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.
“When the child’s rhythm is slow, the adult intervenes irresistibly to substitute his own. Instead of helping the child with his most essential psychic needs, the adult substitutes himself for the child in all the actions that the child would like to carry out himself, thus denying the child all possibility of activity, becoming the most powerful obstacle to the development of his life.” — Maria Montessori, The Secret of Childhood