Looking at the materials online, it looks like the overall idea makes sense, but somehow there is a _rumor_ that most Montessori childs struggle to adapt to a _normal_ curriculum after, and generally lean toward short studies and manual jobs.
As a result, I had amazing test scores in public school, but bad grades overall because I felt that the homework was a waste of my time.
I still appreciate my time on a Montessori school though.
It's still a sore point for me 30 years later. I do a lot of graphics programming, and I know I have the type of mind that can handle complex math, but I missed that fork in the road.
In particular, I don't know small multiplications by rote as well as some others. But that's the major problem I've found.
On the other hand, I did huge 20-digit multiplications well ahead of others because I liked it.
I learned a second language (English) when I was very young because me and a friend was interested in it.
I performed violently exothermic chemistry experiments (in controlled ways, of course) after regular class hours because the teacher saw our interest in things that go boom.
I made HTML-based role-playing adventures to learn the stuff in history class.
I learned how the difference between science and fucking around is writing it down, performing endless series of flight tests of paper plane models and presenting the result.
Many of these things were highly useful to me later in education and life, and were not part of any standard curriculum. I did them because the teachers saw me and exploited an opportunity to make us both content.
I would say that adjusting to a "normal" curriculum took a little time. However, I think that learning independence and keeping my love of learning was worth that tradeoff. I was also happy going to school, something that I feel was beneficial from a developmental standpoint.
For context, I don't currently work a manual job and successfully graduated college.
They're in regular primary school now and adapted just fine.
I don't know the Montessori system, but in the Waldorf system, some of the intellectual stuff is moved from the first years to the later years compared to the public school. So if you compare midway on the public school metric, you'll find a gap.
Of course, if you compared midway on a Waldorf metric, you'll find that students from those public schools have a gap in the other direction.
I talked to a Waldorf school principal about this, and she said that if you enter the system at later grades, say halfway through, they could see that there are some things that such a child just don't learn.
Personally, I'm envious. I did well enough in school, but I was never a great match for industrial education processes. Too curious, too independent. But that's exactly what I've needed in my tech career; technology is now so complex and changes so quickly that we're all effectively self taught.
I don't think that kind of self-directed adaptability is going to become less necessary in the future, so I hope more schools adopt similar approaches.
The most common thing you'll find are Montessori preschools (3-6 years old). The biggest thing I got out of it was the love of learning. Children in a Montessori classroom are able to learn at their own pace, so if you gravitate towards numbers before reading, that's facilitated. Other way around? No biggie. It turns out child development at that age is pretty flexible, and most children all get to where they're supposed to be by the end of those 3 years.
The other benefit is the mixed-age classrooms. Younger kids are able to see the older children as role models, and the older children are able to _be_ that role model for the newer kids. All of this together creates an environment that often graduates children that seem to be more confident in themselves and in their innate abilities.
I will say that transitioning to a traditional school in first grade was a bit of a culture shock, but the lessons learned in Montessori definitely carried over. I still have that love of learning, and a strong inner voice.
My wife's school is Montessori through 8th grade, and her experience is that the children that graduate excel in whichever high school setting they go to, but this is of course anecdotal.
Many adopt a few ideas but really aren’t much different than other schools.
That's interesting. My impression is that kids with ADHD would function better in a Montessori setting compared to a traditional education. Where do you plan to send your kids?
The Montessori philosophy is very much NOT laissez faire: Kids are free to choose their activity, but then they are supervised and assisted to persist at that activity for a period of time (AND to put everything away neatly afterwards AND to not interfere with others). A properly run Montessori school might be very well suited for your children, but of course you'd have to evaluate that yourself.
Both of my children transitioned to the state school system without too many difficulties (the younger one had some initial problems adjusting to the rougher environment). We loved Montessori as a school concept; one problem with sending your children to a private school in Switzerland however is that it puts them in a social bubble (in a telling anecdote, the other children once referred to my wife as my son's nanny, because so many of them were picked up at school by hired help), and we preferred a more egalitarian environment.
There is however likely big variance in terms of which Montessori school exactly we talk about (literally which building).
Even in standardized countries like France or Switzerland, the gap between two classes within the same school can be large,so across city and country, it's a pipe dream to think education is equal.
School is all about maintaining the status quo on social classes.