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Comment by sushp | Hacker News Reader

I had a good impression of "Montessori" from hearing that Larry/Sergey/Bezos went to one. When I put my kid in it at 3 years old, he hated it. As I looked into it more, it seems to me that it is actually very rigid, with kids being able to play with just a small set of toys that don't really exercise their creativity, and with little opportunity for group play. We switched him to a Reggio Emilia school where the kids are constantly doing group projects and art and he enjoys it a lot more. I recommend parents observe what's actually happening in classrooms and think about what's best for their kid in the early years instead of assuming "Montessori" is the best path.

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Like anything, there are lower and higher quality implementations of Montessori programs. What you are saying here does not reflect the Montessori program I went through myself, and I think I can credit the Montessori program with a great deal of my later stage curiosity and drive to outperform.

I would say the same of the public high school that I attended. The attitude of the teachers and the other students was fantastic, and it really helped propel me forward in life, gave me a ton of lessons that I don't think most people were able to take from their own public high schools.

In both cases, my parents (Mom especially) were so incredibly stubborn about finding the best school for their kids. We literally moved the whole family to the town that had the best public school where my parents could afford a single family home. Love you Mom, thank you for caring, and to all other parents I would strongly advise against picking a school based on its philosophy. The quality of teacher matters much more than anything else.

We visited multiple Montessori schools for both my kids and I can confidently say that I met some of the saddest and coldest teachers I have ever seen in my life. I am not sure that is really best environment for small kids.

I myself went to shitty public schools and became an exceptional student later on. I am doubtful about the impact of early education on future success.

Yeah. In general I also don't like much about the vibe of Montessori parents.

That is definitely not my experience. The teachers at my kids’ school are vivacious and friendly. They very clearly love their jobs, and love watching kids grow.

I never went to Montessori, but did cub scouts at one and those were some odd kids and parents. I felt like I was on an alien planet. Not bad people or anything, just certainly different. Like they took a class on how to act human, but lost something in translation.

I do recall there being a lot of toys and stuff. There was an old Texas Instruments computer that caught my interest as we had computers with Windows 95 at my school. Apparently nobody was allowed to touch it though.

My guess is the best school for your kids is one where they're safe and one with curious and motivated kids and enthusiastic teachers that can help inspire and unlock talent. The method is secondary, but kids should be both challenged and given some amount of freedom to explore. It also helps if the parents care and ensure their kids are functioning members of society.

the best school for your kids is one where they're safe and one with curious and motivated kids and enthusiastic teachers that can help inspire and unlock talent

the montessori method is designed to achieve exactly that. so the method matters because it enables children to become like that.

It may be designed to do that, but I'm highly skeptical it does a better job than a typical well-run school. I've heard plenty of horror stories too.

you have to observe it in person to really get it. it does a much better job. i haven't heard any horror stories. but for any story you hear, you have to ask, is that actually an accredited montessori school, or is it one that just uses the name for marketing reason.

Agreed. But that is not necessarily the Montessori system. Plus you can kind of do that yourself to your kid and not expect the school system to do that. Unfortunately we live in a real world and teaching is a job just like any. No one else other than you will have the best incentives to see your kids succeed.

I am of the belief that the best school, for those who can afford it, is homeschooling. Most of the time there is no one who cares more about a child’s education than the child’s parents.

Not everyone can afford to have one parent stay at home, but those who can should try it out. Most of the time there’s online curricula that can be followed and the course work can be completed in a fraction of the time vs learning in a public school. This leads to more time for extracurriculars and give more time for social interaction.

I completely agree with you but man who has time and energy to spend all the time with kids? It is more than just affordability.

I went to one near me just to check it out. They started to moan about public education system and seemed want to be alternative for the sake of it. Some parents I know there are definitely on a woo-woo spectrum. School system in NZ is already a lot like montessori with heaps of fluidity.

p.s. I’ve been joking that soon you won’t be able to take your kid anywhere without a montessori/waldorf/reggio franchise.

The thing is Montessori doesn't mean anything. Any school can call themselves Montessori. So it all depends on actual accreditation. Some accreditations are also not worth the paper they're printed on (like NAMC). AMI and AMS are considered to be the two most serious accreditation

My son's school is AMI accredited and at least there's not much woo-woo here. Children have to be up to date with vaccination (or they're not admitted), only thing slightly woo-woo (from the local point of view) is that the parents who chose this school chose it because they want their kid to have more of a play-based, child directed education and don't want them to have homework and tuition in kindergarten. This is in HK where a lot of children going to public schools will have homework and will get tuition in order to prepare for the primary school entrance exam (and later to the middle school entrance exam).

On the other hand, Waldorf is fully woo-woo. They claim that children should not be taught to read before they get their first adult teeth and have a bunch of very weird racist myth about reincarnation (read up on anthroposophy)

NZ primary schools have no homework and are play based too, hence why it made little sense to me.

Sounds like Montessori is healthier than public HK schools but it's more borderline in NZ, as parent said. Nobody has homework in kindergarten there!

Yea Steiner is woo-woo but so what? Most people are woo-woo (religion) and perhaps old Rudolf realized it has some value in human development. The specific details of the woo hardly matter.

As I see it, the main values of Steiner are the close community and the not forcing them to do logical thinking in Piaget's preoperational stage (before 7 years old), which Rudolf seems to have interpreted as play-play-play all day-day-day, but that might be fine.

Yes, public schools in Asian countries tend to be very problematic to say the least. New Zealand, Australia and Europe tend to have vastly better schools when it comes to respecting the child's need to play. I do see the value of things being child-directed versus being play based but directed by the teacher (like I had as a kid in France) and that for me is the benefit of Reggio Emilia and Montessori.

To be fair, I also wouldn't put my kid in a religious school :) But yes, I agree there's some good ideas with waldorf. Personally though if I had been told when I was a kid not read before 7, I would have been rather pissed off.

Not intending to be rude, but the common denominator here might be the region these schools are based in, vs the particular flavor of education.

A close family member of mine has taught Montessori for 30 years at the same school. The school has changed a lot in those 30 years (for the worse, unfortunately), but it’s nothing to do with the education methods and everything to do with broader trends in the area.

Not rude at all I live in NYC. Education methods mean nothing if they are not executed well. Plus I want my kids to decent human beings above all.

I agree. In Austin, Montessori preschools tend to be more rigid and doctrinaire. I don’t know if this is true everywhere, but they also tend to have disproportionately high representation of immigrant families. My impression, based on 8 years of interactions at two different Montessori schools, is immigrant parents seem more deferential toward the teachers and administrators. And more interested in measurable academic outcomes. So the schools respond by keeping the kids on a more linear path with engaging the various “works” (Montessorispeak for projects or learning kits). That said, I think it’s still a great system.

I grew up attending a public elementary school in Sacramento that implemented Open Education. It had many similarities to Montessori— kids received a weekly “contract” with their personalized learning plan and assignments due. If you wanted to do all your math work on Monday, reading on Tuesday, and spend Wednesday through Friday on science, you could (within reason since some things required group lessons). It was an amazing system and I feel extremely fortunate to have experienced it.

That said, now I kind of wonder how much the California open-minded, seeker mentality was responsible for this.

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/03/27/520953343/open-sc...

Same here. My three-year old loved maps and we always played with them (making map of her room, etc etc)

We enrolled her at the local Montessori and she rushed to the map section but was told she is forbidden from using it until she takes the lesson on that or whatever is called. That lesson was 2-3 months away, and meanwhile all other kids were able to play with the maps.

This, combined with other rigidities and a crazy schedule totally unsuited for working parents (9-1pm wtf) made it impossible. After struggling a lot for two months, she went back to her old daycare and was very happy there, and is now at her elementary school now

I’m by far not an expert on it (my wife is, she teaches Montessori), but AFAIK what you observed was because it isn’t viewed as play, but as work - as in school work. All of the activities are called “works,” and they’re taken very seriously.

Part of this is, I think, to teach responsibility; for example, if a student gets a work out, they’re expected to put it back exactly how they found it. Montessori classrooms are incredibly well-organized, with everything having its (labeled) place.

Can you share where your wife learned the Montessori method from?

Center for Montessori Teacher Education/North Carolina. They don’t have the greatest website, but they’re MACTE-accredited, and AMS-affiliated.

Update: I asked my wife, she said that without other context, it sounded like the school may not be “following the child,” a core tenet of Montessori. She said that while they might steer a new student away from that initially, if they’re clearly interested, she’ll bump that lesson up early instead of when it was scheduled.

There are different “factions” and accreditation organizations in Montessori. Some are more liberal and others are authoritarian and rigid. Not all Montessori schools are like you describe, but some certainly are.

I agree, and sadly this kind of gives the Montessori label pretty limited predictive value. Turns out you just need to find a good school, regardless of label.

It really comes down to the teachers skill and personality- and that often comes down to if the school can afford the best teachers. Often in the USA regular public schools in wealthy communities will have better teachers than you will find at most private Montessori schools.

Part of schools "affording" the best teachers is not money, but the amount of discipline problems they need to deal with. Which correlates to the financial status of the families at that school. For tons of reasons.

Which families tend to win the lottery to go to these schools? The parents that can afford to. Even if the school is free, the transportation is often not. Plus the parents have to have enough free time to be aware of the lottery for their 3 year old.

I suppose this means that Montessori is not a single movement, but multiple movements all claiming to be the proper one.

most improper ones are simply capitalizing on the name recognition, some may have the idealism but fail in the implementation. if you do enough research it is pretty clear that only AMI accredited teachers implement the original method as designed by maria montessori. AMS comes close. and everyone else never received any form of montessori training at all.

(disclaimer: my wife got accredited by AMI)

In our market we see lots of the use of the word Montessori for marketing value only, when it practice it often means something like: "we have a bunch of wooden toys and a certain aesthetic in our classroom." I've heard these referred to as "Monte-sorta."

I attended one for elementary and middleschool. Early on everything we did was in groups. Take the multiplication flash cards and quiz eachother. Mess with the abacus. Look at the geological periods chart, etc. All the stuff seemed pretty fun to me. Yes, we had outdoor recess everyday, alhough we had a good setup with a big playground and some woods on the property. A lot of montessori setups I see now look really spartan like almost a daycare center.

But in hindsight I could tell it depends heavily on the teachers as well as the students you are saddled with because of how much group stuff there is. There was clear divisions between the kids who would reliably do their work and the kids who procrastinated and played around flicking pencils at eachother all day. This was generally possible while the main classroom teacher was busy with some subset of students for a lesson or some other work.

Once we got access to desktop computers we replaced the pencil flicking all day with games. They'd be in the main classroom but we'd just turn the crt monitors to the side to hide it. This was long before IT surveillance tools, we had full internet access too. Gameboys a plenty.

There was a lot of fluid experimentation however. At one point we took all the shelving in the room and turned it in such a way to create sort of cubicles. I think the idea was to get the kids who probably had ADHD to lock in and do their work more vs being tempted to socialize and screw around all day with their friends. Eventually they banned us from turning the CRT monitors as well.

Would a more rigid school structure help other kids? Sure, probably, but I don't think what public school was doing would have helped those kids much. Honestly montessori is a lot like the adult working world now that I am in that and see the parallels. A lot less handholding and you needing to not give into procrastination and ask mentors for individual direction from time to time. Group work and discussion coupled with independent work. Project based education that is more like actual real life work projects vs the dry lecture/memorize/exam patterns. That being said it was more "traditional" and less montessori towards the end as they had to prepare you for a proper highschool setup, so more formally scheduled classes and a lot less free time in the main classroom.

thank you for that detailed insight. i only had the opportunity to observe ad learn about montessori in kindergarten. what you describe is pretty much what i expected from reading about it, but i haven't seen any stories from actual students who experienced it.

it would seem that some groups in your class could have benefited from more teacher attention. or maybe from mixing up the groups.

People were loathe to work in other groups compared to their friends like most kids are. Overall it was a great experience though. A few kids probably with the most lack of focus and fooling around did eventually end up with special 1 on 1 attention as well. Everyone is doing fine today, great outcomes really.

People were loathe to work in other groups compared to their friends like most kids are.

understandable, but actually a problem that should to be counteracted. it's not really healthy if the same kids always work together because it leads to building cliques. ad you don't want that in a school. it also causes kids that don't fit in any group to be excluded.

I think the idea was to get the kids who probably had ADHD to lock in and do their work more

Wow that sounds terrible. My mother used to have me sit in silence at the dining room table to try to get me to do my homework. My god, so much noise. Libraries are similar. People adjusting on a chair, pages turning, pens dropping, car doors outside, eating.... There are just so many freaking little noises. I'd rather have a wall of noise so I can't pick out the distractions and work on whatever I was working on. (Not that it always worked, but I had a chance).

> it is actually very rigid, with kids being able to play with just a small set of toys that don't really exercise their creativity

There exist various implementations of Montessori. AMI was founded by Dr. Montessori [0] and certifies schools so that parents can have some assurance of adherence to a standard. The many materials in a Montessori classroom, including things that look like a dollhouse, don't exist for unstructured play but are learning tools for the guide and student to use in their work. Once the student gets a lesson using a material, then they can choose to practice using the material in their self-directed work periods, which can be in groups.

My kids had a mostly positive mixed experience in Montessori. In addition to evaluating how a child comes to grip with the method, there is also how they work with their guide. My observation is that even skilled practitioners don't always achieve a strong rapport with every student. In those situations the Montessori classroom's weakness is that there is only one guide for all subjects as opposed to a traditional school's subject-specific teachers.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_Montessori_Interna...

Montessori classroom's weakness is that there is only one guide for all subjects as opposed to a traditional school's subject-specific teachers

which tradition is that? in my country subject-specific teachers don't appear until middle school. so that's a rather moot point for kindergarten and primary school.

>In those situations the Montessori classroom's weakness is that there is only one guide for all subjects as opposed to a traditional school's subject-specific teachers.

This isn't a hardset rule. We had the main teacher but we also had specific teachers as well for stuff like music, art, languages, or gym class. By middleschool there was no more "main" teacher. You were basically in a committee of teachers all specific including science, english, and history by that point. Part of that I'm sure was to prepare you for highschool in a non montessori setting.

> In those situations the Montessori classroom's weakness is that there is only one guide for all subjects as opposed to a traditional school's subject-specific teachers.

This is very much dependent on the school (and probably age of the students). At the one my kids go to, as soon as they’re in 1st grade, they have multiple teachers: science, music (which doubles as theater - the entire school does an annual play), art, and P.E., in addition to their main teacher.

For sure, my kids' school was AMI and still had a few ancillary adults. It can still be a bummer most of the day.

> had a good impression of "Montessori" from hearing that Larry/Sergey/Bezos went to one.

Oh man… survivorship bias thinking is dangerous.

At last for me, the last thing I wanted to my son would be for him to become Jeff Bezos.

Well said, see my post above. People think that becoming a rich psycho is somehow great. Montessori schools I visited were depressing AF.

Agree that they are rich psychos.

Disagree that this means the probabilistic signal is negative. They did become especially capable psychos.

There is no signal here whatsoever. Elon and Steve which I considers the best entrepreneurs in our life time did not go to so called Montessori schools. Also let us not clump all alternative schooling systems as Montessori.

I don't doubt your experience, but mine was the opposite. I went to a couple of different Montessori schools, from kindergarten through 6th grade. The majority of our day was what I would call "structured free play"; even in 6th grade, I think formal "sit down" lessons were only half the day. Teachers would often do impromptu sort of lessons for a single or small group of children, like if they were playing with map toys they'd come over and talk about different countries and the weather and food and whatever.

The rest of the time had loose guidelines on what to do (like you should read X pages of any book in the library) or you were free to do/play with what you wanted once that stuff was done.

We were largely encouraged to do things in a group. I think the only place to even sit alone if you wanted was the book nook, everything else was communal tables.

I really enjoyed it, and was ahead to the point of being bored when I switched to public schools. I tried for like a week in 5th grade and they were covering geographic features I'd already done back in 2nd or 3rd grade (archipelagos and islets and what not).

I have a book "The Montessori Toddler".

We read a lot with our son who is almost 3 now. In the book it is recommended not to introduce fantasy in books until 6 (when apparently children suddenly understand the difference between fantasy and reality). I assume this is an original Montessori teaching.

Anyone who knows childrens books knows they are around 95% fantasy stories containing anthropomorphized animals (and some cars/trains/planes).

As far as i can tell our son knows the difference between what we read in books and the real world, and has done for a while. The things we read in books we discuss while reading. In the real world we discuss real world things. He has never shown behavior that would suggest these are mixed up in his head.

Maybe I misunderstand their point around fantasy/reality. But the seems so obviously wrong to me that I would be cautious about the rest of their teachings. Which does seem to contain some good advice.

seems so obviously wrong to me that I would be cautious about the rest of their teachings

that doesn't seem fair. the reality is complicated. i found this paper which talks about this issue: i just briefly skimmed it, but it suggests that the older kids get the better they can make the distinction:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3689871/

generalizing that into a single statement from which age fantasy is fine is difficult if not impossible. as a parent, i wouldn't worry, but as an educator i need to be more cautious because such recommendations tend to be taken seriously, and therefore it is reasonable to err on avoiding fantasy for younger kids.

kids thinking they can fly are a risk: https://slate.com/advice/2025/08/parenting-advice-daughter-i...

and therefore such advice is more defensive than to be taken as a hard rule that must not be crossed.

That's actually my biggest pet peeve with Montessori and I say that as a father whose son goes to a Montessori school.

Is it true that younger children have a harder time making the distinction than older children? Yes that's true. There's research that shows it. But does that necessarily mean that removing exposure to fantasy in stories is beneficial? And would a child exposed to fantasy not learn to distinguish between make belief and reality earlier? There's actually some research that shows that [1]

So while there's a lot I love about my son's school, the stance on fantasy is something I vehemently disagree with. What's interesting though is that most parents in my son's class will happily read fantasy books with anthropomorphised animals, talk about Santa Claus, etc... and completely disregard the idea that fantasy shouldn't be introduced. Officially, we can't give books with fantasy stories to the school library but last time I went to read to children there, 20-30% of the stories had clear fantasy elements.

If you're interested about the rest of Montessori ideas, it's interesting to read "Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius" by Angeline Lillard. She tries to go through most of the Montessori teachings and justify it with existing studies etc... For most part, she finds studies that are relevant and solid but not for the part of fiction where you can really feel that she struggles to justify her own bias.

[1]

- https://www.alisongopnik.com/Papers_Alison/Walker%20Gopnik%2... for a survey of research on that. It shows that fantasy is both beneficial and that children can start distinguishing between fantasy and reality.

- https://liberalarts.mercer.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/20... Do monsters dream? Young children’s understanding of the fantasy/reality distinction

Thanks for the recommendations.

I had the exact same experience except my child is still there. No free play, very little time outdoors, very little interaction with classmates, no creativity allowed. Unhappy child who regularly doesn't want to go. We try to give her outdoor play with friends after preschool to make up for it.

I’m sorry you’ve had that experience. My kids’ Montessori school has a playground, athletic field, and butts up against woods, which they regularly go into for activities. One of the classes actually spends most of their time outside - weather permitting - because that teacher is getting her Master’s in some form of education that focuses on outdoor learning.

It really depends on the teacher (like most school systems) and the support of the parents --- a fellow woodworker and I were enlisted to help make educational aids at one of the schools my daughter attended) --- agree one needs to find the best thing for each child.

We will soon be picking a school for our oldest. (Not in the US.) We're choosing between a Montessori school and a couple others.

I see a lot of sentiment along the line of "quality over philosophy" -- how can we evaluate quality? There is limited data available[1]. What do we ask the school when we visit them?[2]

[1]: Unsure if standardised test scores really matter at a young age, so we're grasping for straws with "fraction of parents with tertiary education" (higher means children have more progressive views?) and "fraction of girls in each class" (higher means calmer classrooms?).

[2]: I don't know how to evaluate schools so my best ideas are to ask about staff retention (is it a tolerable environment?), how they evaluate that they get the desired effects out of efforts (do they do things purposefully?), etc.

If you can, observe the school yards while the kids are playing outside. What's the atmosphere like? How do the kids interact? How do the supervising teachers interact with the children? Would you want your kid to be a part of that? Bonus points if a teacher steps up to kindly ask you what the hell you're doing there! :-)

One factor that has been studied has having a major impact on quality especially in younger years is teacher to student ratio, the less student per teacher, the better the quality. It usually also helps with retention :). I do think that retention is a good element, when looking for my son's school, I read the reviews on Glassdoor and on https://www.internationalschoolsreview.com (paid site) to get a better idea of what teachers thought of the school.

If looking at Montessori, check for certifications. Are they AMI or AMS certified? Those are the two most serious qualifications. If they are not certified, then I think you should be sceptical. Not being certified doesn't mean that the school is necessarily bad but there's a lot of school that trade on Montessori just for marketing purposes and it doesn't bode well for the quality of education when the owner is willing to mislead parents by claiming they're Montessori when they don't try to become certified.

Within alternative schools, Regio Emilia can be good but, from my experience, it's even more dependent on the teacher since there's less structure and it falls on the teacher to take children's input and guide the class toward interesting discussion and group projects. My son went to a Regio Emilia pre-nursery (2 to 3 years old, 2 hours a day) and didn't like it as much as he likes his current Montessori kindergarten. He complains anytime there's a public holiday because he would like to go to school.

I recommend against Waldorf because even though they have some aspects that look good (nature, play based), the underlying philosophy is bat-shit crazy.

Resources if you're interested: - Montessori: The Science behind the Genius by Angeline S. Lillard. Rather academic discussion on the different elements of Montessori education and what studies and research supports it. It's interesting if you're interested in education. I do think that sometimes the author is a bit biased and tries to stretch the meaning of studies to fit her preconceived notion that everything Montessori related is the best thing since sliced bread. In particular, within Montessori there's a weird belief that fantasy elements (like stories with talking animals, etc) are not suitable for children below 6 because they can't reliably distinguish between fantasy and reality. It's something I personally disagree with and the studies that she tries to use to support that point are not really that convincing. - Cribsheet by Emily Oster has a chapter on picking pre-schools that can be useful (and I think applies well to Kindergarten). (I don't always agree with that writer but I do feel that she sometimes has useful points of view)

Montessori is just an educational framework, I have no idea where you draw broad conclusion that the one or two things you looked at deemed it be "rigid" or little opportunity... Sounds like a random bad apple. There's a correlation between gifted children and montessori because it allows them to develop at their own pace which is often faster than that of traditional classrooms etc, it's not for everyone.

This comment and the whole conversation is a great argument for the value of science like this study vs a biased sample of anecdata.

Reggio is way better than the other weirdly controlling, Waldorf-like Montessori

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