The Montessori Mafia • Hacker News Board

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#121

Post by kragen » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 3:58 AM UTC

araneae wrote: post #62

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"

You too can cheaply imitate a Montessori school by a)Taking your kid out of public school and b)Encourage your kid to do things he finds interesting with you at home and take him to museums and crap True, it requires a mostly unemployed parent, but Montessori has just discovered how kids learn naturally at a young age. Just like a kid learns a language without having to be formally taught, he learns other things with…

Your comment sounds like you don't know anything about Montessori education. The program of education you suggest has basically nothing in common with Montessori schooling, except perhaps for being different from traditional schooling.

Montessori's method is centered on structured, self-directed individual activities with materials prepared to focus children's attention on one or another particular skill considered important. Traditionally, it does not involve "doing things with you", "museums and crap", or just "doing things [one] finds interesting".

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#122

Post by stoney » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 4:06 AM UTC

ellyagg wrote: post #57

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…

"Montessori education may or may not have advantages. But unless you control for educational background and income of the family, your analysis has a problem." This WAS controlled for. Correct analysis WAS done, peer reviewed, and published. It's a shame this is so highly upvoted. Pointing out that correlation does not equal causation is the very first most obvious criticism to make of a finding, but don't sail in wi…

I think the dispute here isn't so much whether or not Montessori education has or doesn't have advantages, rather it's the confirmation bias inherent in finding famous people who had a Montessori education and then using them to hint that their success is primarily due to their education.

See for example statements from the article like "perhaps it’s just a coincidence that Montessori alumni lead two of the world’s most innovative companies...". To which I would say, yes, it almost certainly is coincidence. Look at the (non-Montessori educated) leaders of pretty much every other company in the world as counterexamples.

The description of Jeff Bezos's behaviour makes it sound like he was an exceptional example of children in that system (unless Montessori teachers routinely have to pick kids out of their chairs), so probably not a good example of typical results from that system.

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#123

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 4:12 AM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #85

speleding wrote: post #78

My kids (4 & 7) just moved from a traditional school to a Montessori school last summer because we moved house. I wasn't completely sold on the philosophy yet but my kids LIKE going to school a lot more now and it seems to work really well. Happy kids, learning a lot. But it is very counterintuitive for the engineer in me who wants to measure progress by how much of the alphabet they know. It takes a lot of trust in…

kids are not allowed artificial flavoring in their lunch food... Why would that make you cringe?

I don't know why it bothers the original poster, but to me it seems like a cringe-worthy non sequitur. How is artificial flavoring related to education?

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#124

Post by qq66 » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 4:17 AM UTC

teej wrote: post #36

gxs wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 article mentions a study that shows the direct influence of a Montessori school. The study was published in Science . You can read it here: http://www.montessori-science.org/montessori_science_journal... (click "see article full text") An excerpt: On several dimensions, children at a public inner city Montessori school had superior outcomes relative to a sample of Montessori applicants who, because of a random lo…

You can't control for "bright parents." You can control for parents' income, parents' education, parents' height and weight, but you can't control for the kind of attitude towards childrearing and towards life that would cause a couple to send their kids to Montessori school.

This is why so many social science results that are "controlled" for various variables actually don't make any sense.

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#125

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 4:48 AM UTC

ellyagg wrote: post #57

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…

"Montessori education may or may not have advantages. But unless you control for educational background and income of the family, your analysis has a problem." This WAS controlled for. Correct analysis WAS done, peer reviewed, and published. It's a shame this is so highly upvoted. Pointing out that correlation does not equal causation is the very first most obvious criticism to make of a finding, but don't sail in wi…

[deleted]

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#126

Post by timr » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 5:03 AM UTC

teej wrote: post #36

gxs wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 article mentions a study that shows the direct influence of a Montessori school. The study was published in Science . You can read it here: http://www.montessori-science.org/montessori_science_journal... (click "see article full text") An excerpt: On several dimensions, children at a public inner city Montessori school had superior outcomes relative to a sample of Montessori applicants who, because of a random lo…

Read the paper in full -- it doesn't say anything that supports the article's conclusion. It studies a small population of kids at one school, and finds a very slight average improvement on some test scores. That's it.

The Science article is fine for what it is, but it's hardly the evidence that Montessori schools produce disproportionate numbers of billionaires. Based on the data provided, you can't even rule out the possibility that the teachers at the one school in question were just better than average.

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#127

Post by Terretta » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 5:12 AM UTC

brlewis wrote: post #116

Terretta wrote: post #17

Only if your education differed from the so-called basket of techniques lumped together as "the Montessori method". It's been my experience that a home environment with parents who read and care about expanding horizons will tend to offer the children guided "self-directed" learning, observation and indirect teaching, and productive routines of "focused" activities versus idle play, and these children will tend to ou…

Could you detail your experience more so we can compare its statistical significance to the scientific study cited in the article?

My experience covers parents who make an active choice about where their kids go to school versus those who don't. Both my parents were teachers and youth group leaders. We therefore interacted with more parent/kid combos than most people do.

Pick a sizable group of kids selected to indicate strong parental interest in how the children learn. For example, kids whose parents at any point considered homeschooling them. You'll see above average scores, even if, in fact, the child in question ended up never being home schooled. The selected trait seems to be simply parental interest in the child's learning.

Curiously, the Wikipedia article on Montessori claims among randomly selected/rejected applicants, the selectees performed better. That would seem to eliminate other variables. But it also says any difference was gone again by age 12, quite a few years before the successes cited in the link.

I suspect that given the right home environment, it's not that Montessori makes your kid smarter, but that generic grade schools make your kid dumber until the age children manifest individuality. Also see "Outliers" for thoughts on how arbitrary performance and learning measurements seem in grade school as a function of birth month versus school year.

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#128

Post by cwp » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 5:38 AM UTC

aik wrote: post #118

cwp wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Mom was a Montessori teacher. For a couple of years when I was a kid, we rented a house from a Waldorf teacher who lived in the basement. The clash of pedagogical philosophies was epic.

I'm hooked. Please explain how?

Ok, take math. The Waldorf argument went something like this: "Little children can't absorb abstractions so we don't teach math until they're ready." The Montessori argument goes like this: "Little children can't absorb abstractions so we teach math by making it concrete. We don't introduce the abstractions until they're ready."

There was a lot of that agree-on-the-facts-but-reach-different-conclusions. The conversation would go "Yeah, sure. Yup. Yup. WTF?"

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#129

Post by speleding » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 7:20 AM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #85

speleding wrote: post #78

My kids (4 & 7) just moved from a traditional school to a Montessori school last summer because we moved house. I wasn't completely sold on the philosophy yet but my kids LIKE going to school a lot more now and it seems to work really well. Happy kids, learning a lot. But it is very counterintuitive for the engineer in me who wants to measure progress by how much of the alphabet they know. It takes a lot of trust in…

kids are not allowed artificial flavoring in their lunch food... Why would that make you cringe?

It makes me cringe because there is no scientific evidence at all that artificial food additives are bad for kids. Quite the opposite actually, artificial additives are tested to death before they are allowed on the market. It has no relation to the Montessori philosophy, I was just giving an example of the "kind of person" the typically teacher is there, basing decisions more on feelings than rational evidence.

Re: The Montessori Mafia

#130

Post by tomjen3 » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 7:29 AM UTC

bostonpete wrote: post #25

gxs wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can't answer for the grandparent, but to me if you really, really care you make it happen.

Not having the means is an excuse, not a reason.