January

"I'm sure the reason such young nitwits are produced in our schools is because they have no contact with anything of any use in everyday life."

Petronius (27- 66 AD)
The Satyricon

February

"You are troubled at seeing him spend his early years in doing nothing. What! Is it nothing to be happy? Is it nothing to skip, play, and run around all day long? Never in his life will he be so busy as now."

Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
Émile: Or, Concerning Education, 1883

March

"Little children love the world. That is why they are so good at learning about it. For it is love, not tricks and techniques of thought, that lies at the heart of all true learning. Can we bring ourselves to let children learn and grow through that love?"

John Holt,
How Children Learn

April

"Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today."

Barack Obama

Obama for America

May

"The best-kept secret in child psychology is that children who were never spanked are among the best behaved."

Murray Straus, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology,
University of New Hampshire

June

"We must learn to accept the fact that during their developmental years children cannot be expected to exhibit adult behavior."

Robert Mendelsohn, M.D.,
author of How to Raise a Healthy Child In Spite of Your Doctor

July

"Children are entitled to care, security and a good upbringing. Children are to be treated with respect for their person and individuality and may not be subjected to corporal punishment or any other humiliating treatment."

Swedish Corporal Punishment Ban, Parental Code

August

"Babies are born loving perfectly. They give fully, trust completely and enter every moment with an awareness of connection."

Lauren Porter,
Co-Director, Centre for Attachment (NZ)

September

"If I had to make a general rule for living and working with children, it might be this: be wary of saying or doing anything to a child that you would not do to another adult, whose good opinion and affection you valued."

John Holt,
Freedom and Beyond

More Quotes of the Month