The child's conquests of independence are the basic steps in what is called his 'natural development'.
Interpretation
Children's ability to achieve independence is essential for their natural growth and development.
Maria Montessori emphasizes the importance of children's independent achievements as crucial milestones in their overall development. These conquests signify not only a child's growing autonomy but also their journey towards becoming capable and self-reliant individuals, laying the foundation for future learning and personal growth.
In practice
In a community meeting discussing child education methods.
... 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.
When we want to infuse new ideas, _x000D_ to modify or better the habits and customs of a people, _x000D_ to breathe new vigor into its national traits, _x000D_ we must use the children as our vehicle; for little can be accomplished with adults.
Noble ideas, great sentiments have always existed and have always been transmitted, but wars have never ceased.
What we need is a world full of miracles, like the miracle of seeing the young child seeking work and independence, and manifesting a wealth of enthusiasm and love.
To aid life, leaving it free, however, that is the basic task of the educator.
It is fortunate, I think, that nature is not bounded by human reason and by laboratory work and experimentation, for by the laws of pure reason and by microscopic investigation, it might easily have been proved, long before this, that children could not be born.
Don't be an examiner, be the interested inquirer.
Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.
I am naive enough to read incessantly because I cannot, on my own, get to know enough people profoundly enough.
Children have to have access to books, and a lot of children can't go to a store and buy a book. We need not only our public libraries to be funded properly and staffed properly, but our school libraries. Many children can't get to a public library, and the only library they have is a school library.
Good history is good story-telling. And good story-telling demands empathy; it requires understanding different actors, differing motivations, competing goals.
It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.
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