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

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

#61

Post by scirocco »

Montessori from age 6 to 15.

- Self paced learning and choosing how to spend your time

- Need to collaborate with your peers on scarce resources (everyone can't read the same book / solve the same challenge at the same time)

- Small classes, no one could get away with anything/bullying

- Responsibility for completing the weekly plan yourself and being rewarded for hard work ("the diligence light is well lit" sticker you got when sharing your weekly progress - sry poorly translated Swedish"

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

#63

Post by jkestner »

pibechorro wrote: post #3

My mom is a Montessori teacher of many many years and I did summercamps as a swim instructor in one. While they are all reviewed by the Montessori board and certified, they are all a bit different. Shop around, the gap in quality between different schools can be quite apparent. That being said, I would not hesitate to put my kids in one, especially over public schools which are a disaster.

My mother's also a longtime Montessori teacher, and yeah, there’s a lot of variety. Montessori is not a protected trademark. Look for AMI-certified for a school that has to meet some standards. I attended Montessori from 2-14, but have no advice that can be generalized to every kid or school.

But doesn’t the same variety apply for public schools? They’re not all a disaster. My kid goes to a good dual language immersion public school where in addition to academics, they’re learning collaboration and empathy with people from all walks of life, not just the ones whose parents drop them off in a Tesla. The school is underfunded, doesn’t have the resources to market itself, and teachers are burning out, but if some of the hyper-enthusiastic Montessori parents I know applied their energy to a public school, it’d kick ass. That’s the choice I made—I’m on the PTA and am building their makerspace. Others are leading gardening or composting programs. Not everyone has the time to do that, but we shouldn’t be mere consumers of education, as every parent who helps their kids do homework knows.

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

#64

Post by ritzaco »

I was homeschooled, but we used a lot of Montessori principles for that age range. Completely recommend. I can echo the other comments already here about how I think it strongly promoted curiosity, independence and a love of learning, at the cost of some 'social adaption' - for me, mainly when I went to university and everyone had shared experiences that I was missing, but overall totally worth it IMO if the Montessori school is good.

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

#65

Post by krn1p4n1c »

conductr wrote: post #29
krn1p4n1c wrote: post #15

Both my kids transitioned from Montessori to public school at 11 (grade 5) in the US. 13 and 16 now. + Love of learning and self-driven discovery + Top of class in pretty much all subjects + Comfortable giving presentations + Comfortable working in groups + At ease working with younger students/children and essentially mentoring them + Excellent handwriting + Respect for teachers - Difficulty with testing that involv…

Just want to point out this sounds more like a private->public pros and cons list. I’m not doubting it at all, just not sure if it’s due to the Montessori method. Most Montessori’s are or are operate similar to the private setting.

There's definitely a strong overlap in that sense. Probably also because these institutions tend to have smaller class sizes which allow better teach/student interaction and more time. Public schooling in the US could do this too, but has been hamstrung for decades.

In math the kids definitely leveraged the binomial/trinomial tools, beads and other tactile methods to have a better understanding of the concepts of mult/div/exponentials/roots long before they would have approached in the standard US arithmetic methods. They were also doing algebra and geometry by the end of Montessori.

Montessori also spends a lot of time working on holistic views with regards to science and history and then give the kids the freedom to do their own research and projects on the topics. The normal school models tend to take more of a cause-effect + memorize the dates method as that's what tracks the testing. It's not generally till university that they then go back to something that usually requires critical thinking.

On critical thinking there's an emphasis there in Montessori on involving the kids in asking more questions and then building a model to analyze and defend their position. Public school is optimizing for learn by rote and it's a culture shock going to Uni where they back to something that's utilizing critical analysis.

My older child is in IB at the moment and they're using much of this as it's taught in more of Uni style.

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

#66

Post by deathclassic »

GoldenRacer wrote: post #42
deathclassic wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I'll agree with you that some teachers really suck. I can think of a few examples I had growing up that fit your description. That being said, we have a real shortage of teachers right now and low pay combined with lack of respect is a large reason for that shortage. Maybe the solution isn't calling them stupid and disrespect them. Maybe instead we should make teaching a profession with a liveable wage where they don…

We probably just need a different approach to education in general, or just a reckoning of what values our society actually has. As much as I like to hate on teachers (because of bad experiences I had) they really are just the symptoms of an institutional/cultural problem. Reasons teachers get disrespected (and arguably deserve it):

- Education is a major studied by idiots who want to party in college.

- Western society is individualistic to a fault. The reason teachers get screamed at is because grades are seen as an attack on the character of a parents child (and used to evaluate and individuals worth). Since the parents refuse to believe that their little kid might just not have a high IQ or be lazy, clearly the teacher is at fault. Everyone wants to believe their little mini-me is a special snowflake, the bell curve proves otherwise.

- This narcissism and individualism, is also a feature of teachers. Hence, the constant self-aggrandization of being a glorified daycare worker by everyone in the profession.

- Teachers unions make it difficult to fire shitty teachers, even if there isn't a shortage of teachers. Just like cops, teachers look out for themselves.

- Good teachers get poached by private schools, that offer higher wages.

Institutional/Cultural problems that make education shitty:

- Property taxes fund schools. Rich suburban areas have well funded schools, poor inner city areas have underfunded schools that are falling apart. Guess which one attracts better teachers?

- The US is a large and very diverse country. Some populations here value education A TON, others do not. This is a reality that has to be acknowledge, and the standards of say, Silicon valley should not be applied to rural Texas. (my siblings took AP US history in Texas and they didn't even learn about the civil war)

- College is pushed on ALL students, and funding is partially determined by college admittance. Needless to say this is wasteful and partially contributed to many of the issues around student debt and credential inflation.

- Standardized testing is also a terrible mechanism for determining school funding. Teachers end up wasting a ton of time trying to teach to some arbitrary standardized test, and the students hate it as well.

Idk I could probably list more issues with education but those are a few off the top of my head.

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

#67

Post by krn1p4n1c »

sedeki wrote: post #54
krn1p4n1c wrote: post #15

Both my kids transitioned from Montessori to public school at 11 (grade 5) in the US. 13 and 16 now. + Love of learning and self-driven discovery + Top of class in pretty much all subjects + Comfortable giving presentations + Comfortable working in groups + At ease working with younger students/children and essentially mentoring them + Excellent handwriting + Respect for teachers - Difficulty with testing that involv…

> - Difficult transition to the cliques and more aggressive social dynamics of public school Am I naive in thinking that the aggressive social dynamics of public school adds no value whatsoever to a child's or teenager's development? Like, _why_ would anyone want to put their children through that? Is it _really_ integral to a person's social development to understand how to interact with bullies (worst case)? I admi…

I agree that a lot of it's needless and painful, but there's some merit in knowing how to defend yourself (physically, mentally and emotionally). There's a lot of the petty BS that you learn from in school that transposes to adult life. I hate watching my kids deal with it, but I'd be remiss in raising them if I didn't prepare them for that.

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

#68

Post by antiterra »

deathclassic wrote: post #14

I was put into montessori preschool at around age 4 after my mom caught daycare workers abusing me. I liked it, was a fun time and I figured out how to read at around a 4th grade level at 5. The issues started when I got taken out of that environment and put into a normal one when I started grade school. You see, my preschool teacher noticed that I had ADHD, but that didn't really matter in a Montessori environment.…

It sounds like your experience was traumatic and that’s really unfortunate. But, your experience is far from universal for either school type. Today, particularly with Section 504 plans, many schools are much more adept at accommodating ADHD and a number of other challenges. Kids who have slow handwriting development can use keyboards or text to speech. Kids who get extremely overwhelmed can take breaks in the hallway. Others who are bored by the offered curriculum are given access to Khan Academy. It’s not universal and it can require some parental persistence to both create the plan and enforce its use, but it has helped a lot of kids.

Public school taught me physics, calculus, history and a smattering of other topics I wouldn’t have delved into on my own (for example, reverse polish notation.) It did not teach me discipline, structure or obedience (I was actually spanked by a grade school teacher, which seems unfathomable now.) As such, I was wholly unprepared for higher education. Some of this stuff might require direct intervention from the parent instead of simply relying on a school to take care of it.

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

#69

Post by jkestner »

gabcbrown wrote: post #41

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…

I feel you on the challenges. I had the same culture shock going to high school, even though it was only a smallish Catholic school. Learning how to work within a system is a critical skill!

On math, my early elementary teacher and my father (also a teacher) combined Montessori math, which spoke to (or influenced) my visual/tangible style of thinking, and lots of classic drills to internalize math facts. Or maybe it worked out in contrast to your experience because something clicked and I loved learning math early. (High school beat that out of me.)

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

#70

Post by [deleted] »

sedeki wrote: post #54
krn1p4n1c wrote: post #15

Both my kids transitioned from Montessori to public school at 11 (grade 5) in the US. 13 and 16 now. + Love of learning and self-driven discovery + Top of class in pretty much all subjects + Comfortable giving presentations + Comfortable working in groups + At ease working with younger students/children and essentially mentoring them + Excellent handwriting + Respect for teachers - Difficulty with testing that involv…

> - Difficult transition to the cliques and more aggressive social dynamics of public school Am I naive in thinking that the aggressive social dynamics of public school adds no value whatsoever to a child's or teenager's development? Like, _why_ would anyone want to put their children through that? Is it _really_ integral to a person's social development to understand how to interact with bullies (worst case)? I admi…

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