Maria Montessori went beyond the conventions of the day to seek a new way of knowing and loving a child.
In THE DISCOVERY OF THE CHILD, she describes the nature of the child and her method of working more fully with the child's urge to learn.
Maria Montessori believes that "once the general principles have been grasped, the parts dealing with the material application are extremely simple. Gone are teachers who wear out their lungs maintaining discipline, and verbal instruction is replaced by 'material for development', which affords children the opportunity of teaching themselves by their own efforts. The teacher thus becomes a director of the children's own spontaneous work."