10 ms·

The Montessori Mafia

263 points by danielvnzla 16y ago

jsulak 16y ago
Interesting article, but what about Steve Jobs? Warren Buffet? Bill Gates? It's easy to pick a few examples of anything, but it doesn't make it a real trend.
- Kylekramer 16y ago
  For one, all the people you mentioned were in preschool before the Montessori craze really took over in the States and all the ones the article mentioned besides Julia Child were later. And of course, you will never find 100% success in one method and 0% success in all others. But the Montessori method is fascinating, and does have a few studies backing it. On a personal level as a Montessori kid, I know it definitely gave me a head start over many of my peers (by encouraging my math fascination, I was able to do long division before I entered kindergarten and my sister had a similar experience with reading) and a much more enjoyable/inspiring early education experience. There is no one true way, but I know I will personally place any of my children in Montessori.
  - jarin 16y ago
    I don't remember most of my Montessori school experience (other than making baked apples and learning how to wrap a sari), but I know that despite going to a very competitive and exclusive K-12 school afterward, I was one of only two kids in my kindergarten class who could already read. I used to sit in the back of the room and read during nap time. I also vaguely remember having a head start on math as well, which allowed me to breeze through the math games during computer time and play more advanced games like Rocky's Boots (a game where you assemble logic gates). Like the "January-born hockey player" thing in Outliers, I feel that going to Montessori school may have possibly given me a compounding head start in my computer education. Either that or it just gave me an inflated ego.
    - mirkules 16y ago
      I was born and raised until age 12 in an eastern European country, and I will tell you that I was shocked when I first set foot in an American classroom in 6th grade - they were learning "longhand" division, something I did in grade 2. What I take away from your anecdote combined with my personal experience isn't that the Montessori system is really awesome or that European schools rock, but that the public education system in America is really terrible.
      - TillE 16y ago
        > I was shocked when I first set foot in an American classroom in 6th grade - they were learning "longhand" division, something I did in grade 2. I attended an American public school in the suburbs of New York 20-some years ago, and I very clearly remember learning long division in second grade. I remember it because I missed that day, and the teacher told me to learn it from a friend, which didn't work out so well. The real trouble with public education in the US is that funding is almost entirely a function of where the school is located. Schools in wealthier neighborhoods will generally be good, and schools is poor neighborhoods will be awful. It's an absurd system.
        onan_barbarian 16y ago
        Wow, you all must be genuises or something. I went to a decent primary school in Australia and spend a year ( out of phase, so put forward into the second half of Year 3 and then Year 4) in the US at age 8. The thing that threw me at this age, that was part of the natural progression in that stage, was 'subtract with carry' (I'm pretty sure that was it). I was 'put forward' past this interesting tidbit in my US school, assessed on a test that was almost entirely centeres around it, found wanting, and placed in the lowest class in school with about 7 streams. Each test I moved up a class. All up they regarded it as a triumph of American education :-) Neither of these schools was terrible, either, and both had 'subtract with carry' around year 3. That's a far cry from longhand division. No-one at my kids current school is doing long division in Year 2, either, although I have creeping doubts about its rigor. I am hoping this pace continued for all y'all, so that you were doing calculus in Year 7, and proving exotic conjectures by Erdős in your first or second year of university, etc. :-)
  - mirkules 16y ago
    I think the GP's isn't to discredit the Montessori method via counter-example, but rather to show that people have been successful long before the Montessori method came about (as you mentioned) and will continue to be successful and productive long after the craze has died down. At the same time, just because someone went to a Montessori school doesn't automatically mean they will be a successful person. My wife worked in a Montessori school a while ago and I can't say that I agree with their method of teaching - and this is coming from a guy who went to LAUSD from grade 6 and up.
slay2k 16y ago
I've been thinking about how I'd educate my own kids, and currently it's a tossup between the Harkness approach a la Phillips Exeter, the entirely home-schooled approach, and something like this which seems like a hybrid. If anyone has experience with any of the above, I'd love to hear about it.
- asolove 16y ago
  As in most things, people are more important than methods. Now, there is some correlation, as people who care about teaching kids to really learn will tend to be more involved in Montessori or other small private schools or magnet public schools. But don't decide based on reading and abstraction, go meet the people in the communities you would be putting your child into (including home-school communities) and see if you fit in with those people and if they seem nurturing. And explore more traditional options to see if the people there are exceptional. My wife works at a small Catholic school (who would have thought?) with an amazing community that fosters intergenerational, self-guided, scrape-your-knee-climbing-a-tree sort of learning. I'm sure most parents drive right by and think "pfft, Catholic school," and their abstractions are leading them to miss a real gem.
- joshkaufman 16y ago
  Here's what my wife and I are planning to do with our daughter: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1656756 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1656756 Edit: here's a useful overview of alternative teaching methods - http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/25926 http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/25926
- tokenadult 16y ago
  Homeschooling parent here. I need to get more personal experiences up on my personal website. http://learninfreedom.org/ http://learninfreedom.org/ I've launched one child into adulthood (he is deeply interested in the start-up culture, which is one reason I hang out here on Hacker News) and have three more coming up. Interaction with other curious young people is crucial while growing up. Any school experience that encourages that is worthwhile at least in part, while any school experience that ends up discouraging curiosity (as a remarkable variety of schools do) is to be avoided. P.S. I finally had a chance to tour Exeter this year while high school shopping. Exeter does have an interesting approach with the Harkness table for all classes and the problem-solving-based curriculum.
ziadbc 16y ago
I really like the idea of Montessori, and if I have the cash I'd like to send my future kids there someday. That being said, I see correlation here, not causation. To be a little bit tongue and cheek, I could write the headline: "99% of successful people do not attend Montessori schools"
- mortenjorck 16y ago
  "Ironically, the Montessori educational approach might be the surest route to joining the creative elite, which are so overrepresented by the school’s alumni that one might suspect a Montessori Mafia: Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, videogame pioneer Will Wright, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, not to mention Julia Child and rapper Sean “P.Diddy” Combs." "The creative elite" -> "so overrepresented" -> list of five names in tech, one rapper, one 20th Century culinary master I stopped taking the article seriously at this point.
  - mrtron 16y ago
    s/rapper/$475 million businessman
    - SwellJoe 16y ago
      Which, when you realize that most working musicians make less from their music than they would make doing a full-time minimum wage job, is perhaps even more impressive. Even successful musicians are rarely rich by Silicon Valley standards.
      - dman 16y ago
        Most Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are rarely rich by Silicon Valley standards.
        SwellJoe 16y ago
        The successful ones often are.
timr 16y ago
"When Barbara Walters, who interviewed Google founders Messrs. Page and Brin in 2004, asked if having parents who were college professors was a major factor behind their success, they instead credited their early Montessori education" Ahem. I spy a latent variable in this correlation. Can you find it? Hint: Montessori education may or may not have advantages. But unless you control for educational background and income of the family, your analysis has a problem.
- danielvnzla 16y ago
  Definitely. You cannot assume causality simply because a few results turned out a certain way. Although I have to admit I want to since I would have enjoyed building stuff much more than listening to a prof lecture for an hour. To your point though, you could also cite a number of people not educated in Montessori schools who were very creative and achieved big things.
- gxs 16y ago
  This is exactly right. I suspect that the parents of people who attend Montessori schools are more educated than average to begin with. Go into an inner city Los Angeles elementary, and I guarantee you the great majority of parents wont have even heard of the name. TL;DR: the parents of people who care enough about their education to enroll them in a montessori school, would have probably turned out pretty bright kids regardless.
  - bostonpete 16y ago
    > the parents of people who care enough about their education to enroll them in a montessori school... Really? You think it's just a matter of caring enough to make it so? I think I'd phrase this differently -- that the parents of people who have the means to send them to a montessori school probably would have the means to give them other advantages in life as well, so their kids are probably going to do pretty well regardless.
    - kbutler 16y ago
      > the parents of people who have the means to send them to a montessori school probably would have the means to give them other advantages in life as well, so their kids are probably going to do pretty well regardless. I disagree with the emphasis on the "means" of the family. Contrast the success of immigrant families who struggle to get an education for a child with the wastrel habits of many "rich kids". Care is critical. Wealth may be helpful.
kloncks 16y ago
Fascinating insight. But isn't this a classic case of of correlation, not causation?
- neilc 16y ago
  Why is the press so ignorant of basic statistics? It is really depressing. I wonder if reporters actually don't understand the difference between correlation and causation, or if they just willfully ignore it because it makes for catchier headlines and easier research.
  - jerf 16y ago
    Examine this carefully and the answer will become clear: http://www.desu.edu/curriculum-bachelors-degree-broadcast-journalism http://www.desu.edu/curriculum-bachelors-degree-broadcast-jo... (In fact quite a lot becomes clear.) You can do your own search for "journalism curriculum degree" if you want more corroboration.
- s3graham 16y ago
  Puffy did Montessori and he's doing pretty damn well for himself! Jay-Z started in the projects and didn't finish high school, and he's doing even better! Holy crap, I know where I'm sending my kids!
  - Aetius 16y ago
    Extrapolating this out ... Lakeside School, Philips Exeter or perhaps Collegiate ;)
phren0logy 16y ago
Is this even correlation? Is there any evidence to suggest that Montessori students are over-represented among the successful? Or are they simply proportionate?
- hugh3 16y ago
  Even if they were disproportionately represented, it wouldn't prove much -- only that parents of smart children are more likely to send them to a Montessori school.
ladon86 16y ago
I went to a Waldorf/Steiner school, which shares some of these traits such as the lack of a focus on assessment and grading and the emphasis on creativity. We weren't taught the alphabet until the age of about 6-7 and basic arithmetic at 7-8. We did begin learning foreign languages at age 6, however. In practice my older brother taught me to read and count well before the Steiner curriculum did, but I still think that the education was very valuable. I think that creativity in adults is often stifled because they don't want to "get it wrong". People are afraid of trying their hand at a new skill or taking a risk on a new idea because they are "realistic" about their chances of success. Children just do it anyway. I think that Steiner schools encourage this attitude, and no doubt Montessori schools do the same. There's a reason the really big hitters are often first-time entrepreneurs - they are naive enough to try. Creativity works the same way.
- Alex3917 16y ago
  "There's a reason the really big hitters are often first-time entrepreneurs - they are naive enough to try." I think it's often because they don't understand the difference between a good product and a good business, so their expected outcomes tend to be at the extremes. Some of them end up doing ridiculously well, but overall I wouldn't consider not understanding lead gen, sales cycles, margins, cashflow, lifetime customer value, etc. to be a virtue.
  - deleted 16y ago
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  - aik 16y ago
    I don't understand, why exactly don't they understand any of those things? I would expect them to be exceptional at them.
- il 16y ago
  I think it comes down to the fact that, considering the work involved and that the majority of startups fail, it's never an economically rational decision to work on a startup. Realistic to most people means in the "real world" you follow a safe familiar progression from school to entry level job to management to retirement. There are guide rails and evaluations along the way to make sure you're on track. You found a startup because you wouldn't be happy doing anything else. I can't imagine getting a real job. Ever. For me, the set of things I could be doing with my life is {startup}. I remember seeing a quote from some very successful founder saying that the only reason he went into entrepreneurship is because he was completely unemployable.
jsavimbi 16y ago
I can't speak for the higher end of Montessori as I only attended when I was just starting out my career in education, but I found it to be rewarding for someone with a wandering mind, more so than the strict rote-based Catholic-influenced education I was subjected to further on. I also experienced British private school, and that was definitely better than public but without the scientific approach that I saw at Montessori. It depends on the kid, I guess. I have an independent, creative side to me that also needs strong discipline to get anything done, so I'm grateful to have experienced both worlds. As far as current prices go, my divorced and randomly employed mother was sending both my sister and I there until we opted for the local public school as it fit better with our social lives, and I know there were some kids there in the same boat as us, but overall it was a good mix back then with the benefit of being in the hippy Cambridge of the '70s. My advice would be to buy the best education for your kids that your money can buy, and unless your local school system is the pits, I wouldn't home-school them. There's a lot to be said for socializing at an early age and teaching the kids subjects in addition to the regular curriculum isn't against the law either. If the kids are smart, they'll put the regular coursework behind them and need the extra teaching anyways. If the child is a dullard, don't waste too much money on them as you'll need it for later on for when they really fuck up.
- ajju 16y ago
  >If the child is a dullard, don't waste too much money on them as you'll need it for later on for when they really fuck up. In my experience, barring truly mentally challenged children, most children classified as 'dullards' by the education system just don't understand how to cope with the traditional model of teaching. Once someone takes the time to understand them and teaches them how to 'work the system' while still learning, or once they themselves realize that they can take things in their own hands, they shine. I have seen this time and again with cousins, friends and a bunch of kids my mom taught when I was growing up (She is a teacher). So, if the public school teacher thinks your child is a dullard, it may be a much wiser investment in my opinion to consider educational institutes that will pay a bit more attention to the child's needs. In fact, it may not even take that, it may just take one good, concerned teacher to understand why the kid can't cope, gain their trust, and then teach them how to get the most out of the existing system. All of this is IMHO, and I am not a teacher, just someone who has seen a lot of kids suffering because of how they were labelled as dullards and subsequently ignored for years by teachers AND given up on by parents. I have also seen 'dullards' change course and shine, once they had the right help.
c0nsilience 16y ago
My daughter between the ages of 2 and 8. My wife really wanted it, but I was skeptical. She seems to be doing pretty well and - it could be a personal bias - she also appears to be performing better in school than friends her own age who attend public schools.
Terretta 16y ago
Only if your education differed from the so-called basket of techniques lumped together as "the Montessori method". It's been my experience that a home environment with parents who read and care about expanding horizons will tend to offer the children guided "self-directed" learning, observation and indirect teaching, and productive routines of "focused" activities versus idle play, and these children will tend to outperform peers without that same desire to constantly learn instilled in them -- regardless of the formal education they acquire.
- petercooper 16y ago
  I agree. I'm planning to send my daughter to a Montessori school but only when she reaches school age (4/5). She can get most of the same benefits before then at home and even at "normal" nurseries (because the latter has no curriculum but encourages the self discovery and play). Age 5 through 11 seems more important for the Montessori concepts to sink in.
- brlewis 16y ago
  Could you detail your experience more so we can compare its statistical significance to the scientific study cited in the article?
  - Terretta 16y ago
    My experience covers parents who make an active choice about where their kids go to school versus those who don't. Both my parents were teachers and youth group leaders. We therefore interacted with more parent/kid combos than most people do. Pick a sizable group of kids selected to indicate strong parental interest in how the children learn. For example, kids whose parents at any point considered homeschooling them. You'll see above average scores, even if, in fact, the child in question ended up never being home schooled. The selected trait seems to be simply parental interest in the child's learning. Curiously, the Wikipedia article on Montessori claims among randomly selected/rejected applicants, the selectees performed better. That would seem to eliminate other variables. But it also says any difference was gone again by age 12, quite a few years before the successes cited in the link. I suspect that given the right home environment, it's not that Montessori makes your kid smarter, but that generic grade schools make your kid dumber until the age children manifest individuality. Also see "Outliers" for thoughts on how arbitrary performance and learning measurements seem in grade school as a function of birth month versus school year.
bediger 16y ago
Why does this result surprise anyone? Traditional US schools exist not to cultivate individuality, and make people more expressive and creative, but rather for different reasons. Grade school is designed to teach people enough to read The Bible, and enough writing and arithmetic to not get cheated by the fancy, downtown shop keepers. High school is designed to teach the bulk of the citizenry to work according to a fixed schedule, probably in a factory, along with a faceless mass of similary trained people. It sounds inflammatory, but it's true.
- bostonpete 16y ago
  I agree that it's unsurprising, but for different reasons. According to the Montessori website, there are over 4,000 Montessori schools in the US. It's expected statistically there will be some exceptional standouts coming out of these schools. There may be problems with public schools in the US, but using a few successful individuals who went to an alternative school as evidence of problems seems disingenuous. I'm certain there are a lot of examples of wildly successful people who went through traditional public schooling.
- icco 16y ago
  That sounds like a bit of a stretch. American public education focuses on learning the basics so you can be then trained by either your occupation (ala factory worker, etc.) or by your next institution (university). On top of that depending on where you grow up, the school focuses more on one or the other. Grow up in the bay area, there is a higher chance your school will focus on getting kids into a university. Grow up in an agricultural community, you learn more skills associated with living on a farm (more focus on basic economics, biology). But then again, this is just what I observed. It's possible that if you grew up in the midwest, they taught you to read the bible. I know that's what they taught my mom in Missouri in the 1950s. No idea if it's still the case.
  - yalurker 16y ago
    This comment is so absurdly wrong and offensive I had to read it several times fearing I was missing some sarcasm or satire. I'm sure you didn't mean it as such, so here is some information from someone who went to school in the midwest. Schools in the midwest do not focus on "skills associated with living on a farm". Even in agriculture-centric Iowa farm labor is about 8% of the population, the other 92% of people are employed in offices/stores/factories/etc. For comparison, 5% of workers in California are employed as farm laborers for some part of the year. The schools entire focus is on university preparation (often to a fault, many students would probably be better suited by a more vocational focus). No public school is teaching anyone to read the bible, and to my knowledge private Catholic or other religious schools are no more common in the midwest than in New York or California. Ignorant stereotypes based on state/region are just as foolish as any other ignorant stereotype.
haploid 16y ago
tl;dr: Children of rich, well-connected parents tend to attend better schools.
realitygrill 16y ago
This is just confirmation bias. Page credits "part of that training of not following rules and orders, and being self-motivated, questioning what’s going on in the world, doing things a little bit differently." As a Montessori kid myself, I could see myself having differing opinions depending on how the future turned out. Successful: go back and credit Montessori for making me a rebellious, curious nonconformist. Unsuccessful: go back and partially blame Montessori for those same values, that make navigating this world of rules and structures difficult. PG's writings would make me think that he leans more towards the Montessori side of things, and probably a lot of HNers are the same. I'm glad jsavimbi spoke about his need for strong discipline.
- petercooper 16y ago
  Also, more progressive, experimental parents are more likely to send their kids to Montessori schools, but kids raised by such parents are likely to be more progressive and experimental anyway.
- brlewis 16y ago
  Montessori only looks like a "not following rules and orders" environment in comparison to an environment where you ask permission to use the bathroom, and are told every hour of every day exactly what to do. Montessori has structure, just a lot less, more comparable to the amount of structure I have in my day job.
VladRussian 16y ago
what type of people would be developed by combined approach of Montessori and Tiger Mom? :)
- pgbovine 16y ago
  wow my head just exploded at the thought of that :) if you wanna write a blog post speculating on that, i'd gladly post it to HN
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  "You will stay at this desk and drill creative thinking or I will screech at you some more!"
ILIKECAKE 16y ago
I went too Montessori and I am sitting behind a damn desk administering systems...looks like I missed the awewsomness bus
- noahc 16y ago
  I down voted you and the reason why is that I think your thought is a fair thought to have but you're not adding anything to the conversation. Please expand on why you missed the awesome bus, or tell us more about your experiences so we can be better informed about Montessori.
karolisd 16y ago
Are all of the examples male? Do Montessori schools help females too?
- dgabriel 16y ago
  There are certainly some women on the list, but none of them appear to be founders: http://mariamontessori.com/mm/?page_id=571 http://mariamontessori.com/mm/?page_id=571 I would attribute that to there being many more men founders, and that the vast majority of children attend other types of schools. Any crossover will be vanishingly small.
deleted 16y ago
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mmcconnell1618 16y ago
Perhaps creative minded people fit in better in Montessori schools and therefore credit the school with love of learning. Where's the proof that the Montessori method created the effect?
brlewis 16y ago
I have children aged 13, 10 and 5. The oldest spent 1 year in a traditional preschool, but they've gone exclusively to Montessori school since that time. What strikes me about this article is its characterization of Montessori schooling as largely unstructured and free. I think it must be comparing it to a much over-structured methodology, perhaps like the public schooling I got growing up. Styles vary somewhat among Montessori schools, but what I've seen is that in the early years, the age Montessori is most known for, there are specific materials children work with and specific ways they're expected to work with them. A child may not get out a work he/she hasn't been shown how to use. He must return the work to its proper place before selecting another one. The materials aren't tools for self-discovery. They're tools for letting self collide with reality until such time as the applicable real concepts are understood. However, the one simple freedom of being able to choose a work does make it a sharp contrast from the lock-step style of education I grew up with. I hear public schools aren't always this way, according to relatives who sent kids to public school in Lexington, MA. In higher grades the emphasis on materials fades, but the basic idea of letting children work within a structure remains. For example, in upper elementary (grades 4-6) the students develop their own classroom code of conduct. They're given some structure about how to do it, though. I see Montessori as a balanced methodology on the freedom/structure dimension, not an extreme.
- Periodic 16y ago
  I most important memory for me is that Montessori allowed me to excel. It was exceptional at getting out of the way and letting me learn if I was interested, and I most certainly was. What I remember most from my Montessori education in my early years (preschool through elementary) was that we were allowed to progress at our own pace. Our teacher(s) set up various tracks of things to complete, for example we had math cards you could study and then do some problems on and eventually take a test to move on to the next set, or we had a series of books and you needed to select one from the set and answer some questions before moving on to one from the next set. About half of our time was allowing us to work on whatever we wanted. If you got ahead in a subject, the teacher would find more for you to do on it. If you got behind, the teacher would try to help you get over whatever hurdle of understanding you had. As a result, I was a few years ahead of myself in math. Every time the teacher got a new set of math cards I would do them all as quickly as I could and I prided myself on being a few years ahead. However, my reading was a bit behind because I never really cared to do the in-school reading as I preferred sci-fi. There were other children who were just the opposite. The benefit was that I didn't have to sit in a class room doing the exact same boring lessons as the rest of the class. If I could figure something out in 5 minutes I didn't have to sit through a 1-hour lecture on the subject.
damla 16y ago
Maria Montessori lived in Italy a 100 years ago, and no doubt she was a reformist. She was the first woman doctor, she worked with children with mental disabilities when children was not considered humans, and she noticed that, her approach is applicable to all children. She invented very useful methods and tools for teaching preschoolers. She made wonderful toys which are now called "Montessori Materials". Her method is spread to US, and "adapted". Montessori teachers are certified largely by two centers in the world, in Italy (http://www.montessori-ami.org/ http://www.montessori-ami.org/), and in US (http://www.amshq.org/ http://www.amshq.org/). As far as I know AMI sees itself as the "original" Montessori, rejects others, and more strict in many ways, like they don't allow any toys in classrooms, they don't have any books (just lapbooks produced by teachers or children). I have real problems with strict, spiritual Montessori. Why would we be against to toys? Maria Montessori crafted wonderful toys for her students, and now they are called "Montessori Materials". What's wrong with Lego's? I think if Maria Montessori had Lego, she would use them. Montessori, Waldorf, Reggio Emilia, all have different methods to inspire for raising kids and even for start-ups (http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=famconfacpub http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10...). But, none is magic.
speleding 16y ago
My kids (4 & 7) just moved from a traditional school to a Montessori school last summer because we moved house. I wasn't completely sold on the philosophy yet but my kids LIKE going to school a lot more now and it seems to work really well. Happy kids, learning a lot. But it is very counterintuitive for the engineer in me who wants to measure progress by how much of the alphabet they know. It takes a lot of trust in the somewhat nebulous and touchy feely Montessori philosophy, if you read the wikipedia page about it you'll see that even the educators can't agree on what it is exactly. (Montessori did use scientific methods to arrive at her recommendations, but interpretations differ). There's things the type of educators in such schools do that makes us rational people cringe (kids are not allowed artificial flavoring in their lunch food...). But, well, it works (for my kids at least). Since I am too rational to give up on measuring I conclude we are probably not measuring progress the right way by testing how much letters in the alphabet they know.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  kids are not allowed artificial flavoring in their lunch food... Why would that make you cringe?
  - nitrogen 16y ago
    I don't know why it bothers the original poster, but to me it seems like a cringe-worthy non sequitur. How is artificial flavoring related to education?
  - speleding 16y ago
    It makes me cringe because there is no scientific evidence at all that artificial food additives are bad for kids. Quite the opposite actually, artificial additives are tested to death before they are allowed on the market. It has no relation to the Montessori philosophy, I was just giving an example of the "kind of person" the typically teacher is there, basing decisions more on feelings than rational evidence.
    - roel_v 16y ago
jhuckestein 16y ago
"What is 10 plus 1?" "101?" "I'm sorry M'a'm, your son is an idiot"
- jhuckestein 16y ago
  Maybe I was too subtle. The message is: our yes or no school system fails to award perfectly reasonable thoughts such as that 10 plus one might be 101.
  - pnathan 16y ago
    No, that's not reasonable. Concatenation is not the reasonable answer to addition of numbers.
deleted 16y ago
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jtraffic 16y ago
I have a hunch (definitely not an assertion) that even if there are effects from Montessori school early on, they wash out over time, and the major factors afterward are socioeconomic status and habits of parents, and subsequent education (K-12). I guess I'm paraphrasing Freakonomics.
billmcneale 16y ago
I have no problem with the Montessori method but if you're going to throw the names of a few very successful people as examples, you also need to show the full picture, i.e. for all these Montessori kids that became so successful, how many other successful people did not got to Montessori? If anything, the fact that they only list 4-5 names tells me that at best, the kind of education you receive at that age is not that important after all (I think your parents and your environment are probably bigger factors) and at worst, the Montessori school doesn't really work that well after all.
softbuilder 16y ago
"Questions are the new answers" -- Socrates, 429 B.C.
bryanwb 16y ago
I am pretty skeptical of the Montessori approach. Take kids from wealthy, well-educated families and put them in small groups with educators that also happen to be very well-educated and very passionate and you will get great results whatever the pedagogy. Contrast this w/ poor kids whose parents had low educational attainments, stuck in giant classes with poorly-paid teachers. If you put 6 well-off kids with 1 passionate, well-educated teacher, you will get good results almost every time. Montessori approach may have its merits but I find it very hard to separate them from the demographics of its students and teachers. The study in Milwaukee does not seem sufficient to establish a link. Those passionate about teaching are probably more likely to be attracted to the Montessori school than the regular public schools because it has a distinctive approach and probably more liberal management. I would love to love to know if the Montessori schools in teh Milwaukee school had the same teacher/student ratio as the other schools in the study. I am betting they didn't.
gevertulley 16y ago
Perhaps what is required here is a re-examination of the fundamental goals of what we refer to as "education." Is the purpose of school to teach a set of curriculum or to inculcate the habits necessary to become courageous explorers of the world and inventors of our own destinies? Montessori is just one alternative, but now, in a time of rapid change, is the time to begin and support multiple experiments. We need to explore the full range of functional pedagogies and see what new ways of teaching and learning can be developed. Looking for one "best" context or approach for learning is probably never going to work - the fundamental assumption is wrong. An educational monoculture suffers the same vulnerabilities that a biological monoculture does. We should foster a diversity of approaches, supporting the sharing of techniques, approaches, and contexts. This is why we are starting a new K-12 school, based on some new ideas (Tinkering School, and A Curious Summer) and incorporating some really old ideas (apprenticeship and mastery). We call it Brightworks (http://sfbrightworks.org http://sfbrightworks.org). Have a look at our approach, share your ideas, join us at the edge of innovation in education.

263 points by danielvnzla 16y ago

Interesting article, but what about Steve Jobs? Warren Buffet? Bill Gates? It's easy to pick a few examples of anything, but it doesn't make it a real trend.

Kylekramer 16y ago
For one, all the people you mentioned were in preschool before the Montessori craze really took over in the States and all the ones the article mentioned besides Julia Child were later. And of course, you will never find 100% success in one method and 0% success in all others. But the Montessori method is fascinating, and does have a few studies backing it. On a personal level as a Montessori kid, I know it definitely gave me a head start over many of my peers (by encouraging my math fascination, I was able to do long division before I entered kindergarten and my sister had a similar experience with reading) and a much more enjoyable/inspiring early education experience. There is no one true way, but I know I will personally place any of my children in Montessori.
- jarin 16y ago
  I don't remember most of my Montessori school experience (other than making baked apples and learning how to wrap a sari), but I know that despite going to a very competitive and exclusive K-12 school afterward, I was one of only two kids in my kindergarten class who could already read. I used to sit in the back of the room and read during nap time. I also vaguely remember having a head start on math as well, which allowed me to breeze through the math games during computer time and play more advanced games like Rocky's Boots (a game where you assemble logic gates). Like the "January-born hockey player" thing in Outliers, I feel that going to Montessori school may have possibly given me a compounding head start in my computer education. Either that or it just gave me an inflated ego.
  - mirkules 16y ago
    I was born and raised until age 12 in an eastern European country, and I will tell you that I was shocked when I first set foot in an American classroom in 6th grade - they were learning "longhand" division, something I did in grade 2. What I take away from your anecdote combined with my personal experience isn't that the Montessori system is really awesome or that European schools rock, but that the public education system in America is really terrible.
    - TillE 16y ago
      > I was shocked when I first set foot in an American classroom in 6th grade - they were learning "longhand" division, something I did in grade 2. I attended an American public school in the suburbs of New York 20-some years ago, and I very clearly remember learning long division in second grade. I remember it because I missed that day, and the teacher told me to learn it from a friend, which didn't work out so well. The real trouble with public education in the US is that funding is almost entirely a function of where the school is located. Schools in wealthier neighborhoods will generally be good, and schools is poor neighborhoods will be awful. It's an absurd system.
      - onan_barbarian 16y ago
        Wow, you all must be genuises or something. I went to a decent primary school in Australia and spend a year ( out of phase, so put forward into the second half of Year 3 and then Year 4) in the US at age 8. The thing that threw me at this age, that was part of the natural progression in that stage, was 'subtract with carry' (I'm pretty sure that was it). I was 'put forward' past this interesting tidbit in my US school, assessed on a test that was almost entirely centeres around it, found wanting, and placed in the lowest class in school with about 7 streams. Each test I moved up a class. All up they regarded it as a triumph of American education :-) Neither of these schools was terrible, either, and both had 'subtract with carry' around year 3. That's a far cry from longhand division. No-one at my kids current school is doing long division in Year 2, either, although I have creeping doubts about its rigor. I am hoping this pace continued for all y'all, so that you were doing calculus in Year 7, and proving exotic conjectures by Erdős in your first or second year of university, etc. :-)
- mirkules 16y ago
  I think the GP's isn't to discredit the Montessori method via counter-example, but rather to show that people have been successful long before the Montessori method came about (as you mentioned) and will continue to be successful and productive long after the craze has died down. At the same time, just because someone went to a Montessori school doesn't automatically mean they will be a successful person. My wife worked in a Montessori school a while ago and I can't say that I agree with their method of teaching - and this is coming from a guy who went to LAUSD from grade 6 and up.

slay2k 16y ago

I've been thinking about how I'd educate my own kids, and currently it's a tossup between the Harkness approach a la Phillips Exeter, the entirely home-schooled approach, and something like this which seems like a hybrid. If anyone has experience with any of the above, I'd love to hear about it.

asolove 16y ago
As in most things, people are more important than methods. Now, there is some correlation, as people who care about teaching kids to really learn will tend to be more involved in Montessori or other small private schools or magnet public schools. But don't decide based on reading and abstraction, go meet the people in the communities you would be putting your child into (including home-school communities) and see if you fit in with those people and if they seem nurturing. And explore more traditional options to see if the people there are exceptional. My wife works at a small Catholic school (who would have thought?) with an amazing community that fosters intergenerational, self-guided, scrape-your-knee-climbing-a-tree sort of learning. I'm sure most parents drive right by and think "pfft, Catholic school," and their abstractions are leading them to miss a real gem.
joshkaufman 16y ago
Here's what my wife and I are planning to do with our daughter: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1656756 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1656756 Edit: here's a useful overview of alternative teaching methods - http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/25926 http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/25926
tokenadult 16y ago
Homeschooling parent here. I need to get more personal experiences up on my personal website. http://learninfreedom.org/ http://learninfreedom.org/ I've launched one child into adulthood (he is deeply interested in the start-up culture, which is one reason I hang out here on Hacker News) and have three more coming up. Interaction with other curious young people is crucial while growing up. Any school experience that encourages that is worthwhile at least in part, while any school experience that ends up discouraging curiosity (as a remarkable variety of schools do) is to be avoided. P.S. I finally had a chance to tour Exeter this year while high school shopping. Exeter does have an interesting approach with the Harkness table for all classes and the problem-solving-based curriculum.

ziadbc 16y ago

I really like the idea of Montessori, and if I have the cash I'd like to send my future kids there someday. That being said, I see correlation here, not causation. To be a little bit tongue and cheek, I could write the headline: "99% of successful people do not attend Montessori schools"

mortenjorck 16y ago
"Ironically, the Montessori educational approach might be the surest route to joining the creative elite, which are so overrepresented by the school’s alumni that one might suspect a Montessori Mafia: Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, videogame pioneer Will Wright, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, not to mention Julia Child and rapper Sean “P.Diddy” Combs." "The creative elite" -> "so overrepresented" -> list of five names in tech, one rapper, one 20th Century culinary master I stopped taking the article seriously at this point.
- mrtron 16y ago
  s/rapper/$475 million businessman
  - SwellJoe 16y ago
    Which, when you realize that most working musicians make less from their music than they would make doing a full-time minimum wage job, is perhaps even more impressive. Even successful musicians are rarely rich by Silicon Valley standards.
    - dman 16y ago
      Most Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are rarely rich by Silicon Valley standards.
      - SwellJoe 16y ago
        The successful ones often are.

timr 16y ago

"When Barbara Walters, who interviewed Google founders Messrs. Page and Brin in 2004, asked if having parents who were college professors was a major factor behind their success, they instead credited their early Montessori education" Ahem. I spy a latent variable in this correlation. Can you find it? Hint: Montessori education may or may not have advantages. But unless you control for educational background and income of the family, your analysis has a problem.

danielvnzla 16y ago
Definitely. You cannot assume causality simply because a few results turned out a certain way. Although I have to admit I want to since I would have enjoyed building stuff much more than listening to a prof lecture for an hour. To your point though, you could also cite a number of people not educated in Montessori schools who were very creative and achieved big things.
gxs 16y ago
This is exactly right. I suspect that the parents of people who attend Montessori schools are more educated than average to begin with. Go into an inner city Los Angeles elementary, and I guarantee you the great majority of parents wont have even heard of the name. TL;DR: the parents of people who care enough about their education to enroll them in a montessori school, would have probably turned out pretty bright kids regardless.
- bostonpete 16y ago
  > the parents of people who care enough about their education to enroll them in a montessori school... Really? You think it's just a matter of caring enough to make it so? I think I'd phrase this differently -- that the parents of people who have the means to send them to a montessori school probably would have the means to give them other advantages in life as well, so their kids are probably going to do pretty well regardless.
  - kbutler 16y ago
    > the parents of people who have the means to send them to a montessori school probably would have the means to give them other advantages in life as well, so their kids are probably going to do pretty well regardless. I disagree with the emphasis on the "means" of the family. Contrast the success of immigrant families who struggle to get an education for a child with the wastrel habits of many "rich kids". Care is critical. Wealth may be helpful.

kloncks 16y ago

Fascinating insight. But isn't this a classic case of of correlation, not causation?

neilc 16y ago
Why is the press so ignorant of basic statistics? It is really depressing. I wonder if reporters actually don't understand the difference between correlation and causation, or if they just willfully ignore it because it makes for catchier headlines and easier research.
- jerf 16y ago
  Examine this carefully and the answer will become clear: http://www.desu.edu/curriculum-bachelors-degree-broadcast-journalism http://www.desu.edu/curriculum-bachelors-degree-broadcast-jo... (In fact quite a lot becomes clear.) You can do your own search for "journalism curriculum degree" if you want more corroboration.
s3graham 16y ago
Puffy did Montessori and he's doing pretty damn well for himself! Jay-Z started in the projects and didn't finish high school, and he's doing even better! Holy crap, I know where I'm sending my kids!
- Aetius 16y ago
  Extrapolating this out ... Lakeside School, Philips Exeter or perhaps Collegiate ;)

phren0logy 16y ago

Is this even correlation? Is there any evidence to suggest that Montessori students are over-represented among the successful? Or are they simply proportionate?

hugh3 16y ago
Even if they were disproportionately represented, it wouldn't prove much -- only that parents of smart children are more likely to send them to a Montessori school.

ladon86 16y ago

I went to a Waldorf/Steiner school, which shares some of these traits such as the lack of a focus on assessment and grading and the emphasis on creativity. We weren't taught the alphabet until the age of about 6-7 and basic arithmetic at 7-8. We did begin learning foreign languages at age 6, however. In practice my older brother taught me to read and count well before the Steiner curriculum did, but I still think that the education was very valuable. I think that creativity in adults is often stifled because they don't want to "get it wrong". People are afraid of trying their hand at a new skill or taking a risk on a new idea because they are "realistic" about their chances of success. Children just do it anyway. I think that Steiner schools encourage this attitude, and no doubt Montessori schools do the same. There's a reason the really big hitters are often first-time entrepreneurs - they are naive enough to try. Creativity works the same way.

Alex3917 16y ago
"There's a reason the really big hitters are often first-time entrepreneurs - they are naive enough to try." I think it's often because they don't understand the difference between a good product and a good business, so their expected outcomes tend to be at the extremes. Some of them end up doing ridiculously well, but overall I wouldn't consider not understanding lead gen, sales cycles, margins, cashflow, lifetime customer value, etc. to be a virtue.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- aik 16y ago
  I don't understand, why exactly don't they understand any of those things? I would expect them to be exceptional at them.
il 16y ago
I think it comes down to the fact that, considering the work involved and that the majority of startups fail, it's never an economically rational decision to work on a startup. Realistic to most people means in the "real world" you follow a safe familiar progression from school to entry level job to management to retirement. There are guide rails and evaluations along the way to make sure you're on track. You found a startup because you wouldn't be happy doing anything else. I can't imagine getting a real job. Ever. For me, the set of things I could be doing with my life is {startup}. I remember seeing a quote from some very successful founder saying that the only reason he went into entrepreneurship is because he was completely unemployable.

jsavimbi 16y ago

I can't speak for the higher end of Montessori as I only attended when I was just starting out my career in education, but I found it to be rewarding for someone with a wandering mind, more so than the strict rote-based Catholic-influenced education I was subjected to further on. I also experienced British private school, and that was definitely better than public but without the scientific approach that I saw at Montessori. It depends on the kid, I guess. I have an independent, creative side to me that also needs strong discipline to get anything done, so I'm grateful to have experienced both worlds. As far as current prices go, my divorced and randomly employed mother was sending both my sister and I there until we opted for the local public school as it fit better with our social lives, and I know there were some kids there in the same boat as us, but overall it was a good mix back then with the benefit of being in the hippy Cambridge of the '70s. My advice would be to buy the best education for your kids that your money can buy, and unless your local school system is the pits, I wouldn't home-school them. There's a lot to be said for socializing at an early age and teaching the kids subjects in addition to the regular curriculum isn't against the law either. If the kids are smart, they'll put the regular coursework behind them and need the extra teaching anyways. If the child is a dullard, don't waste too much money on them as you'll need it for later on for when they really fuck up.

ajju 16y ago
>If the child is a dullard, don't waste too much money on them as you'll need it for later on for when they really fuck up. In my experience, barring truly mentally challenged children, most children classified as 'dullards' by the education system just don't understand how to cope with the traditional model of teaching. Once someone takes the time to understand them and teaches them how to 'work the system' while still learning, or once they themselves realize that they can take things in their own hands, they shine. I have seen this time and again with cousins, friends and a bunch of kids my mom taught when I was growing up (She is a teacher). So, if the public school teacher thinks your child is a dullard, it may be a much wiser investment in my opinion to consider educational institutes that will pay a bit more attention to the child's needs. In fact, it may not even take that, it may just take one good, concerned teacher to understand why the kid can't cope, gain their trust, and then teach them how to get the most out of the existing system. All of this is IMHO, and I am not a teacher, just someone who has seen a lot of kids suffering because of how they were labelled as dullards and subsequently ignored for years by teachers AND given up on by parents. I have also seen 'dullards' change course and shine, once they had the right help.

c0nsilience 16y ago

My daughter between the ages of 2 and 8. My wife really wanted it, but I was skeptical. She seems to be doing pretty well and - it could be a personal bias - she also appears to be performing better in school than friends her own age who attend public schools.

Terretta 16y ago

Only if your education differed from the so-called basket of techniques lumped together as "the Montessori method". It's been my experience that a home environment with parents who read and care about expanding horizons will tend to offer the children guided "self-directed" learning, observation and indirect teaching, and productive routines of "focused" activities versus idle play, and these children will tend to outperform peers without that same desire to constantly learn instilled in them -- regardless of the formal education they acquire.

petercooper 16y ago
I agree. I'm planning to send my daughter to a Montessori school but only when she reaches school age (4/5). She can get most of the same benefits before then at home and even at "normal" nurseries (because the latter has no curriculum but encourages the self discovery and play). Age 5 through 11 seems more important for the Montessori concepts to sink in.
brlewis 16y ago
Could you detail your experience more so we can compare its statistical significance to the scientific study cited in the article?
- Terretta 16y ago
  My experience covers parents who make an active choice about where their kids go to school versus those who don't. Both my parents were teachers and youth group leaders. We therefore interacted with more parent/kid combos than most people do. Pick a sizable group of kids selected to indicate strong parental interest in how the children learn. For example, kids whose parents at any point considered homeschooling them. You'll see above average scores, even if, in fact, the child in question ended up never being home schooled. The selected trait seems to be simply parental interest in the child's learning. Curiously, the Wikipedia article on Montessori claims among randomly selected/rejected applicants, the selectees performed better. That would seem to eliminate other variables. But it also says any difference was gone again by age 12, quite a few years before the successes cited in the link. I suspect that given the right home environment, it's not that Montessori makes your kid smarter, but that generic grade schools make your kid dumber until the age children manifest individuality. Also see "Outliers" for thoughts on how arbitrary performance and learning measurements seem in grade school as a function of birth month versus school year.

bediger 16y ago

Why does this result surprise anyone? Traditional US schools exist not to cultivate individuality, and make people more expressive and creative, but rather for different reasons. Grade school is designed to teach people enough to read The Bible, and enough writing and arithmetic to not get cheated by the fancy, downtown shop keepers. High school is designed to teach the bulk of the citizenry to work according to a fixed schedule, probably in a factory, along with a faceless mass of similary trained people. It sounds inflammatory, but it's true.

bostonpete 16y ago
I agree that it's unsurprising, but for different reasons. According to the Montessori website, there are over 4,000 Montessori schools in the US. It's expected statistically there will be some exceptional standouts coming out of these schools. There may be problems with public schools in the US, but using a few successful individuals who went to an alternative school as evidence of problems seems disingenuous. I'm certain there are a lot of examples of wildly successful people who went through traditional public schooling.
icco 16y ago
That sounds like a bit of a stretch. American public education focuses on learning the basics so you can be then trained by either your occupation (ala factory worker, etc.) or by your next institution (university). On top of that depending on where you grow up, the school focuses more on one or the other. Grow up in the bay area, there is a higher chance your school will focus on getting kids into a university. Grow up in an agricultural community, you learn more skills associated with living on a farm (more focus on basic economics, biology). But then again, this is just what I observed. It's possible that if you grew up in the midwest, they taught you to read the bible. I know that's what they taught my mom in Missouri in the 1950s. No idea if it's still the case.
- yalurker 16y ago
  This comment is so absurdly wrong and offensive I had to read it several times fearing I was missing some sarcasm or satire. I'm sure you didn't mean it as such, so here is some information from someone who went to school in the midwest. Schools in the midwest do not focus on "skills associated with living on a farm". Even in agriculture-centric Iowa farm labor is about 8% of the population, the other 92% of people are employed in offices/stores/factories/etc. For comparison, 5% of workers in California are employed as farm laborers for some part of the year. The schools entire focus is on university preparation (often to a fault, many students would probably be better suited by a more vocational focus). No public school is teaching anyone to read the bible, and to my knowledge private Catholic or other religious schools are no more common in the midwest than in New York or California. Ignorant stereotypes based on state/region are just as foolish as any other ignorant stereotype.

haploid 16y ago

tl;dr: Children of rich, well-connected parents tend to attend better schools.

realitygrill 16y ago

This is just confirmation bias. Page credits "part of that training of not following rules and orders, and being self-motivated, questioning what’s going on in the world, doing things a little bit differently." As a Montessori kid myself, I could see myself having differing opinions depending on how the future turned out. Successful: go back and credit Montessori for making me a rebellious, curious nonconformist. Unsuccessful: go back and partially blame Montessori for those same values, that make navigating this world of rules and structures difficult. PG's writings would make me think that he leans more towards the Montessori side of things, and probably a lot of HNers are the same. I'm glad jsavimbi spoke about his need for strong discipline.

petercooper 16y ago
Also, more progressive, experimental parents are more likely to send their kids to Montessori schools, but kids raised by such parents are likely to be more progressive and experimental anyway.
brlewis 16y ago
Montessori only looks like a "not following rules and orders" environment in comparison to an environment where you ask permission to use the bathroom, and are told every hour of every day exactly what to do. Montessori has structure, just a lot less, more comparable to the amount of structure I have in my day job.

VladRussian 16y ago

what type of people would be developed by combined approach of Montessori and Tiger Mom? :)

pgbovine 16y ago
wow my head just exploded at the thought of that :) if you wanna write a blog post speculating on that, i'd gladly post it to HN
jacques_chester 16y ago
"You will stay at this desk and drill creative thinking or I will screech at you some more!"

ILIKECAKE 16y ago

I went too Montessori and I am sitting behind a damn desk administering systems...looks like I missed the awewsomness bus

noahc 16y ago
I down voted you and the reason why is that I think your thought is a fair thought to have but you're not adding anything to the conversation. Please expand on why you missed the awesome bus, or tell us more about your experiences so we can be better informed about Montessori.

karolisd 16y ago

Are all of the examples male? Do Montessori schools help females too?

dgabriel 16y ago
There are certainly some women on the list, but none of them appear to be founders: http://mariamontessori.com/mm/?page_id=571 http://mariamontessori.com/mm/?page_id=571 I would attribute that to there being many more men founders, and that the vast majority of children attend other types of schools. Any crossover will be vanishingly small.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

mmcconnell1618 16y ago

Perhaps creative minded people fit in better in Montessori schools and therefore credit the school with love of learning. Where's the proof that the Montessori method created the effect?

brlewis 16y ago

I have children aged 13, 10 and 5. The oldest spent 1 year in a traditional preschool, but they've gone exclusively to Montessori school since that time. What strikes me about this article is its characterization of Montessori schooling as largely unstructured and free. I think it must be comparing it to a much over-structured methodology, perhaps like the public schooling I got growing up. Styles vary somewhat among Montessori schools, but what I've seen is that in the early years, the age Montessori is most known for, there are specific materials children work with and specific ways they're expected to work with them. A child may not get out a work he/she hasn't been shown how to use. He must return the work to its proper place before selecting another one. The materials aren't tools for self-discovery. They're tools for letting self collide with reality until such time as the applicable real concepts are understood. However, the one simple freedom of being able to choose a work does make it a sharp contrast from the lock-step style of education I grew up with. I hear public schools aren't always this way, according to relatives who sent kids to public school in Lexington, MA. In higher grades the emphasis on materials fades, but the basic idea of letting children work within a structure remains. For example, in upper elementary (grades 4-6) the students develop their own classroom code of conduct. They're given some structure about how to do it, though. I see Montessori as a balanced methodology on the freedom/structure dimension, not an extreme.

Periodic 16y ago
I most important memory for me is that Montessori allowed me to excel. It was exceptional at getting out of the way and letting me learn if I was interested, and I most certainly was. What I remember most from my Montessori education in my early years (preschool through elementary) was that we were allowed to progress at our own pace. Our teacher(s) set up various tracks of things to complete, for example we had math cards you could study and then do some problems on and eventually take a test to move on to the next set, or we had a series of books and you needed to select one from the set and answer some questions before moving on to one from the next set. About half of our time was allowing us to work on whatever we wanted. If you got ahead in a subject, the teacher would find more for you to do on it. If you got behind, the teacher would try to help you get over whatever hurdle of understanding you had. As a result, I was a few years ahead of myself in math. Every time the teacher got a new set of math cards I would do them all as quickly as I could and I prided myself on being a few years ahead. However, my reading was a bit behind because I never really cared to do the in-school reading as I preferred sci-fi. There were other children who were just the opposite. The benefit was that I didn't have to sit in a class room doing the exact same boring lessons as the rest of the class. If I could figure something out in 5 minutes I didn't have to sit through a 1-hour lecture on the subject.

damla 16y ago

Maria Montessori lived in Italy a 100 years ago, and no doubt she was a reformist. She was the first woman doctor, she worked with children with mental disabilities when children was not considered humans, and she noticed that, her approach is applicable to all children. She invented very useful methods and tools for teaching preschoolers. She made wonderful toys which are now called "Montessori Materials". Her method is spread to US, and "adapted". Montessori teachers are certified largely by two centers in the world, in Italy (http://www.montessori-ami.org/ http://www.montessori-ami.org/), and in US (http://www.amshq.org/ http://www.amshq.org/). As far as I know AMI sees itself as the "original" Montessori, rejects others, and more strict in many ways, like they don't allow any toys in classrooms, they don't have any books (just lapbooks produced by teachers or children). I have real problems with strict, spiritual Montessori. Why would we be against to toys? Maria Montessori crafted wonderful toys for her students, and now they are called "Montessori Materials". What's wrong with Lego's? I think if Maria Montessori had Lego, she would use them. Montessori, Waldorf, Reggio Emilia, all have different methods to inspire for raising kids and even for start-ups (http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=famconfacpub http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10...). But, none is magic.

speleding 16y ago

My kids (4 & 7) just moved from a traditional school to a Montessori school last summer because we moved house. I wasn't completely sold on the philosophy yet but my kids LIKE going to school a lot more now and it seems to work really well. Happy kids, learning a lot. But it is very counterintuitive for the engineer in me who wants to measure progress by how much of the alphabet they know. It takes a lot of trust in the somewhat nebulous and touchy feely Montessori philosophy, if you read the wikipedia page about it you'll see that even the educators can't agree on what it is exactly. (Montessori did use scientific methods to arrive at her recommendations, but interpretations differ). There's things the type of educators in such schools do that makes us rational people cringe (kids are not allowed artificial flavoring in their lunch food...). But, well, it works (for my kids at least). Since I am too rational to give up on measuring I conclude we are probably not measuring progress the right way by testing how much letters in the alphabet they know.

kenjackson 16y ago
kids are not allowed artificial flavoring in their lunch food... Why would that make you cringe?
- nitrogen 16y ago
  I don't know why it bothers the original poster, but to me it seems like a cringe-worthy non sequitur. How is artificial flavoring related to education?
- speleding 16y ago
  It makes me cringe because there is no scientific evidence at all that artificial food additives are bad for kids. Quite the opposite actually, artificial additives are tested to death before they are allowed on the market. It has no relation to the Montessori philosophy, I was just giving an example of the "kind of person" the typically teacher is there, basing decisions more on feelings than rational evidence.
  - roel_v 16y ago

jhuckestein 16y ago

"What is 10 plus 1?" "101?" "I'm sorry M'a'm, your son is an idiot"

jhuckestein 16y ago
Maybe I was too subtle. The message is: our yes or no school system fails to award perfectly reasonable thoughts such as that 10 plus one might be 101.
- pnathan 16y ago
  No, that's not reasonable. Concatenation is not the reasonable answer to addition of numbers.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

jtraffic 16y ago

I have a hunch (definitely not an assertion) that even if there are effects from Montessori school early on, they wash out over time, and the major factors afterward are socioeconomic status and habits of parents, and subsequent education (K-12). I guess I'm paraphrasing Freakonomics.

billmcneale 16y ago

I have no problem with the Montessori method but if you're going to throw the names of a few very successful people as examples, you also need to show the full picture, i.e. for all these Montessori kids that became so successful, how many other successful people did not got to Montessori? If anything, the fact that they only list 4-5 names tells me that at best, the kind of education you receive at that age is not that important after all (I think your parents and your environment are probably bigger factors) and at worst, the Montessori school doesn't really work that well after all.

softbuilder 16y ago

"Questions are the new answers" -- Socrates, 429 B.C.

bryanwb 16y ago

I am pretty skeptical of the Montessori approach. Take kids from wealthy, well-educated families and put them in small groups with educators that also happen to be very well-educated and very passionate and you will get great results whatever the pedagogy. Contrast this w/ poor kids whose parents had low educational attainments, stuck in giant classes with poorly-paid teachers. If you put 6 well-off kids with 1 passionate, well-educated teacher, you will get good results almost every time. Montessori approach may have its merits but I find it very hard to separate them from the demographics of its students and teachers. The study in Milwaukee does not seem sufficient to establish a link. Those passionate about teaching are probably more likely to be attracted to the Montessori school than the regular public schools because it has a distinctive approach and probably more liberal management. I would love to love to know if the Montessori schools in teh Milwaukee school had the same teacher/student ratio as the other schools in the study. I am betting they didn't.

gevertulley 16y ago

Perhaps what is required here is a re-examination of the fundamental goals of what we refer to as "education." Is the purpose of school to teach a set of curriculum or to inculcate the habits necessary to become courageous explorers of the world and inventors of our own destinies? Montessori is just one alternative, but now, in a time of rapid change, is the time to begin and support multiple experiments. We need to explore the full range of functional pedagogies and see what new ways of teaching and learning can be developed. Looking for one "best" context or approach for learning is probably never going to work - the fundamental assumption is wrong. An educational monoculture suffers the same vulnerabilities that a biological monoculture does. We should foster a diversity of approaches, supporting the sharing of techniques, approaches, and contexts. This is why we are starting a new K-12 school, based on some new ideas (Tinkering School, and A Curious Summer) and incorporating some really old ideas (apprenticeship and mastery). We call it Brightworks (http://sfbrightworks.org http://sfbrightworks.org). Have a look at our approach, share your ideas, join us at the edge of innovation in education.