The child’s parents are not his makers but his guardians.
Interpretation
Parents guide and protect their children rather than creating them.
This quote by Maria Montessori emphasizes that while parents play a crucial role in a child's life, they do not create their child's intrinsic nature or identity. Instead, they serve as guardians, responsible for nurturing and providing a safe environment where children can grow and develop their unique selves.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech at a parenting workshop.
... 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.
Continued adherence to a policy of compulsory education is utterly incompatible with efforts to establish lasting peace.
I feel that for years of teaching in the country and reading criticism in books, I feel like the things most needed in our culture are the understanding of the meanings of our music. We haven't done that good of job teaching our kids what our music means or how we developed our taste in music that reminds us and teaches us who we are.
Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in.
Literature - novels, plays, and poems - can have an uncanny dual life, where they simultaneously represent something eternal and something historical, and this is often how they are taught in school.
Of course humans like to explore, and we should. There's nothing wrong with that. But it's more than that. It's essential for your children and your children's children.
In the end, excellence in education means excellence in teaching, and if this country would give the status to first grade teachers that we give to full professors, this one act alone would revitalize the nation's schools.
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