Ask HN: Anyone go through Montessori education until age 12 (end of grade 6)?

I went to a Montessori School from k-8 then switched into a fairly fast paced public school district for high school. I absolutely loved Montessori, and feel very lucky that I had the opportunity to attend. I felt a lot of ownership/independence about my learning from a young age, and it really supported my curiosity about the world. Interactions with teachers felt like collaboration, not being told what to do, so I felt trusted and it felt very safe to make mistakes and learn. There was no homework, which meant the school day had lots of time built in to work on assignments and move around, which I didn’t realize how much I appreciated until I got to high school and was sitting at a desk all day with hours of homework every night. There were lots of opportunities to learn from people who were really excited to teach what they were teaching. We got to do lots of weird science experiments, big class projects, woodworking, learning about ancient history, several different languages, lots of different instruments... the list goes on.

There were two notable challenges for me, though not everyone in my class experienced these. Some of it will also be limited if you only have them there through 6th grade.

The first was figuring out how to socially transition from a small private school that effectively functioned like a big family, to a large public school. I didn’t really learn how to meet people being at the same small school for so long, and the culture shock of leaving of leaving Montessori was pretty bad. (Both with the way people my age approached learning and the way the public school system operated, i.e. everything is for a grade nothing else matters).

The second is because of some combination of the curiosity driven learning and the particular sequence of teachers I had, I managed to avoid getting a good foundation in algebra because I didn’t really feel like it. This turned out to be a big problem for me for many years, partially because no one realized so I kept being put in higher math classes, doing well through brute force, and being very frustrated and confused about all of it. I’m now getting an advanced degree in math, so everything worked itself out, but I do think math specifically wants a little more structure at those early steps than what I got.

Overall it was still absolutely worth it for me. Sometimes I wonder who I would be now if my curiosity hadn’t been so strongly reinforced when I was young. Happy to answer any specific questions! Hope this helps.

I don’t have personal experience with Montessori, but one of my best friends is a long time Montessori teacher. Just posting to echo the comments stating that different Montessori schools will operate and feel different, so do your research before enrolling to be sure the experience will be a good fit for your child.

I went to a private Montessori school grades 3K-5, and my children have been or are in Montessori school grades 3K-6. As you might have guessed, I am a fan.

As most Montessori schools are private, my impression is that the variance in the quality of Montessori implementation varies considerably, but at a high level I have positive views of many of the same method characteristics as other comments:

  - mixed-age classes
  - learner-driven scheduling/work
  - non-test-centric evaluation
  - etc.

I would guess that most Montessori schools are smaller than schools kids transition into, which might make transitioning to other schools hard socially (it was for me, but not for my kids), but that also is highly dependent on the individual I think. Other than that, I think the method tends to yield:

  - independence in both learning/working and life in general
  - love of learning
  - kindness towards others

Things I would ask about before choosing a school:

  - are you accredited by AMS, AMI and/or SAIS?
  - are your teachers trained primarily through AMS or AMI?
  - how long have your teachers been with the school, on average?
  - where do students go after this school, and what are their outcomes (what colleges, high school honor graduates, etc.)?
  - does the school do standardized testing that is accepted by the local school district or otherwise make it easy to transition to other schools after they age out?

Yes, my education began with Pre-K Montessori, and then transitioned to prep school in 7th grade. The dynamics of my family were chaotic at the moment of transition, so there was not much support for me, and the transition difficult.

40 years later, the self-driven learning informs my work, ceeative practice, and ongoing learning. Montessori taught me to look for the next challenge and embrace it.

Dyslexia / dysgraphia / learning differences were not diagnosed in Montessori school, where I excelled at mathematics. When the pressures of prep school ran into the reading writing differences problems ensued.

The bottom line is Montessori taught me to challenge myself and gave me a lifelong love of learning and independent study.

Thanks for sharing - glad to hear you managed to get through your lower level algebraic struggles! That's a tough thing to have to fix.

One of the things you mentioned (and i've seen in many comments) is the transition from Montessori to another system (an aside: usually while implying saying how poor the structure/goals of the other system is).

My product development part of my brain points to this as as systemic problem that could try to be addressed by the school/parents - though that is such a holistic change that the best you could do is minimize impacts but maybe that should be considered.

The other part is that it seems that most people have very positive memories of their Montessori days.

As I see it the big family, highly personalized, explore at your own pace, keep children curious, unstructured but guided combination is very attractive but the concern is really that transition after the fact to a larger more structured institution & smaller amount of emphasis on athletics are the sticky points.

Without going into a larger debate about education - I kind of wish the state system was less results oriented and exploratory in the early years for all children and then the program changed as they got older. I recognize there are inherent challenges.

I'm curious if the two challenges that you had (which would probably be different challenges for other children) could have been identified at an early time and given some support - or if you think that struggling through both of them help develop your internal strength without sacrificing too much?