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The Development and Importance of Movement
The Development and Importance of Movement
Jenny Wyrick
Montessori Quotations
is the last part that completes the cycle of thought, and spiritual uplift is attained through
action or work…By considering physical life on the one side and mental on the other we
break the cycle of relation, and the actions of man remain generally separated from the
brain. Man’s actions are directed to aid eating and breathing, whereas movement
should be the servant of the whole life, and of the spiritual economy of the world.” (p.
38-39)
8. “It is logical that movement should be a higher expression of the psyche, for those
muscles which depend on the brain are called voluntary muscles, being moved by the
will of the individual, and will is that primal energy without which psychic life cannot
exist." (p. 39)
9. “A human characteristic is that he can do all movements, and extend them further
than any animal, making some of them his own. He has universal skill in action, but
only on one condition, that he first make himself, creating by will at first subconsciously,
and then voluntarily repeating the exercises for coordination.” (p. 40)
10. “It is characteristic of man to think and to act with his hands.” (p. 41)
11. “Movement is the conclusion and purpose of the nervous system; without it there
can be no individual. The nervous system, along with brain, senses, nerves and
muscles, puts man into relationship with the world.” (p. 38)
12. “Without movement there is no progress and no mental health” (p. 39)
The Newborn
1. “The greatness of human personality begins at birth, an affirmation full of practical
reality, however strikingly mystic.” (p. 1)
2. “psychologists who have observed small children from their first year have
announced the discovery that it is in this period that the construction, the building up, of
man takes place. Psychically speaking, at birth there is nothing at all – zero! Indeed,
not only psychically, for at birth the child is almost paralytic, unable to do anything; and
behold him after a while, talking, walking, passing from conquest to conquest until he
has built up Man in all his greatness, in all his intelligence!” (p. 11)
3. “the new-born babe is a psychic embryo, so that at birth all children are alike, and
need the same treatment or education during the stage of embryonic growth, of mental
incarnation. No matter what type of man may result from the work of the child…each
must pass through these phases of incarnation. Accordingly education in the first years
of life must be alike for all, and must be dictated by nature herself, who has infused
certain needs into the growing being.” (p. 19)
4. “The new-born child is far from full development; even physically he is incomplete.
The feet destined to walk the earth, and perhaps invade the whole world, are yet without
bones, cartilaginous; the cranium, that encloses the brain and should be its strong
defence, has only a few of its bones developed. More important still, the nerves are not
completed, so that there is a lack of central direction and of unification between the
organs, and therefore no movement…In fact the child must be considered as
possessing an embryonic life that extends before and after birth.” (p. 24)
5. “the first period of life has been fixed for the storing of impressions from the
environment, and is therefore the period of the greatest psychic activity; it is the activity
of absorbing everything that there is in the environment. In the second year the
physical being nears completion, and movement begins to become determined.
Jenny Wyrick
Montessori Quotations
Formerly it was thought that the small child had no psychic life, whereas now we realize
that the only part of him which is active during the first year is the brain! The chief
characteristic of the human babe is intelligence.” (p. 25)
6. “At birth he frees himself from a prison, the mother’s body, and achieves
independence of the functions of the mother; he is endowed with the urge to face and
conquer the environment, but for this the environment must be attractive to him. What
he feels may not inappropriately be called a love for his environment. The first organs
which begin to function are the sensory organs, and the normal child takes in
everything, not yet distinguishing sound from sound, object from object; first it takes the
world, and then analyses it.” (p. 27)
7. “The baby should remain as much as possible with the mother directly after birth,
and the environment must not present obstacles to his adaptation; such obstacles are
change of temperature from that to which he has been accustomed before birth, too
much light and too much noise, for he has come from a place of perfect silence and
darkness. The child must be carefully handled and moved, not lowered suddenly to be
plunged into a bath, and rapidly and roughly dressed – roughly in the sense that any
handling of a new-born child is rough because he is so exquisitely delicate, psychically
as well as physically. It is best of all if the newborn child is not dressed, but rather kept
in a room sufficiently heated and free from draughts, and carried on a soft mattress, so
that he remains in a position similar to the prenatal one.” (p. 29)
8. “Besides hygienic care and protection, the mother and child should be looked on as
two organs of one body, still vitally connected by animal magnetism; they need
seclusion for some time and very careful consideration in every way. Relatives and
friends should not kiss and fondle the infant, nor nurses remove him from his mother’s
side.” (p. 30)
9. “Only the child under three can construct the mechanism of language, and he can
speak any number of languages, if they are in his environment at birth. He begins this
work in the darkness of the subconscious mind, and here it develops and fixes itself
permanently. Changes take place in the depths not readily accessible to adult
observation; but some external manifestations may be seen and checked, and these
are significant and clear, common to all humanity.” (p. 32)
10. “Observations patiently carried out and accurately recorded day by day after birth
have established certain facts which are like milestones. There is a mysterious inner
development which is very great, while the corresponding outer sign of it is very little,
showing great disproportion between the inner activity and its manifestations. Progress
is found to be not regular and graphically linear, but in jerks.” (p. 32-3)
11. “those muscles which depend on the brain are called voluntary muscles…if one
muscle functions in a particular direction, another always functions in the opposite
direction, and the refinement of movement depends on this opposition…In man this
mechanism is not there at birth, so has to be created, and this is done by practical
experiments on the environment. It is not so much exercise of movement, but of co-
ordination. The co-ordination is not fixed for the human child, but has to be created and
perfected through the psyche.” (p. 39-40)
Jenny Wyrick
Montessori Quotations
Jenny Wyrick
Montessori Quotations
The Newborn
1. “Infancy is a period of true importance, because, when we want to infuse new ideas,
to modify or better the habits and customs of a people, to breathe new vigor into its
national traits, we must use the child as our vehicle; for little can be accomplished with
adults. If we really aspire to better things, at spreading the light of civilization more
widely in a given populace, it is to the children we must turn to achieve these ends.” (p.
66)
2. “The immense influence that education can exert through children, has the
environment for its instrument, for the child absorbs his environment, takes everything
from it, and incarnates it in himself. With his unlimited possibilities, he can well be the
transformer of humanity, just as he is its creator. The child brings us a great hope and a
new vision.” (p. 66)
3. “the child, from birth, must be regarded as a being possessed of an important mental
life, and we must treat him accordingly.” (p. 66-67)
4. “If what we have to do is to help man’s mental life, then the first lesson we must learn
is that the tiny child’s absorbent mind finds all its nutriment in its surroundings. Here it
has to locate itself, and build itself up from what it takes in. Especially at the beginning
of life must we, therefore, make the environment as interesting and attractive as we
can.” (p. 97)
5. “man has no behavior foreordained at birth, and that for a child the question is not
one of mental awakening, but of mental creation, we see at once how much greater is
the role which environment must play in his life. Its value and importance are
magnified gigantically, just as are the dangers it may contain. Hence the care we must
take of all the conditions surrounding the newborn babe, so that he will not be repelled
and develop regressive tendencies, but feel attracted to the new world into which he
has come. This will aid his great task of absorption, on which his progress, growth and
development all depend.” (p. 98)
6. [just after birth] “mother and child are treated as if they were organs of the same
body communicating with one another. The child’s adaptation to the world is thus
favored on natural lines, because there is a special bond uniting mother and child,
almost like a magnetic attraction. The mother radiated invisible forces to which the child
is accustomed, and they are a help to him in the difficult days of adjustment. We may
say that the child has merely changed his position in regard to her: he is now outside
her body instead of inside. But everything else remains the same and the communion
between them still exists.” (p. 99)
7. “the child adapts himself serenely to his surroundings without reluctance. He sets
out on the path of independence we have described, and opens his arms to the
environment. He absorbs and makes his own the customs of the world around him.
The first of his activities on this path, which may well be called a conquest, is the use of
his senses. Because his bony tissues are incomplete, he lies inert and his limbs are
motionless. So his life cannot be one of movement. His mind alone is active, absorbing
Jenny Wyrick
Montessori Quotations
Jenny Wyrick
Montessori Quotations
Jenny Wyrick
Montessori Quotations
The Newborn
1. “experience has revealed a terrible truth to us: we carry the wrongs of early infancy
with us for the rest of our lives.” (p. 14)
2. “We must come to a full understanding of the state of being of the newborn child.
Only then will the absolute necessity of rendering easy his initiation into life become
evident. The newborn child must become the object of knowledgeable care. Even
holding him requires the utmost gentleness, and he should not be moved except with
great tenderness. We must understand that in the first moment, and even in the first
month, the child should be kept very quiet. The infant ought to be left naked, warmed
only by the air in the room itself, not clothed or wrapped in blankets, for he has little
body heat with which to resist temperature change and clothing is of little help.” (p. 17)
3. “The newborn child should be seen as a ‘spiritual embryo’ – a spirit enclosed in flesh
in order to come into the world. Science, on the other hand, assumes that the new
being comes with nothing. He is flesh but not spirit, for all that can be verified is the
growth of tissues and organs that ultimately form a living whole. But this too is a
mystery; is it possible that a complex, living body comes out of nothing?” (p. 22)
4. “growth is essentially a mysterious process in which a form of energy animates the
inert body of the newborn child and gives to it the use of its limbs, the faculty of speech,
the power to act and to express its own will: thus is man incarnate.” (p. 22-23)
5. “The process by which the human personality is formed is the hidden work of
incarnation. The helpless infant is an enigma. The only thing we know about him is that
he could be anything, but nobody knows what he will be or what he will do. His helpless
body contains the most complex mechanism of any living creature, but it is distinctly his
own. Man belongs to himself, and his special will furthers the work of incarnation.” (p.
24-25)
6. “a hidden, imprisoned spirit is born and grows, animating little by little the passive
flesh, calling forth the voice of the will, coming into the light of consciousness with the
force of a living creature being born into the world. But in the new environment another
being of enormous power awaits it and ultimately dominates it. In the new environment
there is no awareness or acceptance of the fact of the human incarnation. No
protection is provided for the fragile newcomer, nor is any aid offered him in his difficult
undertaking. Everything becomes an obstacle. The child thus incarnate is a spiritual
Jenny Wyrick
Montessori Quotations
embryo which must come to live for itself in the environment. But like the physical
embryo, the spiritual embryo must be protected by an external environment animated by
the warmth of love and the richness of value, where it is wholly accepted and never
inhibited.” (p. 27)
7. “An error is much more deleterious when it affects an individual in the process of his
development than when it is committed upon someone who has already completed his
inner development. In this sense, anything that inhibits the growth of the child is
particularly grave because it can influence the entire construct of the personality that
must ultimately emerge.” (p. 35)
8. “The small child, and also one who is a few years old, is defined by educators as a
cera molle (‘soft wax’), which can be shaped in the appropriate way. Now the concept
inherent in the definition of cera molle is correct: the error lies in the fact that the
educator believes that he must shape the child. On the contrary, the child must shape
himself.” (p. 36)
9. “the child, like all human beings, has a personality of his own. He carries within
himself the beauty and dignity of a creativity that can never be erased and for which his
spirit, pure and sensitive, exacts from us a most delicate kind of care.” (p. 44)
10. “today doctors are beginning to understand that the immediate causes of many
emotional maladies is repression during infancy. Often during infancy there appear
such dangerous symptoms as insomnia, nightmares, digestive disturbances, and
stammering, and all these have a single cause.” (p. 85)
11. “The child is not merely a little animal to feed, but from the time of his birth, a
creature with a spirit. If we must look after his welfare, then it is not enough to content
ourselves with his physical needs: we must open the way for his spiritual development.
We must, from the very first day, respect the impulses of his spirit and know how to
support them.” (p. 86)
Jenny Wyrick
Montessori Quotations
Jenny Wyrick
Montessori Quotations
The Newborn
1. “A child is by his nature an avid explorer of his surroundings because he has not yet
had the time or means of knowing them precisely.” (p. 104)
2. “Nothing in nature is sweeter than the silent breathing of the newly born…even
children feel the poetry of the silence of a tranquil, newborn human life.” (p. 143)
3. “It is the spiritual part of that fatal intervention of an adult who wants to substitute
herself for a child and to act for him, and who, in so doing, erects the most serious
obstacle to his development. The beauties which a child discovers on his own in the
world about him could bring him frequent joy and satisfaction, but instead, because of
this teaching by an adult they become a source of tedium and mental inertia.” (p. 168)
4. “We should expect normal children to spontaneously investigate their external
surroundings, or, as I say, ‘willingly explore their environment.’ When they are so
disposed, children experience a new happiness at every discovery they make.” (p. 169)
5. “A child has the natural inclination to explore his environment however great it may
be, just as he has a similar tendency to listen to speech.” (p. 177)
6. “In early infancy the hand assists the intelligence to develop, and in a mature man it
is the instrument which controls his destiny on earth.” (p. 285)
7. “Children, thus, it may be said, live in the Church from their earliest infancy and
acquire almost imperceptibly a knowledge of religious things that is truly remarkable
considering their tender age.” (p. 298)
8. “If physical care enables a child to enjoy the pleasures of a healthy body, intellectual
and moral care introduces him to the higher pleasures of the spirit and urges him on to
new insights and discoveries both in his external environment and in the intimacy of his
own soul. These are the joys which prepare a man for life and which are the only ones
that are really suitable for the education of children.” (p. 320)
Jenny Wyrick
Montessori Quotations
9. “The secret of all nature is to be found in the soul of a child.” (p. 321)
10. “it is certain that the things acquired in the absorbent period are those which remain
fixed, not in the memory, but in the living organism, becoming as they do the guide for
the formation of the mind and character of the individual. Consequently, if a child is to
be educated at this age, this must be done by the environment and not through oral
instruction. The culture absorbed by a child kindles within him a blaze of enthusiasm.
He is as it were suddenly on fire and moves on to further growth and other victories.
This is the age when a man works without becoming tired and when he draws food for
his life from his knowledge” (p. 325)
Jenny Wyrick
Montessori Quotations
Jenny Wyrick
Montessori Quotations
development which characterize the human personality are established. Whilst the
newly-born possesses nothing – not even the power of voluntary movement – the child
of two talks, runs, understands and recognizes things in the environment.” (p. 66)
6. “Man is not a vegetating body which lives only on material nourishment, nor is he
destined to sensual emotions alone. Man is that superior being who is endowed with
intelligence, and is destined to do a great task on earth. He must transform it, conquer
it, utilize it and construct a new world full of marvels which surpasses and overrules the
wonders of nature. It is man who creates civilization. This work is unlimited and it is the
aim of his physical limbs. From his first appearance on earth, man has been a worker.”
(p. 69)
7. “Only a few people, so far, have discovered that the evident psychic abnormalities of
modern childhood, which reveal themselves from the first years of life, are due to two
things: ‘mental malnutrition’ and ‘a lack of intelligent and spontaneous activity’. (p. 70)
8. “The hand is a kind of living machine, the movements of which have to be prepared
so that they may render service to the intelligence.” (p. 90)
9. “The hand is an external organ the movements of which can be influenced directly by
education.” (p. 91)
10. “Culture…has to be taken in through activity with the help of apparatus which
permits the child to acquire culture by himself, urged onwards by the nature of his mind
which seeks and is guided by the laws of his development. These laws prove that
culture is absorbed by the child through individual experience, by the repetition of
interesting exercises which always require the contribution of the activity of the hand,
the organ which co-operates with the development of the intelligence.” (p. 99)
The Newborn
1. “Man appearing in this world in the form of a child develops rapidly by a veritable
miracle of creation. The new-born possesses neither the language nor any other
characteristics which reflect the customs of his kind. He has neither intelligence,
memory nor will, not even the power of moving about or keeping himself upright. Yet,
this new-born realizes a real psychic creation. At two years of age he speaks, walks,
recognizes people and objects in his environment, and at five, he acquires sufficient
psychic development to be admitted to a school and start his formal education.” (p. 7)
2. “the life of childhood was not and is not democratic and … its human dignity is not
respected. From the most ancient times a barrier has been raised in the heart even
more than in the mind of the adult. The inner powers of the child have never been
realized, neither from the intellectual nor from the moral point of view.” (p. 30)
3. “Our social mentality has not grasped the idea that we can receive help from the
child, that the child can give us a light and a lesson, a new vision and a solution for
inextricable problems. Even psychologists do not see in him an open door through
which they may enter the subconscious. They still try to discover and decipher it
through the ills of the adult only.” (p. 31)
4. “no young of a mammal is born as inert, as incapable of actualizing the
characteristics of the adults, of its species, as is the newly-born human being…The
human child, instead, is inert for a long time. He does not speak, whereas all other
young creatures at once begin to chirp or bark or reproduce the sound peculiar to their
species…The long inertia and incapacity of the child belong truly to the human species
Jenny Wyrick
Montessori Quotations
Jenny Wyrick
Montessori Quotations
psychic mimesis, the characteristics of the people in his environment. Thus while
growing up, he does not merely become a man – he becomes a man of his race.” (p.
64)
13. “If the child, from birth onwards, has to create his personality at the expense of his
environment, he must be brought into contact with the world, with the outward life of
man. He ought to take part in, or better still, he out to be in touch with the life of adults.
If the child has to incarnate the language of his people he ought to hear them talk and
be present at their conversation. If he is to adapt himself to the environment he ought to
take part in public life and be a witness of the customs which characterize his race.” (p.
67)
Jenny Wyrick
Montessori Quotations
Jenny Wyrick
Montessori Quotations
environment. We might even say that man ‘takes possession of his environment with
his hands.’ His hands under the guidance of his intellect transform this environment
and thus enable him to fulfill his mission in the world.” (p. 81)
10. “In order to develop his mind a child must have objects in his environment which he
can hear and see. Since he must develop himself through his movements, through the
work of his hands, he has need of objects with which he can work that provide
motivation for his activity.” (p. 82)
The Newborn
1. “At no other period in his life does a man experience such a violent conflict and
struggle, and consequent suffering as at the time of birth.” (p. 21)
2. “At birth the child is clothed at once…the tiny body which had been folded within its
mother’s womb was stretched out immobile as if it were set in plaster. And yet clothes
are not necessary for a newborn child, nor even during its first month of existence.” (p.
22)
3. “A newborn child should not simply be shielded from harm, but measures should
also be taken to provide for psychic adjustment to the world around it.” (p. 23)
4. “The needs of a newborn child are not those of one who is sick but of one who is
striving to adjust oneself physically and psychologically to new and strange
surroundings.” (p. 24)
5. “Our attitude towards the newborn child should not be one of compassion but rather
of reverence before the mystery of creation, that a spiritual being has been confined
within limits perceptible to us.” (p. 24)
6. “Hardships and privations in the first months of a child’s existence can, as we now
know, influence the whole course of his future development. But if in the child are to be
found the makings of the man, it is in the child also that the future welfare of the race is
to be found.” (p. 25)
7. “When he [the newborn] appears in our midst, we hardly know how to receive him,
even though he bears within himself a power to create a better world than that in which
we live ourselves.” (p. 25)
8. “over and above the delicate care that is lavished upon the physical welfare of a
newborn child, attention should be paid to its psychic needs as well.” (p. 28)
9. “Special care should be shown for the psychic life of the newborn child. If it already
has such a life at birth, how much greater will this be as it grows older? If we
understand by ‘education’ a child’s psychic rather than its intellectual development, we
may truly say, as it is said today, that a child’s education should begin at birth.” (p. 29)
10. “The fashioning of the human personality is a secret work of ‘incarnation.’ The child
is an enigma. All that we know is that he has the highest potentialities, but we do not
know what he will be. He must ‘become incarnate’ with the help of his own will.” (p. 32)
11. “We can no longer remain blind to the psychic development of the child. We must
assist him from his earliest moments. Such assistance will not consist of forming the
child since this task belongs to nature herself, but in a delicate respect for the outward
manifestations of this development and in providing those means necessary for his
formation which he cannot obtain by his own efforts alone.” (p. 46)
Jenny Wyrick