Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

We must stop commanding our children. Instead, we will lead them.

Curvature of the
spine is alarmingly prevalent among children and is increasing. Instead of resorting to surgical methods, corsets, braces, and orthopædic means for straightening child bodies, we should try to bring about some more rational method of teaching that children shall no longer be obliged to remain for the greater part of the day in such a pathologically dangerous position.

Not only do we hurt child bodies by the confinement of the school desk, but we wound their souls by ever offering rewards and punishments, by insisting upon such long periods of absolute silence as are demanded in our schools, and by imposing upon children a program of instruction that is built, often by law, to be followed by large groups of children.

from two and a half to five develop naturally and happily along lines that culminate in a spontaneous “explosion” into self-taught reading and writing at four and five years, speaks to the American parent.

Montessori-trained children were self-controlled, free, happy, good.

geometric forms; circles, triangles, squares that they are learning to recognize through the “eyes in their fingers,” and which will help them to see with the mind’s eye the form that makes the beauty of our world.

So the children learn through the exercise of the senses.

This may be a white day in the child’s mind growth,” she thinks, but she does not suggest, or hurry the miracle. She only waits, hopes, watches.

Silence is written on the blackboard. Three hours have passed in which over thirty children, barely out of babyhood, have worked incessantly at many different occupations, have moved gracefully and with complete freedom about the room, have changed occupations as often as they wished, have not once quarreled. But now, out of the ordered disorder, comes a marvelous hush. No word is spoken, but one baby after another, glancing the written sign, drops back with closed eyes into a hushed silence in which the whir of bird wings in the garden, the fluttering of casement hangings, the far-away sound of a bell are audible.

has he been inspired to feel stillness.