5 ms·

Does someone have feedback on having kids in a Montessori school? Looking at the materials online, it looks like the overall idea makes sense, but somehow ther

• watwut 5y ago
  Kind of depends I think. Some people praise it and those who continue into humanities tend to do ok. But, I know two kids who really struggle to caught up with math after. Out of three that I knew went into Montessori. There is however likely big variance in terms of which Montessori school exactly we talk about (literally which building).
• antasvara 5y ago
  I went to a Montessori school. I would say that adjusting to a "normal" curriculum took a little time. However, I think that learning independence and keeping my love of learning was worth that tradeoff. I was also happy going to school, something that I feel was beneficial from a developmental standpoint. For context, I don't currently work a manual job and successfully graduated college.
• duxup 5y ago
  One issue is that anyone can claim to be a Montessori school. Many adopt a few ideas but really aren’t much different than other schools.
• xanaxagoras 5y ago
  My only experience so far is myself. I received a great education overall but I’m not sure I would credit that to Montessori school specifically. I do remember enjoying the hell out of it. It was my only foray into private education. I had no trouble adjusting to regular school, attended a top tier university, and have worked as a software engineer for the entirety of my career. YMMV but I am planning to send my son to Montessori.
• jerrysievert 5y ago
  Montessori for 5 years, myself. I mostly learned how to learn, and the struggles later were that my education was well beyond that of my public school peers when I switched. I found learning by rote to be a waste of time, and continued to learn in my own ways. As a result, I had amazing test scores in public school, but bad grades overall because I felt that the homework was a waste of my time. I still appreciate my time on a Montessori school though.
  • karlshea 5y ago
    Montessori (public school even) until 6th grade, and this mirrors my experience exactly.
    • brooke2k 5y ago
      Exactly the same experience here - montessori until 3rd grade
      • turnsout 5y ago
        My experience as well—I went to a Montessori school up through Kindergarten. I absorbed enough that I could coast without learning any new math until 3rd grade, when we started doing long division. My teacher either didn't notice or couldn't help when I started suddenly struggling. It put me off math for the rest of school. It's still a sore point for me 30 years later. I do a lot of graphics programming, and I know I have the type of mind that can handle complex math, but I missed that fork in the road.
• lhorie 5y ago
  Both my kids went to montessori-style preschools. If I had to attribute development of curiosity and creativity to something, I'd attribute it almost entirely to inherent personality rather than education: my two kids could not be more different from one another; one kid is passive and absent-minded and likes to immerse in fantasy worlds, and the other is an go-getter information sponge that likes to act grown up. They're in regular primary school now and adapted just fine.
  • math_denial 5y ago
    I think the success stories are mostly self-selection: parents who care enough about education to enroll their children in an alternative system will have children who care more. Anecdotical data: in my non-US state everyone (admittedly 3 people) who went to Montessori schools were 3 years behind in every subject as compared to public schools and mostly they did fine with some help, but the difference between who did better or worse was, as you pointed, inherent personality that was completely independent from the education they received.
    • olau 5y ago
      There is of course self-selection compared to going with the default, but your data may be poisoned. I don't know the Montessori system, but in the Waldorf system, some of the intellectual stuff is moved from the first years to the later years compared to the public school. So if you compare midway on the public school metric, you'll find a gap. Of course, if you compared midway on a Waldorf metric, you'll find that students from those public schools have a gap in the other direction. I talked to a Waldorf school principal about this, and she said that if you enter the system at later grades, say halfway through, they could see that there are some things that such a child just don't learn.
• TimTheTinker 5y ago
  Not exactly answering your question, but my wife and I considered Montessori for our kids. However, after observing it (and getting some advice) we concluded it wouldn't be a good fit, since our kids (one of whom likely has ADHD, the other was diagnosed with high-functioning autism) would probably spend all their time looking around to see what the other kids are doing and struggle to pay attention to their own work in that environment.
  • nouveaux 5y ago
    > since our kids (one of whom likely has ADHD That's interesting. My impression is that kids with ADHD would function better in a Montessori setting compared to a traditional education. Where do you plan to send your kids?
  • microtherion 5y ago
    Both of my children went to Montessori kindergarten. Our younger son is neurotypical, but our older son has atypical autism; when he started kindergarten he struggled with language and would spend literally hours looking at the aquarium in the room. He was exactly the sort of kid would would not necessarily stick to an activity unassisted. The Montessori philosophy is very much NOT laissez faire: Kids are free to choose their activity, but then they are supervised and assisted to persist at that activity for a period of time (AND to put everything away neatly afterwards AND to not interfere with others). A properly run Montessori school might be very well suited for your children, but of course you'd have to evaluate that yourself. Both of my children transitioned to the state school system without too many difficulties (the younger one had some initial problems adjusting to the rougher environment). We loved Montessori as a school concept; one problem with sending your children to a private school in Switzerland however is that it puts them in a social bubble (in a telling anecdote, the other children once referred to my wife as my son's nanny, because so many of them were picked up at school by hired help), and we preferred a more egalitarian environment.
• igetspam 5y ago
  We put our daughter in a Montessori preschool for a week. She started to read some time when she was two. She's wild and smart. After a week of Montessori, she refused to go back. They focused on learning through functional tasks and kept the classroom bland (primary colors and earth tones and nothing else). She wanted to play and be outside. It wasn't going to work for her. We found a school that focused more on learning through play and focused on social/emotional development. There's nothing they're going to teach her from an education standpoint (she reads chapter books and the other kids are learning letter sounds, she counts to one thousand and the other kids are still working on getting to 20 consistently, etc) but non of the preschools we found actually can. She's having fun now though.
  • scruple 5y ago
    I'm curious, how old is she now? I met a 3 year old recently (through my kids Montessori) who is reading chapter books and I was honestly blown away by it.
    • igetspam 5y ago
      She's four and a half. Her literacy and her vocabulary because of it, is mind boggling. She has read entire boxed sets of chapter books now. Watching her read is fascinating too because she hasn't been taught any rules, so she'll come across words like "scheme" and read them as "sheme" because it makes sense. We correct her, she asks what it means and she puts it in a mental data store and then uses it for other word patterns later. Now when she finds a conflict where there are two possible pronunciations, she either figures it out because she knows the word or she points at it and asks which model (my word, not hers) it is. I have no clue how she learned to do this but we've always read a lot to her (by her request) and she just figured it out.
• wpietri 5y ago
  I have a relative who's in his 11th year of a Montessori education, and none of us are worried about that. The parents are huge fans of the school. Personally, I'm envious. I did well enough in school, but I was never a great match for industrial education processes. Too curious, too independent. But that's exactly what I've needed in my tech career; technology is now so complex and changes so quickly that we're all effectively self taught. I don't think that kind of self-directed adaptability is going to become less necessary in the future, so I hope more schools adopt similar approaches.
• kqr 5y ago
  I went to a Montessori daycare and school for the first 15-something years of my life. I have noticed I have some gaps. In particular, I don't know small multiplications by rote as well as some others. But that's the major problem I've found. On the other hand, I did huge 20-digit multiplications well ahead of others because I liked it. I learned a second language (English) when I was very young because me and a friend was interested in it. I performed violently exothermic chemistry experiments (in controlled ways, of course) after regular class hours because the teacher saw our interest in things that go boom. I made HTML-based role-playing adventures to learn the stuff in history class. I learned how the difference between science and fucking around is writing it down, performing endless series of flight tests of paper plane models and presenting the result. Many of these things were highly useful to me later in education and life, and were not part of any standard curriculum. I did them because the teachers saw me and exploited an opportunity to make us both content.
• Foobar8568 5y ago
  It really depends of the schools and teachers. There isn't a Montessori curriculum. Even in standardized countries like France or Switzerland, the gap between two classes within the same school can be large,so across city and country, it's a pipe dream to think education is equal. School is all about maintaining the status quo on social classes.
• omniscient_oce 5y ago
  The school I went to did trial days. Maybe look into sending your kids for a few days trial. If I recall correctly we'd occasionally have parents of prospective parents come and quietly observe our 3hr work cycles or morning circle.
• oo0shiny 5y ago
  I'm the product of a Montessori preschool environment, as are my 3 siblings. My mother owned a Montessori school, and my wife has taught in a Montessori school for over a decade. The most common thing you'll find are Montessori preschools (3-6 years old). The biggest thing I got out of it was the love of learning. Children in a Montessori classroom are able to learn at their own pace, so if you gravitate towards numbers before reading, that's facilitated. Other way around? No biggie. It turns out child development at that age is pretty flexible, and most children all get to where they're supposed to be by the end of those 3 years. The other benefit is the mixed-age classrooms. Younger kids are able to see the older children as role models, and the older children are able to _be_ that role model for the newer kids. All of this together creates an environment that often graduates children that seem to be more confident in themselves and in their innate abilities. I will say that transitioning to a traditional school in first grade was a bit of a culture shock, but the lessons learned in Montessori definitely carried over. I still have that love of learning, and a strong inner voice. My wife's school is Montessori through 8th grade, and her experience is that the children that graduate excel in whichever high school setting they go to, but this is of course anecdotal.