Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“Our task is to offer the child the instruments of education, to keep pure within him the springs of his intellectual growth, of his life of feeling.”
- Date
- 1917
- English wording
- Arthur Livingston — Translator · from Italian
Meaning of “Our task is to offer the child the…”
Teaching is presented as furnishing tools and protecting conditions for intellectual and emotional development rather than attempting to manufacture every insight directly.
Where does it come from?
The Montessori Elementary Material (1917), Arthur Livingston translation, Part II, Reading, Chapter I, subsection “The Most Popular Books,” printed page 201, Project Gutenberg #42869. Montessori says education should supply essential instruments while preserving the child’s intellectual and emotional springs, then argues that method should assist development without repressing spontaneous activity. This is historical Montessori pedagogy rather than an experimentally established modern educational-outcome rule.
