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.
It's a failure of national vision when you regard children as weapons, and talents as materials you can mine, assay, and fabricate for profit and defense.
The primary goal in the education of children is to teach, and to give the example of, a virtuous life.
Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for this is deep reading: the slow and meditative possession of a book. We don't just read the words, we dream our lives in their vicinity. The printed page becomes a kind of wrought-iron fence we crawl through, returning, once we have wandered, to the very place we started.
That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.
I think that the greatest education in the world is the education which helps one to be able to do the right things at the time it has to be done.
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.
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