Montessori Musing
FOLLOW THE CHILD
What did Maria Montessori mean?
“Our educational aim with very young children must be to aid the spontaneous development of the mental, spiritual, and physical personality, and not to make the child a cultured individual in the commonly accepted sense of the term. …
And herein lies the art of the educator; in knowing how to measure the action by which we help the young child’s personality to develop.
To one whose attitude is right, little children soon reveal profound individual differences which call for very different kinds of help from the teacher. Some of them require almost no intervention on her part, while others demand actual teaching. …”
~Maria Montessori, THE MONTESSORI METHOD, pg. 230-231.
“…by leaving the children in our schools in liberty we have been able with great clearness to follow them in their natural method of spontaneous self-development.”
~Maria Montessri, THE MONTESSORI METHOD, pg. 357.
