Quotes on Children

I think I became more productive through not having children. I never really had the desire to have them. My husband didn't want them either, so it worked out well.

People should be _very_ careful when choosing the future fathers and mothers of their children. For that reason alone, it is extremely mean to demand a marriage certificate for life, just for one night of embracement.

Every baby born_x000D_ unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come_x000D_ due in twenty years with interest, an anger_x000D_ that must find a target, a pain that will_x000D_ beget pain. A decade downstream a child_x000D_ screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched,_x000D_ a firing squad is summoned, a button_x000D_ is pushed and the world burns.

Everyone wins when children - and especially girls – have access to education. An educated girl is likely to increase her personal earning potential and prepare herself for a productive and fulfilling life, as well as reduce poverty in the whole community. Investing in girls' education also helps delay early marriage and parenthood. Our booming economies in Africa need more female engineers, teachers and doctors to prosper and sustain growth.

The child is truly a miraculous being, and this should be felt deeply by the educator.

Supposing I said there was a planet without schools or teachers, where study was unknown, and yet the inhabitants -- doing nothing but live and walk about -- came to know all things, to carry in their minds the whole of learning; would you not think I was romancing? Well, just this, which seems so fanciful as to be nothing but the invention of a fertile imagination, is a reality. It is the child's way of learning.

But if for the physical life it is necessary to have the child exposed to the vivifying forces of nature, it is also necessary for his psychical life to place the soul of the child in contact with creation.

This system in which a child is constantly moving objects with his hands and actively exercising his senses, also takes into account a child's special aptitude for mathematics. When they leave the material, the children very easily reach the point where they wish to write out the operation. They can thus carryout an abstract mental operation and acquire a kind of natural and spontaneous inclination for mental calculations.

As soon as children find something that interests them they lose their instability and learn to concentrate.

The objects in our system are instead a help to the child himself, he chooses what he wants for his own use, and works with it according to his own needs, tendencies and special interests. In this way, the objects become a means of growth.

The essence of independence is to be able to do something for one’s self. Adults work to finish a task, but the child works in order to grow, and is working to create the adult, the person that is to be. Such experience is not just play... it is work he must do in order to grow up.

I have studied the child. I have taken what the child has given me and expressed it and that is what is called the Montessori method.

No one can be free unless he is independent. Therefore, the first active manifestations of the child's individual liberty must be so guided that through this activity he may arrive at independence.

How does he achieve this independence? He does it by means of a continuous activity. How does he become free? By means of constant effort. we know that development results from activity. The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences.

The child has a different relation to his environment from ours... the child absorbs it. The things he sees are not just remembered; they form part of his soul. He incarnates in himself all in the world about him that his eyes see and his ears hear.

The child has a mind able to absorb knowledge. He has the power to teach himself.

The child should live in an environment of beauty.

The child’s parents are not his makers but his guardians.

The child is an enigma… He has the highest potentialities, but we do not know what he will be.

All our handling of the child will bear fruit, not only at the moment, but in the adult they are destined to become.

No adult can bear a child’s burden or grow up in his stead.