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The Montessori Mafia

blogs.wsj.com

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Re: The Montessori Mafia

#21

Post by gxs »

timr wrote: post #5

"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 inco…

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.

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#22

Post by jarin »

Kylekramer wrote: post #6
jsulak wrote: post #2

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.

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 definitel…

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.

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#23

Post by realitygrill »

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.

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#24

Post by mrtron »

mortenjorck wrote: post #7
ziadbc wrote: post #4

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"

"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" -> "…

s/rapper/$475 million businessman

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#25

Post by bostonpete »

gxs wrote: post #21
timr wrote: post #5

"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 inco…

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 kid…

> 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.

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#26

Post by petercooper »

realitygrill wrote: post #23

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. Uns…

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.

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#27

Post by tokenadult »

slay2k wrote: post #3

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.

Homeschooling parent here. I need to get more personal experiences up on my personal website.

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.

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#28

Post by dasil003 »

timr wrote: post #5

"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 inco…

Yeah absolutely, but the irony is if you spend all your time perfecting your scientific approach to decision-making about parenting, you are not necessarily more likely to make better decisions than if you paying very close attention to them and using your intuition.

It goes without saying I don't have a citation for that, but based on my personal experience as a child and a parent I strongly believe it be true.

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#29

Post by bostonpete »

bediger wrote: post #18

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 fi…

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.

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