I’m helping to manage a Montessori preschool, so I’m immersed in Montessori at the moment. There’s a pretty consistent underlying structure to the day, and the

I’m helping to manage a Montessori preschool, so I’m immersed in Montessori at the moment. There’s a pretty consistent underlying structure to the day, and the kids are taught to eg sit quietly for the class gathering (“circle time”), so I don’t think it’s accurate to say that the kids are taught no discipline. The periods that they’re asked to sit for aren’t very long, it’s preschool. But if you go an observe a class, they’re actually extremely well behaved. During their work cycles, they go and get their work, they sit individually to complete their work for a bit, then they return it to the shelf as they found it. And they’re learning relatively advanced reading, spelling, and math at 4. One thing to be aware of is that many Montessori schools, especially nowadays, are “Montessori-inspired”, they don’t actually go through the effort (and the hiring requirements) it takes to be accredited by AMS. It’s more expensive to hire actual Montessori teachers, but the difference can be pretty incredible.