Education for A New World

The purpose of this book is to expound and defend the great powers of the child, and to help teachers to a new outlook which will change their task from drudgery to joy, from repression to collaboration with nature ... Already, the psychic life in the new-born has aroused great interest, scientists and psychologists having made observations of babies from three hours to five days after birth. The conclusion of these is that the first two years of life are the most important... So here begins a new path, wherein it will not be the professor who teaches the child, but the child who teaches the professor.

Maria Montessori, Italian physician and educationist, born in Rome, the first women in Italy to receive a medical degree (1894), dedicated her life to learn how best to educate children-particularly the poorest, most challenged children-during their vulnerable beginnings.