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Damn, that part about being excited to learn and share knowledge with your peers only to be shouted down dredged up some memories. Most American schools are so regimented that any exploration of knowledge is actually sneered down. How did our communities let it get so bad...

I'll note that this comment assumes standardized education was somehow better in the past. We all have specific memories of being inspired by a teacher or something but that seems like a happy accident more than anything intentional.

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’s a lot that could be say about it, but I think John Taylor Gatto said much of it. The current system does not really do the literacy thing well either.

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.

I came across this quote recently by John Holt (unschooling movement):

"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."

My school at least tried, we had separate programs for "gifted" students separate from kids who were just there for the babysitting. Kind of dystopian, but I was never mocked for wanting to learn something even though my school was in a bad area.

I sometimes feel like most people would rather drag people down to their level then let them run free.

Especially bad because it's not even gifted kids, it was literally just one class for the kids who wanted to be there with the rest of the classes being for the kids who didnt. Yet people want to act like it's discriminatory to just put effort in. Plenty of bad students in the gifted program, but they were there because the teachers saw them trying.

There was this NPR piece talking about Texas letting anyone graduating top of their high school to get college tuition. It didn’t matter how good the school itself is, compared to other schools.

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.

When my oldest went to the local middle school, there were 4 classes from one elementary and 3 each from 2 more making 250 or so kids. It seemed like there would be advanced English, regular English, and remedial English. Maybe 15-20% on each side and 60% or so in the middle.

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 the same experience. They separated us "gifted" kids very early on.

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 did my last year of high school in a public US high school.

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.

> Most American schools are so regimented that any exploration of knowledge is actually sneered down.

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.

We at the same time lament the fact that the primarily utility of most of our schools are subsidized governmental childcare and also praise the progress of society having liberated the women to be free to pursue the same endeavors as the men.

Perhaps future societies will go back to the drawing board and recognize communal, multi-generational living, where one was tightly integrated with some form of community provides everyone the greatest benefit and happiness, not being dual income wage slaves who leave mostly strangers and the state to raise their children.

In my public and private school experience it was both the other kids in the class who didn't like to be outshined as well as (some, not all) of the teachers who couldn't be bothered with anything outside of the textbook and did not like to be questioned.

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 had a teacher who insisted to my heterochromic classmate, looking him straight in the eyes, that it's not possible to have one brown eye and one half blue/half brown eye, because that's not how genetics work.

I don't understand why teachers are so often threatened by thoughtful children, but it's awfully sad.

There was another case with a different science teacher where we were learning about weather in science class. The book showed a drawn pic of a rain gauge which had a funnel on top of it. Basically a glass cylinder with inches marked on it with a funnel on top to catch the rain. I asked the teacher: "Wouldn't that funnel mean it's catching more rain compared to the diameter of the cylinder and wouldn't that throw off the result making it look like there was more rain than there really was?" And he was adamant that with or without the funnel you'd get the same result.

Because they are incompetent and limited in their knowledge.

Just look at their salaries [oublic school system]. Their pay weeds out quite a lot of good people

American private school salaries are often lower than equivalent public school salaries, because you don't need credentials to teach at a private school, and because private schools can be an easier work environment than public schools.

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.

Better work environment, and private schools typically discount tuition significantly for the children of teachers. At current tuition rates, that's a massive benefit.

Everything is about standardized tests, american schooos are depressing, and as an european who studied at OSU, but had other friends who went to MIT and Ucla and other famous universities, I think americans immensely overrate the quality and difficulty of american universities.

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.

It all comes down to money. If professors make the subject hard, they don’t get students. No students is less money for the University and less opportunity for the professor to scope out potential thesis candidates.

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).

In Europe it's no different, except we mostly only pay with time. Even without the "motivator" of student loans, most people enter university to party, pass tests and get out with paper that grants them access to better-paying or more interesting jobs. Learning is incidental.

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.

Why learn complex stuff when you can zip thru coursework and party with friends, and get laid every week with different chicks, away from parents’ watching eye?

For a teenager with bursting hormones this becomes a trivial choice

Widely true, though as an undergrad in the US I (fairly unusually) wrote and orally defended a 120pp anthropology thesis; as a Masters student in England I wrote a 40pp thesis that was worth only 20% of my overall marks, but sat in an exam hall and handwrote essays for three days (for 70%) while being proctored by a fellow in a robe wearing a sword... In general my British peers were better-spoken and better-read than most American students, but not actually better academically I don't think. I don't think most education produces consistently good results, but it makes a space for some people who are motivated.

It's how most exams and tests work and the emphasis on those (rather than learning) being the goal ruining it all.

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".

> Damn, that part about being excited to learn and share knowledge with your peers only to be shouted down dredged up some memories. Most American schools are so regimented that any exploration of knowledge is actually sneered down.

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.

In middle school, my first year out of Montessori, I was shocked at how little other kids cared about learning.

...

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.

Statistically, there would be some 'Montessori' level(whatever that means) kids in the random student population. It's just they'd been beaten down by the public education system long before OP arrived.

That's totally plausible, I would just add that I attended private middle and high school.

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.

This topic is really controversial and people usually have an axe to grind. I agree to an extent.

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 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.

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?)

Best school I went to divided classes between academic and social --- social classes (gym (physical education), social studies/history, homeroom, &c.) were attended at one's age/grade level --- for academic classes (English, science, math) one attended at one's grade level up to 4 grades ahead, until 8th grade when the cap was removed.

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.

that’s sound awesome! what school was that?

A tiny school outside of an Air Force Base in Mississippi --- the school got DoD funding for all the students from the base attending.

that should have been a research project on how to do school properly :-) I bet some phd in education could easily have published a research paper on this.

Hard to say how much of this was the difference between public and private school though right? The montessori kids had parents who cared about education enough to pay the tuition.

Montessori is a very different approach. Plenty of Asian tiger moms who care about education, but they don’t necessarily use the Montessori approach, at home or otherwise.

A friend of mine put his (2) kids in montessori school, he said his daughter she loved going to school every day. When they moved there was no montessori school and the first day in a normal school she came home upset and said the kids don’t care, don’t listen, and they don’t know anything.

Eventually they moved again so they could put her back in montessori school.

You’re probably conflating expensive private school vs. public school here.

As I said elsewhere, it's plausible but to a lesser degree, since I'm comparing private schools here. Montessori was probably more expensive and was probably more attractive to parents that cared a lot more.

> I was shocked at how little other kids cared about learning.

One of my children started public from 1-5 in Montessori and found the same (and at a somewhat selective public school).