Plainly, the environment must be a living one, directed by a higher intelligence, arranged by an adult who is prepared for his mission.

Two things are necessary, the development of individuality and the participation of the individual in a truly social life.

The prize and punishments are incentives toward unnatural or forced effort, and, therefore we certainly cannot speak of the natural development of the child in connection with them.

The development of the individual can be described as a succession of new births at consecutively higher levels.

By the age of three, the child has already laid down the foundations of his personality as a human being, and only then does he need the help of special scholastic influences. So great are the conquests he has made that one may well say: the child who goes to school at three is already a little man.

The child, making use of all that he finds around him, shapes himself for the future.

We must, therefore, quit our roles as jailers and instead take care to prepare an environment in which we do as little as possible to exhaust the child with our surveillance and instruction