“The greatness of the human personality begins at the hour of birth. From this almost mystic affirmation there comes what may seem a strange conclusion: that education must start from birth.”
“And so we discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being.”
“[In her 1946 book,] Education in a New World, ... education is a natural process carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words, but by experiences in the environment.”
“The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. In our system, she must become a passive, much more than an active, influence, and her passivity shall be composed of anxious scientific curiosity and of absolute respect for the phenomenon which she wishes to observe. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.”
