Elizabeth Peabody Quote:

The advantage to the community in utilizing the age from 4 to 6 in training the hand and eye; in developing the habits of cleanliness, politeness, self-control, urbanity, industry; in training the mind to understand numbers and geometric forms, to invent combinations of figures and shapes, and to represent them with the pencil—these and other valuable lessons… will, I think, ultimately prevail in securing to us the establishment of this beneficent institution in all the city school systems of our country.

 

Maria Montessori

"The child's work is nothing more or less than man-building! Day after day, hour after hour, from minute to minute, that incessant labour goes on. There must be no break in his activities, for that would mean death. He must surmount every obstacle in his path, he must vanquish every difficulty. Humanity, unaware of what it is doing, has blocked his path of development with countless difficulties; so that the child's labour through the ages has been broken by cries of lamentation and drenched in tears. Now that we know what he suffers; now that we realise the fatal consequences of frustrating this development which goes to form the man, we have been awakened to the consciousness of the need for a new kind of social crusade - a social campaign on behalf of the noblest of beings, the least protected of all workers - the child. Let humanity awake! Let her give the child such conditions of living as he requires - if he is to achieve his task - which is sacred - no longer amid strife and lamenting, but full of joy, and aided by the society in which he lives."