In San Diego, there is a camp called Outpost Summer Camp that is exactly this.
This has also made me post-Montessori. I’ve left the faith, but we’ve found the forest.
This has also made me post-Montessori. I’ve left the faith, but we’ve found the forest.
Basically, in principle it’s great. Children drive themselves and follow what they’re passionate about (with a teacher’s encouragement). If they’ve got a tendency for math, for example, the teacher helps them develop their own intuitions and keeps those pathways open for them.
In practice, my son believed there was a limit on his abilities to develop because children under 4 years and zero days weren’t allowed to begin learning numbers (or those stations weren’t available to him). You see, it’s still cohort based learning, where cohort is based on age not ability.
So he knew numbers from home, but believed at school he was incapable. It was a strange sort of cognitive dissonance where he could only “count to twenty” as reinforced by his classmates, because he wasn’t old enough to do the number station. And yet, he didn’t realize that meant he wasn’t able to say the numbers greater than 20 - but often times he’d go from 1-200, etc.
Math wasn’t the only topic where this happened unfortunately.
This was at one of the few fully certified Montessori programs in San Diego.
I believe that it was a better program than a median program, but I’m not sure if it’s because his peers came from families who could afford to spend time with their children, or if the program itself was better than median.
However, it’s a different model that definitely did not address my root concern - assisting a child to advance at their own pace (faster or slower). Which just means that my expectations were mismanaged.
Overall, I think the forest kindergarten concept is more rewarding for my kid, and he’s at least happy going to and coming home from school. That’s an oft overlooked part of schooling: ensuring your child isn’t miserable - and there’s quite a bit of misery at Montessori, due to the focus on quiet, individual work.
ouch. someone hasn't been paying attention in their training.
there is no hard date to introduce any activity. if children are interested in an activity, they are introduced to it. or to a simpler one that leads up to it. applying a hard date shows lack of understanding of the different speed of childrens development.
if it's not to late i'd read up a bit on the montessori method and confront the teachers about it. they are clearly doing it wrong. i'd also check who certified that school, or where the teachers were trained.
unfortunately, the montessori name is not protected, and anyone school can claim to be montessori, even if they are not.
Children proceed through Montessori as they demonstrate mastery of developmental materials. The teacher should be closely following each child’s progress and will introduce a new material when they show readiness. Materials are kept organized by domain on accessible shelves but children would lay out a mat or find a table and bring materials there. In fact one thing the teacher is observing is their ability to independently select a material that is of interest, work with that material in a state of concentration, and replace the material where it came from when they are finished with the material. Goals are independence and autonomy in a community that supports respect for others. When it’s done well, it is really beautiful to see a community of little scientists at work.
If in your school progress was age-linked or materials were set up at stations, than whoever “certified” that school does not understand sone pretty basic and fundamental concepts of Montessori education. Or they have gone off the Montessori nap somehow.
Another basic tenant of Montessori is free access to the outdoors. And there is a lot of work about what the outdoor environment should offer in the way of exploration, gardening, etc.
Sorry you had the experience you had. When done well it is difficult to imagine a better way to do early childhood than Montessori. I wish I’d had it.
Doesn’t matter which is true. Early educational interventions fade out universally and we have nothing that effects adult intelligence or conscientiousness which explain pretty much all variation in educational attainment, partly through their effect on SES.
> “Heckman curve” update: The data don’t seem to support the claim that human capital investments are most effective when targeted at younger ages.
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/04/06/heckman-cu...
> The Heckman Curve describes the rate of return to public investments in human capital for the disadvantaged as rapidly diminishing with age. Investments early in the life course are characterised as providing significantly higher rates of return compared to investments targeted at young people and adults. This paper uses the Washington State Institute for Public Policy dataset of program benefit cost ratios to assess if there is a Heckman Curve relationship between program rates of return and recipient age. The data does not support the claim that social policy programs targeted early in the life course have the largest returns, or that the benefits of adult programs are less than the cost of intervention.
From this you seem to have drawn the surprising conclusion that there is no benefit to greater in investment in early childhood education, a conclusion which the paper you're citing specifically warns against:
> This finding does not imply that there should be less investment in early childhood programs. There are many early interventions that have large positive rates of return, and there are powerful equity reasons for investment in children.
> The data shows that prevention can be cost effective, but in addition, later treatment and amelioration using evidenced based programs can also succeed.
i don't know if that is true.
i believe there are some things that really make a long term difference, however these things are more likely coming from the parents themselves and less from the schools they go to.
dfee's son was denied that choice, and hence the effect that montessori is supposed to have may not take hold.
Montessory was designed for troubles boys originally. The effect it was supposed to have was that the kids that fail get some order and controll at the same time and build good working habits.
It worked for non troubled kids too and had good results, but it was not designed to push kids fast forward.
My point is there isn't one style that works for all kids so you need to try different things until you find what works best for your family.