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Books by Maria Montessori

From Childhood to Adolescence

Maria Montessori

Maria Montessori first analyses the characteristics and needs of children from seven to twelve. It may be said that veritable metamorphoses takes place during this period and constitutes one of particular importance for moral education, the concept of justice and social adaptation; the passage to abstraction, the role of the imagination and ‘going out', the key to culture. She also discusses the education of Adolescence, the ‘Erdkinder' and at the University.

Selected Quotes from From Childhood to Adolescence

...there would be all kinds of artistic occupations open to free choice both as to the time and the nature of the work. Some must be for the individual and some would require the cooperation of a group. They would involve artistic and linguistic ability and imagination,...
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 75
All work is noble, the only ignoble thing is to live without working.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 65
Our experience with children in elementary schools has shown us that the age between six and twelve years is a period of life during which the elements of all sciences should be given. It is a period that, psychologically, is especially sensitive and might be called the "sensitive period of culture" during which the abstract plane of the human mind is organised.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 85
Here then is the essential principle of education: to teach details is to bring confusion; to establish the relationship between things is to bring knowledge.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 94
…economic independence...would result in a "valorization" of his personality, in making him feel himself capable of succeeding in life by his own efforts and on his own merits, and at the same time it would put him in direct contact with the supreme reality of social life. We speak therefore of letting him earn money by his own work.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 65
The school where the children live, or rather their country homes, can also give them the opportunity for social experience, for it is an institution organised on a larger scale and with greater freedom than the family.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 69
These children reveal to us the most vital need of their development, saying: “Help me to do it alone!”
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 65
Education should... include the two forms of work, manual and intellectual, for the same person, and thus make it understood by practical experience that these two kinds complete each other and are equally essential to a civilised existence.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 65
Being active with one's own hands, having a determined practical aim to reach, is what really gives inner discipline. When the hand perfects itself in a work chosen spontaneously and the will to succeed is born together with the will to overcome difficulties or obstacles; it is then that something which differs from intellectual learning arises. The realisation of one's own value is born in the consciousness.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 87
But, above all it is the education of adolescents that is important, because adolescence is the time when the child enters on the state of adulthood and becomes a member of society.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 60
If puberty is on the physical side a transition from an infantile to an adult state, there is also, on the psychological side, a transition from the child who has to live in a family, to the adult who has to live in society. These two needs of the adolescent: for protection during the time of the difficult physical transition, and for an understanding of the society which he is about to enter to play his part as an adult.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 60
The chief symptom of adolescence is a state of expectation, a tendency towards creative work and a need for the strengthening of self-confidence.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 63
Productive work and a wage that gives economic independence, or rather constitutes a first real attempt to achieve economic independence, could be made with advantage a general principle of social education for adolescents and young people.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 66
Independence, in the case of the adolescents, has to be acquired on a different plane, for theirs is the economic independence in the field of society. Here, too, the principle of "Help me to do it alone!" ought to be applied.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 67
The essential reform of our plan from this point of view may be defined as follows: during the difficult time of adolescence it is helpful to leave the accustomed environment of the family in the town and go to quiet surroundings in the country, close to nature. Here, an open-air life, individual care, and a non-toxic diet, must be the first considerations in organising a "centre for study and work."
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 67
Therefore work on the land is an introduction both to nature and to civilisation and gives a limitless field for scientific and historic studies. If the produce can be used commercially this brings in the fundamental mechanism of society, that of production and exchange, on which economic life is based. This means that there is an opportunity to learn both academically and through actual experience what are the elements of social life. We have called these children the "Erdkinder" because they are learning about civilisation through its origin in agriculture. They are the "land-children."
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 68
The adolescent must never be treated as a child, for that is a stage of life that he has surpassed. It is better to treat an adolescent as if he had greater value than he actually shows than as if he had less and let him feel that his merits and self-respect are disregarded.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 72
Successive levels of education must correspond to the successive personalities of the child. Our methods are oriented not to any pre-established principles but rather to the inherent characteristics of the different ages. It follows that these characteristics themselves include several levels.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 1
If "the formation of man" becomes the basis of education, then the coordination of all schools from infancy to maturity, from nursery to university, arises as a first necessity: for man is a unity, an individuality that passes through interdependent phases of development. Each preceding phase prepares the one that follows, forms its base, nurtures the energies that urge towards the succeeding period of life.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 84
Education should not limit itself to seeking new methods for a mostly arid transmission of knowledge: its aim must be to give the necessary aid to human development.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 84
Now what is it that strikes the imagination? Above all, grandeur and, next, mystery. The imagination is then able to reconstruct the whole when it knows the real detail.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 21
Life in the open air, in the sunshine, and a diet high in nutritional content coming from the produce of neighbouring fields improve the physical health, while the calm surroundings, the silence, the wonders of nature satisfy the need of the adolescent mind for reflection and meditation.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 67
My vision of the future is no longer of people taking exams and proceeding from secondary school to University but of passing from one stage of independence to a higher, by means of their own activity and effort of will.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. Opening
The essential reform is this: to put the adolescent on the road to achieving economic independence. We might call it a "school of experience in the elements of social life.”
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 64
Education should therefore include the two forms of work, manual and intellectual, for the same person, and thus make it understood by practical experience that these two kinds complete each other and are equally essential to a civilized existence.
Maria Montessori
From Childhood to Adolescence, p. 65