Within The Child Lies The

We Cannot Know The Consequences Of Suppressing A Child's Spontaneity When He Is Just Beginning To Be Active. We May Even Suffocate Life Itself. That Humanity Which Is Revealed In All Its Intellectual Splendor During The Sweet And Tender Age Of Childhood Should Be Respected With A Kind Of Religious Veneration. It Is Like The Sun Which Appears At Dawn Or A Flower Just Beginning To Bloom. Education Cannot Be Effective Unless It Helps A Child To Open Up Himself To Life.

The Task Of The Educator Lies In Seeing That The Child Does Not Confound Good With Immobility, And Evil With Activity, As Often Happens In Old-time Discipline . . . A Room In Which All The Children Move About Usefully, Intelligently, And Voluntarily, Without Committing Any Rough Or Rude Act, Would Seem To Me A Classroom Very Well Disciplined Indeed.

Sometimes Very Small Children In A Proper Environment Develop A Skill And Exactness In Their Work That Can Only Surprise Us.

It Is Exactly In The Repetition Of The Exercises That The Education Of The Senses Exists; Not That The Child Shall Know Colors, Forms Or Qualities, But That He Refine His Senses Through An Exercise Of Attention, Comparison And Judgment.

Great Tact And Delicacy Is Necessary For The Care Of The Mind Of A Child From Three To Six Years, And An Adult Can Have Very Little Of It.