Drawn from my three-year immersion for the film Let the Child Be the Guide, my research, and my Montessori teacher training (AMI), this quote is an excerpt from a thematic selection I compiled to remove the primary obstacle to education: our adult prejudices. This post presents one of the themes from this collection, designed to transform, step by step, our gaze upon the child.
“The child does not only need to touch things and work with them, but must follow a succession of acts of great importance in the inner construction of his personality. […] But he is never allowed to carry out a plan of actions. […] One day, the adult will explain to the child that one must be responsible for one’s own actions; but this responsibility has as its primary foundation the fact that a complete plan establishes relationships between those actions, as well as a judgment as to their significance.” — Maria Montessori, The Secret of Childhood