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Comment by ellyagg | Hacker News Reader

"Montessori education may or may not have advantages. But unless you control for educational background and income of the family, your analysis has a problem."

This WAS controlled for. Correct analysis WAS done, peer reviewed, and published.

It's a shame this is so highly upvoted. Pointing out that correlation does not equal causation is the very first most obvious criticism to make of a finding, but don't sail in with that criticism until you've made sure that causation wasn't actually suggested by legitimate research.

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"It's a shame this is so highly upvoted. Pointing out that correlation does not equal causation is the very first most obvious criticism to make of a finding"

What a shame.

The Science paper cited at the bottom of this article found that Montessori kids from one school in Wisconsin had slightly better performance on some kinds of academic tests. The story's "finding" is that Montessori kids are overrepresented amongst the creative/business/economic elite. Clearly, one follows from the other, right?

But yes, let's talk about the up-voting of comments that sound approximately correct, but actually aren't.

I think the dispute here isn't so much whether or not Montessori education has or doesn't have advantages, rather it's the confirmation bias inherent in finding famous people who had a Montessori education and then using them to hint that their success is primarily due to their education.

See for example statements from the article like "perhaps it’s just a coincidence that Montessori alumni lead two of the world’s most innovative companies...". To which I would say, yes, it almost certainly is coincidence. Look at the (non-Montessori educated) leaders of pretty much every other company in the world as counterexamples.

The description of Jeff Bezos's behaviour makes it sound like he was an exceptional example of children in that system (unless Montessori teachers routinely have to pick kids out of their chairs), so probably not a good example of typical results from that system.

I have a hard time believing that. Around here, Montessori schools are private and expensive. These school are all established is wealthy neighborhoods, so even if you forget that they are expensive, you still need a pretty good income to live in a place where it is convenient to get your kids to school everyday or be willing to go through important sacrifices for your children's education.

The cited study found improvements, not latent billionaireism. The broader claim is wild speculation.

I'm a parent, and I'm interested in improvement, not latent billionairism. So to me, such studies are useful, even without broader claims.

I have to agree, but my gut tells me the claim is likely to be true.

I am interested in what companies and technologies this leads to because so goes the fate of nations.

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