What is your opinion of Montessori schools?

[bluestateguy]

I was educated in Montessori schools from Kindergarten through the 3rd grade. I loved school back then. I had a great time and wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

[SheilaT]

1. My younger son did Montessori

for about three years and it was the best possible school experience, certainly for him.

In two different Montessori schools in two different states his teachers told me he was the "perfect Montessori child", meaning he did the things the way their textbooks told them a child should do, only almost no kid reads the texts and does it that way!

Do you remember counting beads? I don't know for sure what they were called, but they were beads strung on a wire. There'd be, say, one red bead, two blue beads, three yellow beads, each number grouping having it's own color. The idea was for a child to grab a handful of the beads and lay them out, creating groups of ten, until they got to 100. At least three times (one while I was watching) my son simply grabbed a handful of the beads, laid them out as prescribed, and each time had grabbed what counted up to exactly 100. The teacher was astonished each time, telling me that kids NEVER just grab 100 beads. But my kid did.

[naaman fletcher]

2. I knew lots of kids who went to the local montessori schools..

Seems that it was great for young kids, but terrible if the kids were still in as they hit puberty and needed some concept of having to grow up.

[patrice]

3. My daughter was in one for something over 3 years and thenshe was always quite autonomous in public

school. Did absolutely everything: drill team, band, cheerleader, yearbook editor, musicals, debate and forensics, didn't hop from guy to guy. Went straight through college, no screwing around.

Has her own business now, which is going on 10 years old and which she has run by herself for about 5 years now.

[patrice]

4. P.S. I think the Montessori school taught her how to learn.

[patrice]

5. P.P.S. You'd think someone as type A as she is would be Conservative, but she isn't she's even more

Liberal than I am.

[YOY]

6. I'm a Montessori kid.

I'm still pretty good in math and sept-lingual. Don't know if the Montessori had anything to do with it.

We looked at Montessori for our daughter...but they are too expensive. We make too much for the lowered rate but not enough to budget the cost.

It pissed us off.

[no_hypocrisy]

7. I taught a year as an assistant teacher for Montessori kindergarten.

The entire endeavor is devoted to the child on the child's terms. The teacher is more of an observer and passive as the child teaches him/herself.

There is much preparation of the materials and demonstration expected of the teacher.

Our classroom had the standard Montessori reading, math (including spacial geometry), and physical science. What I enjoyed was experimenting with yoga, sign language, and music.

And it was a very calm, quiet, and serene environment. We spoke to the children on their eye level in quiet voices.

On occasions, children were "children", they wouldn't want to go along and they could have a time out, but not necessarily removed from the group. They could observe others at their work but not interfere with them.

I think it was a good experience for both students and teachers.

[marybourg]

8. The only thing I know about Montessori schools is that they keep

calling me asking for donations. Why? I ask them. They can't answer.

[noamnety]

9. In theory I love them. In reality, it was an awful experience for us.

The theory was great. I put my daughter in a Montessori kindergarten.

What happened was discouraging, very similar to another thread in this forum by someone whose kid has to keep doing math drill for work they've already mastered.

My daughter could read and write prior to entering school. They were so rigid in their methodology though that they never checked if she could read. They had her doing some BS work of tracing a single letter again and again in multiple formats and doing very remedial work with one letter at a time. She knew it was a waste of her time, so she wouldn't do it. And their policy was not to force her. So they just didn't give her anything challenging at all, they allowed her to sit and do almost nothing. At parent teacher conferences I expected to hear she was doing great. Instead the teacher passed on her concerns that she was "slow" - based on her not being able to learn even 5 letters yet, while most of the students have already learned 10 or more. I told the teacher she can already read, she thought I was one of "those parents" and spent a lot of time trying to convince me gently that I should lower my expectations, be prepared for lots of remedial help and all.

I had to have a conversation with the principal about this. I was not happy. I told the principal she can already read, and wanted to know how the teacher could not have figured that out by now. The principal gave me another "gentle" talk about how sometimes parents think their kids can read, but really they have just memorized the words on each page of their favorite children's books so it looks like they are really reading them. I was pissed. She ended up pulling my daughter out of class to join us, asked her to pull a book of the book shelf, and show us what she could read from it. She obviously jumped in and started reading. (This is a kid who was reading the Oz books on her own by first grade).

Even after that, and even though the kids progress through goals independently so it's not like it's a problem if they are jumping ahead of other students, they wouldn't let her just skip the finger tracing of letters and other work that was designed for kids several behind her level. I had to have a talk with her about how school is about learning to suck up and pretend to care about work that you know you aren't learning anything from. I still resent having to tell my daughter that - in kindergarten.

She finished out the year there because I didn't have other options. The so-called public schools were not accessible to us that year because of their discriminatory enrollment policies, and the montessori was the only school in the right area that I could afford.

[applegrove]

10. I went to Montessori for 3 and 4 year old kindergarden. I liked it. But my mom said it was

supposed to teach me to put things away once I was finished with them and I never did.

[booksenkatz]

11. I' m very torn...

It's probably a perfect environment for many kids. I would not recommend it, however, for children who have a real problem with laziness. Sure, most kids are lazy, but it's a serious issue for my dear son, whom I love with all of my heart. He was in Montessori for preschool through Kindergarten. The cost to keep him in beyond that was prohibitive, so he has been in a very good public school since then (currently in 5th grade). A bit on the shy side, he is risk-averse and generally doesn't care to try something unless he is 100% assured of success. He is not athletic, he is a musician. I thought I was doing him a favor by putting him into a program with a gentle approach, but in hindsight, perhaps he needed a program that would have toughened him up a bit, given him more structure, whipped him into shape, made more demands. I don't know.

My son loved his time in Montessori, we all loved his teachers, they all loved him. He could speak some French and excelled in math beyond his years. How wonderful is that! But the Montessori program lets each child proceed at his own pace. For example, if he was asked to write a simple sentence and was given no deadline, he might take weeks to get it done. This was not good practice for public school, where deadlines are in place and are much shorter! As a result, even all of these years later, he has serious issues with being a self-starter, setting timelines, setting goals, and getting things done in school. My husband and I have been working with our son on this issue for all of these years and he is only just now beginning to make some progress... thank goodness, right before the start of middle school!

Looking back, there may have been some benefit to placing him in this elementary school early on, as the curriculum in our district is quite rigorous. He makes A's and B's, but it's like pulling teeth, because he finds it "haaaaaaaaaaard wooooooork" to apply himself (he sometimes makes GW Bush look brisk & industrious). He should be making straight A's, he is very bright, but we try not to be grade happy around here. The only thing he is willing to work at is music, but there's more to life than that -- he needs to understand the importance of being well-rounded.

On the plus side, his classroom behavior is exquisite and his teachers always remark on it -- "if only all of them were like your son, he's such a joy." Several teachers have said, "You can always tell the Montessori children by their behavior." But can I credit Montessori for that? My son came into this world a kind, considerate soul, genuinely a born liberal. I take no credit for that. Perhaps Montessori merely reinforced the kind soul that was already there. I do wonder at times if Montessori was coddling him a bit, though, as his public school experience has really brought him out of his shell. Sometimes a "sink or swim" approach promotes more growth, because he knows how to interact with many different kinds of people whom he would not have met at Montessori. He's friends with everyone, and I don't know that he would have developed in that manner had he stayed in the protective womb of Montessori where everything is "easy" by comparison. "Easy" is very seductive to this kid!

Sorry this was so long. I'm a product of public schools, and my entire family are public school teachers. I would love to see public schools better funded, because when they do it right, it's fantastic! Bottom line: Montessori was great for my son's spirit and soul, not so great for developing his practical side. I'm not entirely sure I'd do it again.

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. Very expensive

I taught primary grades for many years and had several kids every year who were coming out of Montessori. They almost always had a very difficult time adjusting, as a traditional school is very different from Montessori. A few had behavior problems.

So I am torn. I can't see spending the money since most preschool programs use lots of Montessori materials and methods.