“The Secret of Childhood”

By Maria Montessori

The Spiritual Embryo

• If we understand by “education” a child’s psychic rather than its intellectual development, we may truly say, that a child’s education should begin at birth. (page 29)

• Proof of a child’s psychic life may be found in the distinction that is made between its conscious and its subconscious activities. But even if we limit ourselves to more obvious and basic concepts, we must admit that there is a play of instincts within a child not only with respect to its physical growth and nourishment but also with respect to various psychic operations. (page 29)

• Philosophers have always been intrigued with the state of a child so helpless after birth, but up to the present teachers and physicians have been too little concerned with it. Like many other things that lie hidden in the subconscious, the child’s state has been considered simply as a fact without any particular significance. (page 33)

The Sensitive Period

• A child learns to adjust himself and make acquisitions in his sensitive periods. These are like a beam that lights interiorly or a battery that furnishes energy. (page 40)

• It is this sensibility which enables a child to come into contact with the external world in a particularly intense manner. At such a time everything is easy; all is life and enthusiasm. (page 40)

Order

• The child was not interested in finding the object, but in finding it in its place. (page 54)

• It is a kind of inner sense that distinguishes the relationships between various objects rather than the objects themselves. It thus makes a whole of an environment in which the several parts are mutually dependent. When a person is oriented in such an environment, he can direct his activity to the attainment of specific goals. Such an environment provides the foundation for an integrated life. (page 55)

The Rights of the Child

• Forced study brought on fear, weariness, and nervous exhaustion. They became disheartened, and melancholy replaced their natural gaiety. (page 210 & 211)

Movement

• Through movement, he acts upon his external environment and thus carries out his own personal mission in the world. Movement is not only an impression of the ego but it is an indispensable factor in the development of consciousness, since it is the only real means which places the ego in a clearly defined relationship with external reality. 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. Physical activity connects the spirit with the world, but the spirit has need of action in two fold sense, to acquire concepts and to express it self exteriorly. (page 97)

The Hand

• The two bodily movements most intimately connected with man’s intelligence are those of the tongue, which he uses for speaking, and those of his hands, which he employs for work. (page 80)

• The first movement of his small hand toward external objects should thus be eagerly awaited. (page 82)

• The first intelligent moving of these tiny hands, the first thrust of that movement which represents the effort of the ego to penetrate the world should fill an adult’s mind with admiration. But instead he is afraid of those tiny hands stretching out for things that are of no value and importance in themselves, and he strives to keep them from the child. He is constantly saying, “Don’t touch!” just as he constantly repeats, “Be still! Keep quiet!” (page 82)

• The order to develop his mind a child must have objects in his environment which he can hear and see. Since he must develop himself through his movements, through the work of his hands, he has need of objects with which he can work that provide motivation for his activity. (page 82)

I HEAR AND I FORGET;

I SEE AND I REMEMBER;

I DO AND I UNDERSTAND.

BY MARIA MONTESSORI