By Maria Montessori
(From speech delivered in California.)
What shall we say, then, when the question before us is that of educating children?
We know only too well the sorry spectacle of the teacher, who, in the ordinary school room, must pour certain cut and dried facts into the heads of the scholars. In order to succeed in this barren path she finds it necessary to discipline her pupils into immobility and to force their attention. Prizes and punishments are ever ready and efficient aids to the master who must force into a given attitude of mind and body those who are condemned to be his listeners.
The Mother’s Task
By Ida Tarbell
(From “The Business of Being a Woman.”)
A woman never lived who did all she might have done to open the mind of her child for its great adventure. It is an exhaustless task. The woman who sees it knows she has need of all the education the college can give, all the experience and culture she can gather. She knows that the fuller her individual life, the broader her interests, the better for the child. She should be a person in their eyes. The real service of the “higher education,” the freedom to take part in whatever interests or stimulates her—lies in the fact that it fits her intellectually to be a companion worthy of a child.