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life. Education during this period must be intended as a help to the development of the psychic powers inherent in the human individual. This cannot be attained by teaching because the child could not understand what a teacher would say.
the child has a type of mind that absorbs knowledge and instructs himself.
The only language that man learns perfectly is acquired at this period of childhood when no one can teach him.
It is as though nature had safeguarded each child from the influence of human intelligence in order to give the inner teacher that dictates within, the possibility of making a complete psychic construction before the human intelligence can come in contact with the spirit and influence it.
Psychologists say that if we compare our ability as adults to that of the child it would require us 60 years of hard work to achieve what a child has achieved in these first three years.
Our school is not a real school; it is a house of children, i.e., an environment specially prepared for the children where the children absorb whatever culture is spread in the environment without any one teaching them.
So we found that education is not what the teacher gives: education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual. It is acquired not by listening to words, but by experiences upon the environment. The task of the teacher then becomes not one of talking, but one of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity spread in a specially prepared environment.
We, the human teachers, can only help the great work that is being done, as servants help the master. If we do so, we shall be witnesses to the unfolding of the human soul, to the rising of a New Man who will not be the victim of events, but who will have the clarity of vision to direct and shape the future of human society.
Education, as a help and protection to life, is an idea which certainly has not entered the field of action of any ministry of education, neither in America North or South nor in Europe.
Education as conceived today prescinds from both biological and social life.
Students must follow the rules established by each institution and adapt themselves to the syllabus recommended by the ministry of education. If we think about it we find also that in these schools no consideration is given to life itself. If the high school student for instance has not enough food, that is no concern of the school.
What about the child from birth to the seventh year, or of the child before its birth? It is taken into no consideration whatever by the school. This age is called pre-scholastic and this means it falls outside the concern of the school.
A modification of the family, a modification in the sense that mothers must be educated.
Education must no longer be based upon a syllabus but upon the knowledge of human life.
All must be called upon to collaborate: mothers and fathers must, of course, do their part well, but if the family has not sufficient means, then society must give not only knowledge, but enough means to educate the children.
it is the mother who forms the child, the mother who teaches him to talk, walk etc., etc. But I say that it is not the mother at all. It is the child himself who does all these things. What the mother produces is the new-born babe, but it is this babe who produces the man.
The child needs special aid in order to build man properly and society must give this its attention. Recognizing the merits of the child does not diminish the authority of the father and the mother for when they come to realize that they are not the constructors, but merely the helpers of this construction, then they will be able to do their duty better; they will help the child with a greater vision.
if the slightest violence is offered to the child, then his psychic construction will be faulty.
The first of these periods goes from birth to six years. This period shows notable differences, but during its whole length the type of mind is the same. From zero to 6 the period shows two distinct sub-phases. The first from to 3 years shows a type of mentality which is unapproachable by the adult, i.e., upon which the adult cannot exert any direct influence and, indeed, there is no school for such children. Then there is another sub-phase from 3 to 6 in which the type of mind is the same, but the child begins to become approachable in a special manner. This period is characterized by the
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Now that the psychologists have come to study life, there is a tendency to go to the other extreme, and there are other people besides me who say that the most important part of life is not the university, but the first period the period that extends from to 6 years, because it is during this first period that intelligence, the great instrument of man, is formed; and not only intelligence, but the whole of the psychic faculties are constructed during this period.
upon the new-born, and the one year old, who create the personality of man; and they feel the same emotion, the same deep impression
A type of mind different from ours, endowed with different powers is necessary to accomplish this. And it is not a small creation that the child achieves.
He creates not only the language, but the organs that make it possible for us to speak. Every physical movement he creates, every side of our intelligence.
This is not done with a conscious mind.
There is no consciousness in the small child, no will.
How has he been able to take in this environment?
The acquisition of language is the most evident example of this.
It is said that the child is endowed with the sense of hearing, that he hears the voice of the human being and thus he learns to speak.
The Absorbent Mind
that is what the child possesses, a type of intelligence different from ours.
We might say that we acquire with our intelligence, the child absorbs with his psychic life.
The child merely by going on with his life, learns to speak the language ...
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We are vessels; impressions pour in, and we remember and hol...
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The child is born and for some months he lies in his house. After a while he walks, goes around, does things and he enjoys himself, he is happy; he lives from day to day and by doing this he learns movements; language comes into his mind with all its constructions; the possibility of directing his movements to suit his life and many other things.
Whatever is in his environment comes to be part of his mind: habits, customs, religion.
How wonderful would it be if one could learn German merely by walking with a German.
Movement is another of these wonderful acquisitions. At birth the child moves very little, then gradually his body becomes animated. He starts to move. The movements that the child acquires, just as is the case with language, are not formed by chance. They are determined in the sense that they are acquired during a special period.
If you watch a small child of three, he is always playing with something. That means he is elaborating with his hands, putting into his consciousness, what his unconscious mind had taken in before. It
He is directed by a marvelously grand mysterious power which little by little he incarnates and thus he becomes a Man. He becomes a man by means of his hands, by means of his experience, first through play, then through work.
He comes to life and begins his mysterious work and little by little he becomes the wonderful personality adapted to his time and to his environment.
Our work is not to teach, but to help the absorbent mind in its work of development.
Now it is easy to understand why the first is the most important amongst the periods of development.
We do not any longer help the child because he is a small and weak being. No! We have realized that the child is endowed with great creative powers, that these great powers are delicate in their nature and can be thwarted if obstacles are placed in their path.
It is these powers we wish to help, not the small child, not his weakness.
Education will take the guise of an aid to the psychic development of man and not of making him memorize ideas and facts.
A very banal consideration will show that the child does not progress towards death like the adult, the child progresses towards life because the purpose of the child
is the construction of man in the fullness of his strength and in the fullness of his life.
So the whole life of the child is a progress towards perfection, a progress of e...
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Already before birth the child has contact with the adult because as an embryo life is spent in the body of the mother. Before the embryo, there is the germinal cell which is the result of two cells which come from adults. So from either side when one goes towards the origin of the life of human beings, and when one goes on following the child towards the completion of his task of growth, one finds the adult. The child’s life is the line that joins the two generations of adult life. The child’s life which originates and is originated, starts from the adult and finishes in the adult.
It is in the field of the child’s life that can be found the type of love which shows what ought to be the ideal moral attitude of the adult community, because only here can be found love that naturally inspires self-sacrifice.
