PAMS Twelve Guiding Principles of Montessori Education 

The Role of Montessori Education:

1. Education is a release from within, not a pouring in from without.

2. The purpose of Montessori Education is to aid the full development of the child and to release all of the child’s human potentialities, for the betterment of humanity.

The Role of the Guide:

3. The role of the guide is to prepare an environment in which all obstacles to the child’s development have been removed, in order to free the child to reach his/her greatest potential at each stage of development.

4. The guide must prepare a child-centered, teacher responsive, materials driven, active environment in which s/he will present materials with which the child can work independently at his/her own pace and initiative.

5. The Montessori guide is the dynamic link between the child and the prepared environment.

6. The guide is a watchful observer of the special sensitivities with which the child is endowed at each stage of development and a mediator of experiences which enhance the release of those potentialities.

7. The guide must be transformed! S/he must be obedient to the observed needs of the child. S/he must become a student and follower of the child. To do so, s/he must be transformed into the kind of person that is capable of this sublime service. If the guide is to be transformed, s/he must first love the child, for no other motivation is strong enough!  (Dr. Feland L. Meadows)

8. The Montessori Guide is called to teach the Science of Peace as the most effective way to transform humankind into a Society of Peace, ONE CHILD AT A TIME!

9. “It is my belief that the thing which we should cultivate in our teachers is more spirit than the mechanical skill of the scientist: that is, the direction of the preparation should be toward the spirit rather than toward the mechanism.”  (Dr. Maria Montessori in The Montessori Method).

The Role of the Child:

10. The child constructs himself through creative acts upon the prepared environment. It is through his work upon the environment that the child achieves the power of concentration that is the key to his normalization.

11. “The children have come to make a better world. To help them, we must understand that it is not what we say, it’s not what we do, but what we are that will make the greatest difference in their lives.” (Dr. Elisabeth Caspari, when she was 102)

12. Love is the Key – (Elisabeth Caspari’s motto throughout her lifetime!)