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

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

#131

Post by Yhippa » Wed, Nov 16, 2022, 9:05 PM UTC

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…

The reason that's valuable IMO is that once you get into the Real World, you are going to run into these complex social situations and need to be able to navigate them with grace. Especially in the business world.

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

#132

Post by doctor_eval » Wed, Nov 16, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

Montessori is awesome, have put two kids through it and everything about the approach is wonderful. We committed serious financial resources (for us) to do this.

However, as others have said, the individual school can have a huge influence on the quality. We moved interstate a year ago and sadly the new Montessori school doesn’t even have a Montessori teacher in my kids class, so we are leaving.

So make sure you go to an established school where the teachers are Montessori trained and have been in the school a long time. That’s the #1 metric of a Montessori school if you ask me.

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

#133

Post by scottshea » Wed, Nov 16, 2022, 9:10 PM UTC

My daughter went from 18 months through 8th grade and my wife runs the school so, as you may guess, we are big fans. One thing to look for is the certifications. In the US there are (at least) two main Montessori Certification groups, AMI & AMS. The school my wife runs is AMI but I think AMS would be just as good.

What is slightly different than other experiences here is that the school is a Charter school which poses some challenges but does offer Montessori beyond the normal tuition based model.

As for my daughter, her transition has been fairly smooth. The high school she goes to has more than 10x the students as her old school so is much larger. On the other hand, her grades are good, and she is involved in a number of clubs too.

Montessori is not for everyone but I definitely recommend checking it out.

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

#134

Post by kashunstva » Wed, Nov 16, 2022, 9:31 PM UTC

My daughter attended Montessori through grade 8, with a stint of homeschool in there. She is in high school at an arts boarding school studying classical violin (well, and those academic things on the side…) She felt well prepared for the type of work required because of foundational experiences of independent work in Montessori. Transition was not difficult at all.

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

#135

Post by em-bee » Wed, Nov 16, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

foobarian wrote: post #107

em-bee wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i am very confused by the reasoning for your choice. i believe the smaller the class size, the less likely there are going to be any problems. for one, the teacher will have more time for each child and be able to notice and deal with conflicts, and also your child will spend more time with the same kids, and so they will have more opportunity to get along. but most of all, i do not believe that children can not lear…

It was mostly a numbers thing. If probability of any given kid being a good match is p, I wanted a good chance of getting 3-4 good matches i.e. wanted (1-p)^(N-4) to be small, while not losing too much quality due to overpopulated class. I thought a cohort of 20 in the class year was too small. We've also had a cautionary experience with an earlier grade where too many classmates were aggressive little shits who were…

ok, i do agree that prior bad experience does shape ones expectations, and i could not say that i would not allow my self to be influenced by such an experience. that said, from an outside perspective, i don't think the odds are stacked like that. from my personal experience, a large class size doesn't make it more likely for any one child to make friends. on the contrary. in my class of 25-30 kids i had no friends at all. i believe that a smaller class of say 15 kids would have increased the opportunities to make friends because there would be less opportunities for others to exclude me from their activities.

even if your child makes friends easily, large classes allow the class to split into multiple subgroups, cliques that stick together. the smaller the class, the less likely this should happen. at least that is what my intuition suggests. i would put the limit for that to 10-15 kids though. any more than that is an invitation to form subgroups.

but we also must not forget the montessori aspect here, which has a strong influence on the group dynamics and individual childrens behavior.

for one, i believe that the montessori approach is driving and motivating children in a way that they simply don't show as much negative behavior as they would exhibit in a traditional class.

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

#136

Post by anon291 » Wed, Nov 16, 2022, 9:45 PM UTC

conductr wrote: post #95

spiffytech wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attended a small, private, religious, non-Montessori school through middle+high school. While the atmosphere wasn't toxic like I hear people say about public school, few of my peers were interested in learning, excelled academically, etc. A non-negligible portion of the kids in my school were the ones kicked out of the public school for grades or troublemaking. I think they did better at my school, but that populat…

This is a good point. "Private" encompasses a wide variety of experiences and quality. My private experience with my kid is of the somewhat elitist variety. They simply would not accept expelled students from any school. They heavily curate enrollment to create an environment for success. They're building a cooperative community of Families that will reinforce the holistic development of each student. Parental involv…

> At that point, simply being "private" has no advantage.

Based on the experience given above as well as my own experience, I'm going to guess the poster was talking about Catholic parochial schools. Catholic parochial schools were the original public schools in North America and still operate as such today, except obviously no public funding in the United States (they do in some provinces of Canada).

Either way, they'll accept basically anyone. However, they do consistently give better results anyway, even adjusting for income and social status. Actually, the effect is most pronounced in the lowest incomes. The richer you are, the less difference parochial v public makes (of course going to super cushy private schools puts you at an advantage).

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

#137

Post by glhast » Wed, Nov 16, 2022, 9:46 PM UTC

I attended a Montessori from Kindergarten to 5th grade in the 90's.

I loved it. The teachers let me teach an art and drawing class in 2nd grade. Another student taught an algebra class (he's a brilliant cancer researcher now). I co-wrote, illustrated, and sold a comic book with another classmate in 4th grade during class time.

It allowed me to complete the curriculum on my own time and held me accountable.

Montessori was something I made my own, not something that was happening to me.

The transition out wasn't that bad. I did 5th grade again (June baby) at a standard private school. The biggest things: - I had never written a formal essay, or an essay outline. - I had never taken nor prepared for a real test

Like others here, I never really enjoyed school as much after Montessori.

For the right kid, it can cultivate curiosity, independence, collaboration, and a love for self managed learning. For the wrong kid, it can be an unstructured nightmare.

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

#138

Post by gmnash » Wed, Nov 16, 2022, 9:53 PM UTC

eclarkso wrote: post #45

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…

I have two children in Montessori and agree wholeheartedly with the above.

I would like to emphasize the check for AMS or AMI. Any school can all themselves a Montessori school, so I'd make sure it's at least certified in one of those two (not familiar with SAIS so cannot comment on that).

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

#139

Post by satellite2 » Wed, Nov 16, 2022, 9:55 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #5

I was a troubled kid. Expelled from 2 kindergartens for disruptive behaviour. My parents tried Montessori, and it worked. They found out I was interested in mythology, so I apparently learned to read from the Greek myths. One of my friends was into cars, so they got him a pile of car showroom brochures and he learned to read from that. There was a non-verbal autistic kid there, too. I played "clap-hands" with them ev…

What kind of kindergarten expels children? It sounds at best grossly incompetent. Are you sure there was no other bias that played a role in their decision? It sounds rather unlikely you were the cause.

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

#140

Post by morgelgluff » Wed, Nov 16, 2022, 10:01 PM UTC

rejectfinite wrote: post #79

simiones wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in my country (Romania), the norm in all public schools is to have the same set of ~30 children you'll go to school every day with from grade 0-1 (6-7 years old) to grade 8 (14 years old). Since there are very few to no electives, you'll spend ~all of your time in school with all of these kids every day for 8 years - and virtually everyone in the country has this experience (private schools are very rare). E…

Same here in Sweden. All school is like this. Not just Montessorri.

It used to be the norm to mix up the groups every three years, when transitioning between low/mid/high school stadium.

I appreciated that change of social dynamics every time.