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My partner became involved in Montessori a few years ago, and I've been really impressed with how it works.

If you don't know much about Montessori, here is my "in a nutshell" version: It's a method of schooling usually associated with preschool and elementary education. There are mixed age groups (e.g. 3 to 6) in classrooms. There is at least one adult who gives one-on-one lessons on how to work with "materials." The materials do the teaching, not the adult.

There are hundreds of different types of materials. They're designed to teach or exercise a particular skill, but they look like games and are all designed to be "beautiful" as to entice children to them (Montessori is really serious about this; materials are not allowed to be broken or chipped or worn). They follow a particular progression. Children may work with any material for which they've had a lesson. They can work with it as many times as they like.

My favorite example of how Montessori works is how it develops reading skills. First a child is introduced to materials that involve very short crayons - when they use them they strengthen the muscles in their hands. Then they're introduced to letter-tracing materials. Then they're introduced to letter/sound matching materials. Children who follow these lessons wind up writing first, and then reading follows very naturally. The emphasis on developing physical capabilities first really demonstrates the attention to detail that's typical of Montessori.

The math education progression is impressive also. There are materials that have children doing proto-multiplication, exponentiation, algebraic manipulation, and more. My partner developed a material that teaches counting, addition, and subtraction in base 8. (Her 4 and 5-year-olds understood it much more quickly than her colleagues!)

There are parts of the method I don't like (e.g. dogmatic resistance to rewarding performance, for example), but overall it feels like a huge improvement over typical early childhood education.

4 comments

Alternate pedagogies (Montessori, Waldorf, etc.) seem to work quite well for early childhood education, but I'm very skeptical of them for middle school, and especially high school (what Montessori defines as "3rd stage"). The reason for this is that extremely few people I've met who went to such high schools came out of them with levels in science/math that could be reasonably qualified as decent (and often borderline on catastrophic).

One of the main issues is certainly that some of those pedagogies do have pseudo-science/religion baked in, and they have a hard time ridding themselves from that past (notably Waldorf). Another problem is that the kind of teachers who are attracted to these pedagogies rarely have scientific/mathematical backgrounds, and as a result this aspect of the education suffers. It's a problem that they don't like to talk about.

The hard thing to wrestle with here is that for many scientific disciplines, hardcore reading and memorizing is vastly more efficient than inferring everything from observation and first order principles. Now you don't want to overcorrect and do ~only~ that, but there's a reason medicine students spend many years cramming.

See: "Does Waldorf Offer a Viable Form of Science Education?" http://www.csus.edu/indiv/j/jelinekd/publications/waldorfsci...

I can confirm. Montessori education is great for kids under 12. For middle or high school, it was actually Maria Montessori who said, when asked what she saw as the best education for teenagers, that it was useless to try to force adolescent to concentrate on intellectual work. Instead she recommended an Earth school, where children would live close to nature, eat fresh farm products, and carry on practical work related to the economics of supplying food, shelter, transportation, and so forth.

The Montessori middle- and high schools that currently exist, at least in Europe, do not follow Montessori's advice at all. Instead they have a kind of half hearted mix of regular education with some elements of lower age Montessori, such as more responsibility to make your own homework planning. For many teenagers this is not a good combination and they drop out.

I think you're right, the issue is not that alternative schools can't teach science, it's that often they don't. I have friends who had an alternative education that got almost no maths and science education, but I know of other schools where this is not the case.

My kids go to fitzroy community school, an alternative school that is science friendly (years 0 to 6) http://www.fcs.vic.edu.au/links.php

previous parents from the school started an alternative high school (years 7 to 12) http://www.alia.vic.edu.au/about.php that has a strong maths science programme.

Both schools are very successful, and I think the key aspect is that they have managed to create a culture where the kids accept that they will have to do things that are tough, like run laps around the oval in the rain or grind their way through maths problems to achieve what they want, but this happens in an emotionally supportive environment.

The kids seem to work harder physically and mentally than kids at any primary (elementary) school I've seen in this country, but they also really look after each other.

extremely few people I've met who went to such high schools came out of them with levels in science/math that could be reasonably qualified as decent

Hi, nice to know you. Montessori-educated until University here. Even in high school, it's all about the learning material: as long as the teachers were skilled enough to make me interested in the subject, there was hardly any limit to what I could take in. I left school with high marks across the board, with five languages and all STEM subjects except biology (because I hated the learning material with a passion).

That said, my parents encouraged the same at home so it's not just my school: I wrote my first BASIC program with my father when I was nine, and there was a surplus of construction toys (Lego, Mecano, electric science kits) at home as well.

(edit: I'm not familiar with official "Montessori" policy on high schools, but I want to add that our school roster was partly free: we had a number of mandatory class hours for each subject, but were expected to spend more time in school than just our roster: all teachers had "open hours", which you could use to get additional mentoring from the teacher, peers or sometimes senior year students)

> Montessori is really serious about this; materials are not allowed to be broken or chipped or worn

This is a traditional pseudoscientific gimmick to drive sales revenue.

In the real world, children are enticed by non-new and broken things just fine... until their parents, competitive peers, TV, or lovers insist they be more materialistic and wealthy signalling.

Citation needed? I'm just describing the Montessori method, which was developed in the early 1900s. But maybe they were driving "sales revenue" then also?

"In the real world, children are enticed by non-new and broken things just fine... until their parents, competitive peers, TV, or lovers insist they be more materialistic and wealthy signalling."

Tamana is describing a behavior known to anyone who have ever watched children play or explore the world. They start out interested in all kinds of stuff regardless if it's shiny or in perfect condition. Later, after much cultural conditioning, they might become adults who aren't interested in such things. The change is conditioned into them overtime. So, focusing on such attributes when training children is unnecessary given it's crap adults make up. If anything, children having some of their best experiences with heirlooms of varying quality might make them prefer such things in the future due to the mental association. So, Montessori method promoters themselves need to show some citations for making that a requirement.

Meanwhile, that should probably be stripped out of the method given there's no hard science backing it as necessary for children's learning. As I illustrated, it's even potentially harmful in predisposing them toward specific aesthetics and disposable goods.

Do you have kids? My toddler won't even eat a cookie that has a corner broken off.

I help raise many of them. They're picky on some things but not on others. Keeping them from grabbing and playing with stuff or going into random places is work. All of them, despite many dissimilar bloodlines, seem to have in common the willingness to explore something once motivated. It doesn't need to look perfect to motivate them although certain things seem to evoke a negative reaction. Greens on a plate or scary-looking insects come to mind. Exposure reduces this.

You can use aesthetics as a motivator for children. However, it being mandatory for anything they benefit from could make them very superficial. Show them something shiny they'll enjoy. Also, show them a worn-out book that has something they'll enjoy or learn from. Do both. Get them to focus on what something is rather than just appears to be.

Awesome, my kids would take the cookie out of my mouth as I chew it. I put that down mainly to nurture.

IME toddlers will refuse to touch something almost perfect aesthetically then pick up something else out of the dirt, a worm maybe, and pop that in their mouth.

Not sure we should be modeling pedagogies to foster toddler temperamentalility.

Why on earth would intorture myself by teaching my toddler to expect perfect cookies?

> Why on earth would intorture myself by teaching my toddler to expect perfect cookies?

You're not doing it intentionally or consciously. Children form habits from imitation – "Do as I say, not as I do" doesn't really work for them.

When my little sister was a toddler she would eat dirt, dead wasps and generally everything unable to outrun her.

Do you ensure your toddler gets perfect cookies, or do you wait it out until she relents?

Well, the early 1900s wasn't exactly an utopian golden age where people were not interested about stuff like sales revenue.

Do especially 'beautiful' items really entice children better compared to, well, maybe bit worn but in good condition and definitely not broken or dirty items, or utilitarian mechanical things that are in prime condition but designed the function, not looks, in mind?

I mean, many children are absolutely enticed by garbage trucks and tractors and stuff like that.

I went to a Montessori Kindergarten as a child. I think it was good, but I do not remember much anymore. I remember all the toys and other things that taught me reading, counting, fine motor skills etc.

If you think it was good, it probably was - all I remember about traditional kindergarten was hating it.

I was so bored in kindergarten that I barely participated at all. When it was over, the teachers thought I must be slow so I should be held back and do it all again. Thankfully my mother knew it was because I was bored out of my mind and fought to prevent that.

I went to a Waldorf kindergarten. I have no negative memories of it, but my mother assures me that I hated it. I suspect that she hated it on my behalf.

That said, they apparently voiced strong disapproval of the fact that I could already read, so it's not something I could actually recommend. It probably just didn't come through to the small me.

> That said, they apparently voiced strong disapproval of the fact that I could already read

Strange, I had the same experience in a public kindergarten. I never understood that attitude. I could read at a 5th grade level in kindergarten, but that was treated as an evil thing by the teachers because the material they were trying to teach was far below me. I suppose I can understand that in retrospect now that I think about it though, it must be frustrating to have a kindergartener who doesn't bother listening to a teacher teaching the alphabet, but doesn't even know how to tie their shoes so there's no possible way they could be skipped ahead.

Waldorf education assumes, for completely unscientific reasons that are about as reasonable as homeopathy, that children go through fairly specific phases at fairly specific ages. Based on that belief certain things are taught at specific ages in specific ways. Any deviation from that is seen as harmful to a child's development.

So, their disapproval is not strange at all, it's completely consistent with their view, which is that teaching children younger than 7 about abstract things like reading is harmful.

What is strange is that Waldorf is still a thing. I strongly suspect that a large number of people sending their children to these schools would've never done so, if they were introduced to the theory behind them in detail beforehand. It's certainly not the place to send a child, if you dislike the cookie cutter approach of public school systems, as Waldorf schools are even worse in that respect.

My son is in a Waldorf kindergarten. He loves it, especially the silly little rituals. I think of it as a trade-off. Most of the ideas Rudolf Steiner had are harmless, at least in the way they are practiced today, but others are clearly beneficial. Either that, or they attract teachers who spend more time reflecting on what's good for the children, as opposed to how to put some specific knowledge into their heads.

I can, however, understand where your condescending attitude comes from. I used to wonder why churches and clerics were still a thing. Until someone from my family ended up in the local church council, and it sort of dawned on me, that actually, you do not need science to do a lot of things right. You can come from a down-right anti-scientific base and still be more skilled - scientifically better - at something than someone who doesn't believe in anything but quantum mechanics.

Of course they can do well and even better for some students. You shouldn't ignore why that is though. They are at an advantage because their students that are incredibly privileged. Steiner also made rather obvious improvements on the status quo but that doesn't mean he has found an optimal solution, if such a thing exists for pedagogy.

Waldorf education has turned Steiner's ideas into an ideology and the movement is unable to reflect on what it's doing, why and that it might be wrong. This creates a culture that, just like religion, is fixed and cannot change without conflict.

Science doesn't have that problem, the culture around it embraces change and improvement. An education policy that truly takes advantage of that, will eventually lead to institutions that outperform alternative ones like Waldorf schools.

Those injection molded plastic beds for the kids to sleep in.

I remember reading that when you compare the development of a child that went to a regular school vs. Montessori the results are the same.

Something in Freakanomics kids with parents that care enough about their education, did "better" regardless of being selected for in the charter school lottery.

Wonder if that is correlated.

That.

Kids at special schools, and even some 'home schooled' kids - have parents who obviously care a lot about their kids education. Compare that to parents who don't care at all - or worse - are toxic.

I suggest having a 'positive and balanced home life' with parents who take an active interest in their child's life is 2x as important as the school they go to.

While not scientific, my best friend had a boy when he was in his 20's. He was in constant conflict with her and the son was caught in the middle. He's had a tough life and struggled academically until he finally graduated high school.

Fast forward a decade or so and he finally settles down and him and his wife have a daughter. Both of them hold masters degrees and since she's an only child, reading, writing and math were constants during her early development. She loves to learn and is in a language immersion school and has done very well in school.

Yes, there are a ton of factors involved that could explain the difference - a relatively perfect situation (two parent home, parents put time into teaching) with a terrible one (one parent home, bad relationships, no focus on education) but it is interesting to note the differences in the kids attitudes towards learning in each situation.

That's quite surprising, given how different the methods are. What about a control group that received no schooling?

Unschooler here. I am the only unschooler from my 12 person cohort of hippie parents who did not go to University. And I am doing okay. So I think school basically has no effect. Mostly just daycare. It is good at that, though.

Sounds like your cohort was great. There was an "unschooled" girl in my college friend group who was failing remedial math and science classes in her third year. She never wanted to learn basic mathematics (we're talking long division here), so she never did, and she did not understand how to motivate herself to learn about something she wasn't already interested in. She didn't end up graduating despite the small, private school bending over backwards to try to accommodate her with personal tutoring and endlessly lengthening deadlines. She was first chair violin and had an almost full ride scholarship because of it, so she didn't lack motivation in general she just could not bring herself to care about math or science even when her degree was on the line.

That's the value school has. It teaches you how to learn about things you might not be interested in, but will be useful later in life.

Hope many times do you think the subject of your comment needed to use long division "later in life"?

I found it useful as a foundation to understand rationalising algebraic fractions; but outside that I've probably only used it a few times, none of which would have been essential.

What was her degree? Demanding maths when it's not needed by practitioners in a degree subject area seems perverse to me [I love maths FWIW].

>>What was her degree? Demanding maths when it's not needed by practitioners in a degree subject area seems perverse to me [I love maths FWIW].

Degree is inconsequential. I'd say "if she is a human, she will do better by learning math rather than not doing it."

How so?

Maths is more about "thinking creatively, clearly and critically about things that are complex and abstract" rather than about doing "arithmetic". And I guess, "thinking creatively, clearly and critically about things that are complex and abstract" is a very essential thing in human life. The entire human progress depended upon this skill and in fact, the very survival of humans depended upon this skill in the earlier world which was very hostile for humans.

Now coming back to the issue of having to do long division in early childhood: yes, it may be the case that you don't need to do long division (later) in your life even for once. Long division may not be that important but the concept of division (and remainder) is very important in our life.

Why is it important to learn division along many other complex (boring) topics in math? It's to hone your skills to "think creatively, clearly and critically about things that are complex and abstract".

Proofs in geometry and algebra help you more in this conquest. Sadly, most mainstream schools these days take out the creative challenges and motivational aspects from the math education and stuff it with mundane procedures to be followed like rituals. Sadly again, the much-tauted non-standard schools (like Waldorf, Sudbury etc) do away with the math almost entirely and which is very detrimental to academic progress of the kids.

edit: corrected some grammatical errors.

I agree with the thrust of your comment, I'm not arguing that maths isn't worthwhile, that it doesn't develop critical thinking skills, push the capabilities of the brain. Neither am I arguing that you should hold back on teaching younger children basic skills, even if it's outside their core competencies and outside their natural area of focus (all that changes quite fluidly when you're young).

What I am trying to say is that at degree level, if you're mastering a field that has no intrinsic core mathematical content that you should be able to get certified in those abilities separate to maths ability. If an employer needs/desires a student to have mathematics abilities then they can request a certificate to demonstrate that.

Suppose things worked the other way and science majors had to produce a paper on Chaucer and Puritanism in order to graduate? Whilst IMO that wouldn't be a wasted educational experience, would be mind expanding, it's pretty orthogonal to the skills one needs as, say, an astrogeologist.

TL;DR more carrot, less stick.

> That's the value school has

When you say value, are you talking about the economic type? Because Susie here is probably better off focusing on her music career than learning long division.

I don't see how you can analyze value without quantifying cost and benefit. Even if a better method existed you'd have no way of knowing - especially without more experiments and bigger data sets.

I would agree if she didn't want to learn calculus or linear algebra, but I think long division is a pretty fundamental skill in today's world. How much is my monthly car payment going to be if I take this loan? What is my share of the rent in this house? What are the consequences of running up a credit card balance?

The flipped perspective is that she's clearly a talented, competent person who can succeed—the fact that she didn't says more about how the school system defines success than it does about her. Hell, who's more likely to end up doing something great: her or somebody who fills out the minimum requirements exactly but nothing more? Even if they manage to learn long division and she doesn't?

Besides, it's not like many of the people who did manage to pass their math classes actually learned it all that well. I bet if you took random adults and asked them to solve long division problems, a sizable fraction wouldn't be able to do it. They just figured out how to put in enough work to jump through the right hoops and get out of the school system.

Personally I'd much rather have an education system flexible enough to motivate and engage students like her (even if that means skimping on basic math) than systems which try to force everyone down the same path regardless of how well it fits them.

To be clear, I absolutely think math is important. If anything, I think mathematical thinking is one of the most important skills you can learn. (Not that high school math is any good at actually imparting it.) And I even think I presented a false dichotomy above: you don't have to skimp on math to motivate students not interested in it, you could also just do a better job teaching. (But that's hard, of course!) If that was the choice, though, I'd rather not worry about a minimum amount of math, especially for students who clearly have lots of other things going for them.

She works at Trader Joes and has for four years now and is in severe credit card debt. Not to say that being bad at math makes you more likely to get into debt but not understanding compound interest or even percentages certainly makes it harder to understand the ramifications of it.

That also sounds like your typical, "genius" who excels at one thing, but finds frustration in other subjects that aren't as easy to pick up.

Still. You would think that there would be a correlation between music proficiency and maths.

"Because I absolutely had to", is a pretty good motivator. I've lost a lot in life, and had little support:

"Why did you start a business at 20?"

"Because I absolutely had to."

Why on Earth would there be a correlation between music proficiency and maths? Math involves no musical skill, and music only involves mathematics because mathematics is abstract enough to apply to literally every human discipline. Music is probably one of the places where math is used the least.

Correlation doesn't imply that every single one who is good at music is good at math.

Sounds like a failure of research and planning on her part and on the part of her parents. There are universities which have no core curriculum nor any general education/breadth requirements. I believe Olin college fits the bill.

How would you know what you don't know, though? Or what you never experienced or could have experienced?

Genuine question, just curious how anyone firmly on the "schooler" or "unschooler" side of the fence can know without some kind of external reference, particularly one which they themselves didn't choose in case of bias.

The assumption is that if there is something you need to know and you encounter a situation that requires it, you can learn it. And if it turns out you do not need it, you saved the time. Further, formal instruction only works for some types of people, albeit probably most. Synthesis from learning when you are interested tends to be more useful than memorization. The experienced part is the scary one, although in terms of spending time with peers, doing sports, art, etc. we did not really miss out on that.

> and you encounter a situation that requires it, you can learn it

Which is perfectly fine as long as you know what that "it" is, which assumes a base-level familiarity with subject X.

The problem cases I can imagine are ones where you don't have the base familiarity, or in other words the cases where you don't know what you don't know (as opposed to knowing what you don't know and where to look for the answers).

This is the case that I see leading towards the so-called "expert beginner" stage of understanding.

Anecdata, unfortunately.

Not that surprising when you consider that education may be more about the overall physical & social environment than the specific method. Despite the current fashion of doing a lot of hand-wringing over the fine points, kids are surprisingly indestructible and will generally turn out pretty well if the environment is basically sound or even if it's not-so. This is consistent with millions of years of evolution during which there was no institutional education at all. Basically a child learns the truth about whatever environment they're in, and adapts to it. So yeah, there are for example, truly fucked-up environments where a kid learns all the wrong lessons about life... but notice, they do learn them. To the degree that they manage to find similarly fucked-up environments to inhabit as adults (criminal gangs let's say) they will thrive. Meanwhile if a child is in an environment where there is mutual concern/care and a curiosity for learning, they will learn and adapt to that. Adults don't make that learning happen though; they only create the environment. They have some control but not nearly as much as they think. The point of Montessori seems to be to explicitly take the adults out of the picture a little bit more, which is just acknowledging reality - they're already mostly out of the picture. EXCEPT in their capacity as establishers of the overall environment, and I don't see nearly as much variation there.

Why should it be surprising? We're evolved to develop at about the same rate.

Why?