Except where civilisation has broken down this custom, no mother ever entrusts her child to someone else. The child shares the mother’s life and is always listening.”
All the great human groups, nations and races, have their individual differences; for example, they have different ways of carrying the baby . . . . In most parts of the world, mothers put the baby on a small bed, or in a large bag; they do not carry him in their arms . . . . Some hang the child from their necks, others tie him to their backs, and others again put him in a small basket; but in all countries mothers have found a way of taking their children about with them.
One observes, too, that the little one, going about with his mother, never cries unless he is ill or hurt in some way. Sometimes he may fall asleep, but he does not cry.
Yet the crying of children is a problem in Western countries. How often do we hear parents complain of their children’s incessant crying? They discuss what to do to quieten the baby, and how to keep him happy. The reply of modern psychology is this: “The baby cries and becomes disturbed, has screaming fits and rages, because he is suffering from mental hunger.” And this is the truth. The child is bored. He is being mentally starved, kept prisoner in a confined space offering nothing but frustration to the exercise of his powers. The only remedy is to release him from solitude and let him join in social life. This treatment is naturally and unconsciously adopted in many countries. With us, it must become understood and applied deliberately, as a result of conscious thought.
Another point is the custom of prolonging the period of maternal feeding. Sometimes this lasts for a year and a half; sometimes for two, or even three years. This has nothing to do with the child’s nutritional needs, because for some time he has been able to assimilate other kinds of food; but prolonged lactation requires the mother to remain with her child, and this satisfies her unconscious need to give her offspring the help of a full social life on which to construct his mind.
That humanity which is revealed in its entire intellectual splendour during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.
One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.
[E]ducation is a natural process carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words, but by experiences in the environment.
My vision of the future is no longer of people taking exams and proceeding from secondary school to University but of passing from one stage of independence to a higher, by means of their own activity and effort of will.
And so we discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being.
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