Ellen Key Quotes

Children are ready to learn when they are ready to learn, not necessarily when their parents are ready to teach them.

My father taught in the wise way which unfolds what lies in the child

Most people do not actually know how to think for themselves, and unfortunately that prevents them from even knowing it.

Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.

If children know there is someone standing over them who knows all the answers, they are less inclined to find the answers for themselves.

Being made to feel like an irrelevant child was probably an asset. Benign negligence is not a bad parental attitude or at least a cross between a benevolent dictator and benign negligence - you should just let kids crack on with it.

My mother set us to an activity and let us be.

It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.

Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves.

Education must be aimed at creating a wider imagination in the child, not at suppressing. The child's mind must be set free.

All children know when something is wrong and they can't understand something - they never need someone to tell them they're stupid. They need help in solving the problem.

I really feel strongly that we don't need to dumb things down for children.

It's important to let kids be themselves and to let them make mistakes. Self-discovery goes a long way.

Children have their own mind.

My whole thing with parenting, even though this is my first time, I want to just put five or six objects on the floor - a trumpet, a piano, some dancing or a computer or whatever it is, and just see what he picks up.

The adult ought never to mold the child after himself, but should leave him alone and work always from the deepest comprehension of the child himself.

When a child is given a little leeway, he will at once shout, "I want to do it!" But in our schools, which have an environment adapted to children's needs, they say, "Help me to do it alone." And these words reveal their inner needs.

Personally, I think that children should be left alone, they should be given an opportunity to grow up, to become aware of themselves and decide themselves who they are: men or women, if they want to have a traditional or homosexual marriage.

Reading might not be the way that the child engages with the world, but it should be something that they all learn how to do, and that they get to have for themselves, as opposed to somebody telling them what to do and how to do it.

I have very good advice to give to kids this age, which is, you shouldn't listen to your mum or dad and you just have to work it out for yourself. And the reason I've taken the age range down this year, and I never would have done it 10 years ago, is what I've seen with the success of Willow Smith. You don't have to be so cutesy anymore.

All education is self-discovery.

To know is not too demanding: it merely requires memory and time. But to understand is quite a different matter: it requires intellectual ability and training, a self conscious awareness of what one is doing, experience in techniques of analysis and synthesis, and above all, perspective.

At the age of 18 I don't think that I thought very differently than I did at the age of 25. I think we instinctively have the knowledge and adapt the knowledge we need.

Now you are beginning to think for yourself instead of letting others think for you. That’s the beginning of wisdom.