The central idea of the Montessori system, on which every smallest bit of apparatus, every detail of technic rests solidly, is a full recognition of the fact that no human being can be educated by anyone else. He must do it himself or it is never done. And this is as true at the age of three as at the age of thirty; even truer, for the man of thirty is at least as physically strong as any self-proposed mentor is apt to be, and can fight for his own right to chew and digest his own intellectual food.
It can be readily seen how this dominating idea changes completely the old-established conditions in the schoolroom, turning the high light from the teacher to the pupil. Since the child can really be taught nothing by the teacher, since he himself must do every scrap of his own learning, it is upon the child that our attention centers. The teacher should be the all-wise observer of his natural activity, giving him such occasional quick, light-handed guidance as he may for a moment need, providing for him in the shape of the ingenious Montessori apparatus stimuli for his intellectual life and materials which enable him to correct his own mistakes; but, by no means, as has been our old-time notion, taking his hand in hers and leading him constantly along a fixed path, which she or her pedagogical superiors have laid out beforehand, and into which every childish foot must be either coaxed or coerced.
We have admitted the entire validity of this theory in physical life. We no longer send our children for their outdoor exercise bidding them walk along the street, holding to Nurse’s hand like little ladies and gentlemen. If we can possibly manage it we turn them loose with a sandpile, a jumping-rope, hoops, balls, bats, and other such stimuli to their natural instinct for vigorous body-developing exercise. And we have a “supervisor” in our public playgrounds only to see that children are rightly started in their use of the different games, not at all to play every game with them. We do this nowadays because we have learned that little children are so devoted to those exercises which tend to increase their bodily strength that they need no urging to engage in them. The Montessori child, analogously, is allowed and encouraged to let go the hand of his mental nurse, to walk and run about on his own feet, and an almost endless variety of stimuli to his natural instinct for vigorous mind-developing, intellectual exercise is placed within his reach.