Ellen Key Quotes

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

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.

Rousseau ranks among the great educational theorists of the modern era, even if he was the last man to put in charge of a classroom. Young adults, he thought, should be allowed to develop their capabilities in their distinctive way.

I knew I had to find my own way of teaching.

What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so. We form no guess, at the time of receiving a thought, of its comparative value. And education often wastes its effort in attempts to thwart and balk this natural magnetism, which is sure to select what belongs to it.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily.

The business of both parent and teacher is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better , if less "showily." Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself... Teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences.

One of the things that is very silly - and I hear from educators all the time - is that schools essentially teach kids to learn. They don't need school for that. Learning is what they do best.

Being homeschooled for half of my life allowed me to choose my own curriculum and find things I really enjoy, and that's kind of inspired me. I've always been intrigued in or interested in the topics I've been covering.

Homeschooling has given us some wonderful flexibility and some great life experiences, especially with our son.

Instruction ends in the schoolroom, but education ends only with life. A child is given to the universe to be educated.

I soon gave up instruction for self-teaching.

I actually went to film school, but I didn't like it. I'm basically self-taught.

I wasn't a great student. Just give me a school with no grades, and I'll be happy.

Responsibility for learning belongs to the student, regardless of age.

There is no greater education than one that is self-driven.

I've never been a big believer in formal education.

People should be free to find or make for themselves the kinds of educational experience they want their children to have.

In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.

It is not true that I invented what is called the Montessori Method... I have studied the child; I have taken what the child has given me and expressed it, and that is what is called the Montessori Method.

I never had a teacher, and I never had lessons, other than hard Nature itself.

Being home-schooled, you really get to explore your hobbies, what you want to do for a living.

Don't get me wrong: school is good and all, but school is way too slow for me. Like, super slow. So I didn't want to go. I wanted to learn on my own with real life experiences.

Learning in our family was entirely self-directed.