If help and salvation are to come they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the crucial role of children in shaping humanity's future through growth and learning.
Maria Montessori highlights the idea that children play an essential role in society's development. By nurturing and educating children, we lay the foundation for future generations, as they have the potential to become the influential figures and creators in our world. The assertion that help and salvation depend on children suggests that their upbringing and education are paramount to achieving a better society.
In practice
In a speech at a community center, a speaker might use this quote to emphasize the importance of investing in children's education.
... 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.
What I really want are students who want to partner with other people, to be part of an organization and to influence people so that they can accomplish things that the organization would not have accomplished otherwise.
For me, books have always been a way to feel less alone while being alone. Perhaps if I was depressed and isolated, just communicating with these authors through their sentences helped me.
At a time when the average student is graduating from a four-year college $27,000 in debt, when hundreds of thousands of capable young people no longer see college as an option because of high costs and when the U.S. is falling further and further behind our economic competitors in terms of the percentage of young people graduating from college, no agreement should be passed which, over a period of years, makes a bad situation worse and will make college even less affordable than it is today.
Problems in human engineering will receive during the coming years the same genius and attention which the nineteenth century gave to the more material forms of engineering._x000D_ _x000D_ We have laid good foundations for industrial prosperity, now we want to assure the happiness and growth of the workers through vocational education, vocational guidance, and wisely managed employment departments. A great field for industrial experimentation and statemanship is opening up.
And books, they offer one hope -- that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.
Maybe reading was just a way to make her feel less alone, to keep her company. When you read something you are stopped, the moment is stayed, you can sometimes be there more fully than you can in your real life.
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