb and, in doing so, to cling with his hands and pull himself up. No longer is he clasping in order to posses but gripping in order to clamber. These are the trials of strength and there is a whole period of life dedicated to them. So here, again, we see the logic of nature, for the grown man must be physically strong. (156)

It was the children themselves who showed that they preferred one another’s company to dolls, and small “real life” utensils to toys. (169)

These two powers of the mind (imagination and abstraction), which go beyond the simple perception of things actually present, play a mutual part in the construction of the mind’s content. (184)

Not till six can we become missionaries of morality, because it is between six and twelve that conscience begins to function, and the child is able to visualize the problems of good and evil. (208)

We start by equipping the child’s environment with a little of everything, and left the children to choose those things they preferred. (223)

Good laws and a good government cannot hold the mass of men together and make them act in harmony, unless the individuals themselves oriented toward something that gives them solidarity and makes them into a group. (237)

Children unaided can construct an orderly society. For us adults, prisons, police, soldiers, and guns are necessary. (285)