Social grace, inner discipline and joy. These are the birthright of the human being who has been allowed to develop essential human qualities.

The teacher’s first duty is to watch over the environment, and this takes precedence over all the rest. It’s influence is indirect, but unless it be well done there will be no effective and permanent results of any kind, physical, intellectual or spiritual.

Education demands, then, only this: the utilization of the inner powers of the child for his own instruction.

Only through freedom and environmental experience is it practically possible for human development to occur.

If we can, when we have established individual discipline, arrange the children, sending each one to his own place, in order, trying to make them understand the idea that thus placed they look well, and that it is a good thing to be placed in order . . .

We must clearly understand that when we give the child freedom and independence, we are giving freedom to a worker already braced for action, who cannot live without working and being active.

The adult works to improve his environment while the child works to improve himself.