The universal education system we have today was never meant to "inspire learning" or anything similar. It was designed as a vaccine for illiteracy across a handful of subjects. I would argue it continues to deliver on that goal quite well (all things considered).
As someone who never attended, what Montessori offers is more the University-style inspiration and idea of learning for the sake of learning. This sounds amazing for the right people but I find it unlikely it could ever be universal.
Students who go to Montessori will have parent who believe in education in one way or another. The students will learn these values from their parents and so there's an inherent selection bias in the attendees and the positive outcomes.
However, education is not universally valued across our society. Public school exists for everyone to hit that minimum literacy bar.
What would be great is something like Montessori for every student who wants it. A different style of school universally available for the families that value it.
There are also some exciting things happening in the unschooled and regenerative education space. The main thing though, is kids who develop into adults with intrinsic motivation and capable of determining the wise choices for themselves, their children, and community.
"We can best help children learn, not by deciding what we think they should learn and thinking of ingenious ways to teach it to them, but by making the world, as far as we can, accessible to them, paying serious attention to what they do, answering their questions -- if they have any -- and helping them explore the things they are most interested in."
It turned out that the kids who want to do well within their high school had a better chance of doing well in college, even if they had to take catch-up courses or get peer tutoring.
Absolutely not, because being put in the remedial class was "tracking" so there could be no separating kids by ability. My daughter was sent to the library about every other day because she got her work done the first day and it was supposed to take two or three.
I am sympathetic to the idea that when a student is a little behind at one point doesn't mean that they always will be. Maybe things are going on at home, maybe they don't have a home, etc.
But our local school system insists on treating them all the same, regardless of their abilities.
My advice to my kids was to take any AP class that you could. It would be harder but you'd be in a class where the other students wanted to learn and almost always the teacher wanted to teach.
I had no negative experiences other than being a bit out of touch with the culture of my area, which isn't necessarily a bad thing either.
I had mostly ok teachers and no problems learning or making friends. I recall there actually being a lot of free time to just study whatever we wanted most days. We never struggled on the mandatory standardized tests, so the system left us alone. It was very uneventful and boring.
I took some AP classes and some regular classes. The AP classes were probably better or at least on par with my private school Mexican high school.
The regular classes were a grim perspective into the US education system.
It felt mostly like a daycare for young adults. The way they treated us was closer to how you treat infants than 17 year olds. There was little to no hope for learning from the teachers, and no expectation from the students. Cheating was rampant.
When I told my English teacher I had been admitted to UT Austin, his reaction was "no you weren't".
The US takes good care of university bound students, but does a pretend job for for those that are not on that track.
America’s not special. Schools are very similarly run in every government school system I know of and almost all the others. https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=11375
> How did our communities let it get so bad...
If schools provide childcare and sort and rank the children a large majority of parents are satisfied.
I recall once in 6th grade we were talking about marine sponges and the teacher had brought in one of those loofah sponges, passed it around and said that it was a sponge from the ocean. I raised my hand and said "no, that's a loofah. It's from a plant that's in the cucumber family. I know because my grandmother grows them." And he was like "No, this is a sponge from the ocean. Your grandmother can't grow these." There was no changing his mind and he didn't appreciate being contradicted.
I don't understand why teachers are so often threatened by thoughtful children, but it's awfully sad.
I did three years in education before switching to software development. I would have done a lot more if the pay was better and the schools provided more support to the teaching staff. Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting my time working on a bunch of worthless marketing websites instead of educating people but at least I can provide for my family and live a rich and fulfilling life outside of work.
To us, it was impressive how simple tests and exams were, I saw ridiculous things like professors uploading test exams which contained like 90% of the questions.
To me it was absurd.
There are some professors who make it hard. Generally those who have tenure don’t care and put down a shitload of work on students. Also, if you have a well funded lab that pays well you will have a lot more students willing to deal with a harder course.
Normal students want to zip thru and get to living. It’s sad - but its a tragedy of college being so expensive. It’s hard to take a risk on academic (mis)adventures that can crater your financial standing for life (yup for life - student loans cannot be written off during bankruptcy).
I think that despite it being less obvious these days, it's still true: actually learning for the sake of knowing and understanding is a nerd thing. Even at universities, students who care are considered weird.
For a teenager with bursting hormones this becomes a trivial choice
American universities definitely have their great courses, but the fact that so much depends on money, makes teachers focus on funding first, publications second and teaching is very low on the priority and so is actually making sure students "understand", rather than "know".
Actually I always thought most Americans share what they know, even if they aren't experts. Usually people from other cultures are more reserved and dont do this.
One of my children started public from 1-5 in Montessori and found the same (and at a somewhat selective public school).
Eventually they moved again so they could put her back in montessori school.
In my own experience multi-year/grade classrooms seemed more fun and interesting, and I think there were social and educational benefits as well.
My perception is that in the US multi-year tends to be largely limited to elective courses, clubs, sports, and extracurricular activities.
(Unfortunately a typical "college preparatory" track in secondary school can interfere with elective courses such as arts courses or practical courses, both of which seem to be viewed as less important by many schools and college admissions departments. I wonder whether California proposition 28 will expand access to arts courses and activities?)
For students who finished high school courses, some teachers were certified by the local college to teach college level courses (all teachers at this school had at least a Master's degree) and there were arrangements to students to the college, or bring faculty from the college to the school, depending on the number of students taking a given class.
Many students when graduating from high school were simultaneously awarded college degrees.
...
I kept tabs more or less my classmates that came out of the Montessori, and I think they overall overperformed the non Montessori people in middle school and high school. Harder to gauge adulthood success.
Isn't this just as likely to be a selection effect? The kids who go to Montessori schools are not selected from the population at random. But public school kids are.
But still I can see that parents that place kids in Montessori schools are a different population than those that place them in private schools.
As a former parent and former board president of a small catholic PK-8 school, I'd say that parental involvement is the key differentiator, uniforms/behavior, faith teaching and teacher motivation are other big drivers there. The Montessori methods are a different path that works well as well. End of the day, we're all clever apes and will learn in a supportive environment.
Our kids in that school had access to fewer educational/enrichment resources, but tended to outperform their peers when they transitioned (mostly) to public high school. about 40% of the kids were scholarship funded, and those scholarships did not require religious affiliation. These were kids who would have significantly worse outcomes in public school, but they had parents committed to their success.
There are several key disadvantages.
- Parental involvement can transition into meddling.
- A kid who needs an IEP and services may not get it because the school doesn't offer the services and won't tell the family to leave OR the parent is in denial and the school isn't prepared to deal with it.
- Kids may be boxed out of sports as suburban schools usually have (corrupt) pay-to-play feeder programs.
As a parent, my goal is to get my child the best education that I have the ability to provide. Montessori and other private schools are a great way to do that. However, I don't think taxpayers should be paying for those options beyond core services (school nurses, etc)
I really, really like it.
I think it reinforces the kids natural curiosity.
In middle school, my first year out of Montessori, I was shocked at how little other kids cared about learning. I remember the teacher discussing something about astronomy, and I raised my hand to comment on some fact I had read, and what followed was mockery by my peers and antipathy by the teacher. I learned quickly to never again show that I cared about learning.
This was a huge contrast with Montessori where most us were eager to learn and share what we had learned. I had friends that had built the solar system to scale out of their own initiative (in hindsight they may have taken some liberties, nonetheless).
I kept tabs more or less my classmates that came out of the Montessori, and I think they overall overperformed the non Montessori people in middle school and high school. Harder to gauge adulthood success.
I also liked that they had children of various years in the same classroom. I think it promoted knowledge sharing from the older kids to the younger ones, and it removed barriers for friendships. Some of my best friends back then where older than I was. That would never happen in middle or high school.
Finally, I don't think it's perfect. Because we were all expected to join a traditional school after grade 6, the school made some effort to make sure that the outgoing class had covered all the basic requirements (a not necessarily a simple thing since we had great liberty of pursuing what was interesting to us).
All in all, I would strongly recommend it.