We put [young children] into kindergarten where their reasoning powers are ruined; or, if we can afford it, we buy Montessori outf...its that were invented for semi-imbeciles in Italian slums; or we send them to outdoor schools and give them prizes for sleeping.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As a parent, you can play three important roles in teaching your children about sex. As a model for your child, your own comfort l...evel can instill a sense of confidence and trust that will reinforce his or her healthy curiosity about the world. As an information source, you can make sure that curiosity is satisfied with clear and accurate facts about the body, the sexes, and how babies are made. Finally, as a guide to values, you can guarantee that the messages your child receives about sex are invested with the family values you want to instill.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is ... in every child a painstaking teacher, so skilful that he obtains identical results in all children in all parts of th...e world. The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be ...hoped from it in the bettering of man's future. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and evil; ...and the task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If we can, when we have established individual discipline, arrange the children, sending each one to his own place, in order, tryi...ng to make them understand the idea that thus placed they look well, and that it is a good thing to be thus placed in order, that it is a good and pleasing arrangement in the room, this ordered and tranquil adjustment of theirs--then their remaining in their places, quiet and silent, is the result of a species of lesson, not an imposition. To make them understand the idea, without calling their attention too forcibly to the practise, to have them assimilate a principle of collective order--that is the important thing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. In our system, she must become a pass...ive, much more than an active, influence, and her passivity shall be composed of anxious scientific curiosity and of absolute respect for the phenomenon which she wishes to observe. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An educational method that shall have liberty as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of liberty. That is to s...ay, his training must be such as shall help him to diminish as much as possible the social bonds which limit his activity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »