We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master.
Interpretation
Teachers assist students' learning and growth, much like servants support a master.
In this quote, Maria Montessori emphasizes the essential role of teachers as facilitators of learning rather than as authoritative figures. She illustrates that teachers provide guidance and support, allowing students to take charge of their own education, similar to how servants support the needs of a master without wielding power themselves.
In practice
In a speech at a teacher's conference, to highlight the supportive role of educators.
... 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.
World's children cannot wait any longer. While international community debates and issues recommendations, statements and fine speeches, world's children - marginalised, socially excluded, poor and vulnerable - continue to suffer.
If [a student's] college’s endowment portfolio has fossil-fuel stock, then their educations are being subsidized by investments that guarantee they won’t have much of a planet on which to make use of their degree.
We are often raised as dependents then given over to teachers. It's experience and exploration that can transform us and lead to mastery.
No man can be a compleat Lawyer by universalitie of knowledge without experience in particular cases, nor by bare experience without universalitie of knowledge; he must be both speculative & active, for the science of the laws, I assure you, must joyne hands with experience.
An environment-based education movement--at all levels of education--will help students realize that school isn't supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world.
Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.
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