I’m part of a now-large-ish Montessori startup and am a sort of Montessori scholar. The biography reviewed here is very good and worth checking out. Overall it’s the best of the biographies available, and is a significant improvement over Kramer’s from a few decades ago.
Just an aside: the extended tangents in the review about Montessori’s entrepreneurialism turning her method into a classist privilege are, uh, really strange. The idea in the review seems to be that the rarity and expense of Montessori in the US is because she charged for trainings and tried to parent some materials. Purely as a matter of historical fact, this is a narrative in search of evidence that isn’t there, and a narrative that isn’t really face plausible. Montessori education is rare because the progressive intellectuals that built the US school system adamantly and vociferously rejected Montessori for pedagogical reasons. There are just way better explanations available for why her work didn’t take hold more widely.
Glad to see Montessori and Stefano’s biography in particular getting coverage though. I’ve enjoyed reading the many comments here about people’s experiences with Montessori!
Thanks - I'd be interested in your alternative explanations if you're willing to comment here? I know it's never simple, and often even just timing is a factor in markets. Sounds like you've given it a lot of thought though.
Yes I think about it all the time, both presently and historically.
It's mainly an intellectual issue. That is: it's a dispute about what is true in development and education.
In the early 20th c., when American progressives and intellectuals were very interested in education, this dispute was explicit. The (nascent) educational establishment reviewed Montessori's works, attended her trainings and published criticisms, and held whole conferences on the problems with the method. She was very popular for about five years or so, but the popularity was grassroots. The intellectuals always thought she was wrong. Just as one example: the intellectual current in the US was to delay it until later for largely Rousseauvian reasons (reading is an adult imposition that children aren't naturally interested in). Montessori became famous in large part because she taught children how to read earlier. (This is mentioned in the review above.)
There were dozens of issues like this. Montessori thought there should be "an education of the senses"—but progressives critiqued this idea as incoherent. Montessori thought there should be specific, synthetically designed learning materials. Progressives thought there should be more natural experiences and fewer, if any, truly curricular "learning materials". Some thought her approach was too rigid, others too anarchic. Despite widespread public popularity, Dewey, his students, the NEA, and many many many others were vocally critical of her method. By 1916 it had all but vanished from the country, and wouldn't come back for over 40 years.
(There are modern versions of every single one of these critiques, but the overall educational scene is also just much less intellectual than it was a hundred years ago, so it's not as visible.)
But the first half of the 20th century is also precisely when the US school system took shape! It became bureaucratized, and US progressive educators themselves flip-flopped between different pedagogical approaches—from "project based" approaches to "efficiency" approaches that were more vocationally directed. By the time Montessorians clawed back some influence in the US, the basic shape of the system was already in place, and the only outlet it could take was as a grassroots movement. Which meant: lots of entrepreneurial women starting small schools in scattershot ways. Which means independent schools. Which means tuition.
The school system in the US is so badly broken that it also affects the nature and costs of independent schools. And Montessori schools are largely independent schools. So they are more expensive and less accessible. There's a very explicit narrative at play in the review above, one that concludes with completely unmerited swipes at Amazon/Day One. A frank look at current and historical school policy dynamics would conclude that the barrier to getting more Montessori education in the US is the public school system, and that philanthropic and entrepreneurial efforts to push Montessori forward are the only things that have kept it going at all.
The idea that Montessori schools are expensive, rare, and inaccessible because Montessori pushed them to be this way is really ridiculous. It's belied not just by the above narrative, which is a better explanation, but by decades of work that she did that was strongly characterized by humanitarian and activist efforts for the very poorest students, by many attempted (and mostly failed) partnerships that she attempted to engage in with any national government would listen, by her work in India during WWII (which has tremendous and ongoing influence), and more.
I wrote a Twitter thread (was a bit irritated when I banged this out, unfortunately) that makes some similar points here with a couple of specific citations, newspaper clippings, etc. https://twitter.com/mbateman/status/1499590385638821889
> Just as one example: the intellectual current in the US was to delay [reading] until later for largely Rousseauvian reasons (reading is an adult imposition that children aren't naturally interested in). Montessori became famous in large part because she taught children how to read earlier. (This is mentioned in the review above.)
I must admit that before my children started attending Montessori schools, I had this naïve view that Montessori education was somewhat similar to Waldorf, while on matters like this, they are pretty much diametrically opposed. It's somewhat amusing that there are multiple alternative school systems that claim for themselves to be "child centric" but have such startingly different theories of what children really want or need.
Just checked out your startup and it looks interesting. I glanced through the different brands but didn't see anything related to public schools. Are you guys doing anything on that front? In your opinion, what are the challenges to more widespread adoption of Montessori in the US.
There certainly were objections to Montessori and, as we see today, fierce arguments among the many thought leaders who dedicated their lives to transforming education. But I disagree that “progressive intellectuals” “adamantly and vociferously rejected Montessori for pedagogical reasons.” Education often becomes bogged down in idealogical warfare because we become distracted by differences instead of uniting on common ground. I think there is a lot of common ground, both historically and today. Building on that will advance both Montessori pedagogy and the transformation of education.
If you have not read “Founding Mothers and Others”, I highly recommend it. Many progressive schools were founded by women who studied with Montessori, sought to spread her pedagogy and gave her great respect and credit. Helen Salz and Flora Arnstein,founders of San Francisco’s Presidio Hill School, were inspired to launch their school after observing Montessori work with children in a glass walked classroom at the 1915 San Francisco Exposition. Other Californians attended her California lectures, studied her work, traveled to Italy or trained in her US programs. They went on to found schools and train teachers. This didn’t stop in 1916, indeed most of these schools were founded between 1918 and 194o. They still exist and acknowledge their Montessori roots.
Margaret Naumberg, who trained extensively with Montessori, simultaneously launched a public Montessori and a private one in New York. The schools had very different results but I don’t know why the public program was not replicated or sustained. I wonder what lessons we could learn from the difference in the public implementation and the private one which grew into The Children’s School, later the Walden School, which lasted for over 50 years.
Helen Parkhurst was purportedly the only person Maria Montessori authorized to train teachers. She is known as the “mother of the Dalton School” and the architect of the Dalton Plan which was extremely influential in inspiring school design not just in the US but internationally. Dalton remains a leading school in both popularity with families, credibility with college admissions offices, and with the education community.
It would be interesting to learn how you think it is aligned with Montessorian pedagogy and how it differs.
The bigger question is what are the essential elements of a Montessori education and how are they adapted across different contexts? Should Montessori classrooms only have Montessori materials? For example, can they incorporate Caroline Pratt’s unit blocks? Can’t we teach educators to observe play with unit blocks & facilitate intellectual development through applying Montessori methods with these excellent non-Montessori materials?
Montessori principles are widely taught in education philosophy, early childhood, and child development courses. The basic principles are familiar but not the practices. Is that because the education establishment has shut them out or because the AMI & AMS have not made training accessible? That is probably a hot button question for a highly visible and rapidly growing start up but, IMO, the success of Higher Ground & the Bezos “Montessori inspired” schools will hinge on three things, accessibility, adaptability, and accountability. Indeed any form of transformation will have to tackle those three areas and that is one reason finding common ground is important.
Your work is interesting and important. Good luck!
This is very much a “yes and”. I think I can speak for all of us working on the course when I sat that we don’t think that industrial innovation is the only or even the most important part of history. Why does developing a course on one aspect somehow reduce the importance of another?
The parts of LIC immediately adjacent to Astoria and Queensboro plaza aren't too bad, but the closer you get to the river and further north you get the more of a pain in the ass LIC can be. I used to live adjacent to the sculpture park and that hike to the N was a serious workout in the winter (especially with groceries!). Great view of Manhattan, though.
Yep. I travel to China frequently and this is a huge pain. There are some moderately useful workarounds you can do, like floating money from a friend in your WeChat Pay. But at the end of the day, you are highly dependent upon people hooked into the native financial infrastructure.
For what it's worth, what the Maya families are doing is a version of the central principle of Montessori early education (and what my company is trying to scale). That is, build a capacity for deep concentration in early childhood using (1) high autonomy pedagogical practices and (2) an environment with a structure that makes it possible for children to contribute to practical life.
I am part of a startup with founding team of 12 previous coworkers. One of our selling points during the seed round was that we're starting off with an aligned team. It was really attractive to some investors.
In principle the same should go for hiring, but in practice I think it's game theoretically more complicated. I've hired swaths of cohered tech teams before, but it was one by one, to allow for more individualized assessment and negotiation.
I agree. I'm inclined to think the concepts are more subtle, not less.
Some traits are shaped by sexual selection because of their deleterious effects. It's an honest signal: if you can survive despite having that crappy trait, you must be really robust!
You can't conceptualize that as a fitness hit, because of what fitness means in the context of evolutionary biology. But you had better be able to conceptualize it somehow, because it's interesting and important if true.
"The anti-Rockefeller focus of these otherwise incompatible political positions owes much to Populism. 'Populists' believe in conspiracies and one of the most enduring is that a secret group of international bankers and capitalists, and their minions, control the world's economy. ... Populists and isolationists ignore the tangible benefits that have resulted in our active international role during the past half-century."
The Bilderberg Group does exist, has economically powerful members and acts in private. So it's hardly a stretch to believe that not a secret group but a known group is exerting some level of control over the world economy.
>The Bilderberg Group does exist, has economically powerful members and acts in private.
A bunch of wealthy and influential people assemble to discuss policy and other strategy. I'm not sure why this is unexpected, bad, or why it should be frowned upon or disallowed.
Because when the super-wealthy collaborate, it's usually on stuff that benefits them, to the expense of everyone else, e.g. software patents, copyright extensions, and trade agreements with all sorts of fun stuff hidden inside: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership_inte...
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
Well, considering the wealth and power concentrated in those rooms during the meeting, these people would have a good shot at foisting whatever system they want over the world. I'm not arguing it should be disallowed, but it is disconcerting when every billionaire in the world might agree on the same set of policies.
Not endorsing the guy in this video and don't know much about him personally. With that disclaimer, if you watch this video his lampooning of these meetings as an insider is quite hilarious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbfBi-O8ijg#t=11m45s
I've been looking for software for months that would help facilitate a lot of collaborative document production. I love the simplicity and user interface of this system -- almost every other system I've tried fails in some major element of the user experience.
It's missing two things that I would need to actually use it:
1. An overview, where you can see the status and progress of all the projects at a glance. Right now, as far as I can tell, the only info the overview page gives about the projects is the project name and participants. I'd love to be able to see which columns were completed in the overview page.
2. Project templates. I want to have a few different project types, each type of which loads a default set of columns, colors, and tasks.
One final observation is that I'm not sure what the "state" field of the columns does. Changing the state doesn't seem to have any visible effect. For my purposes I'd like each of the columns to represent project stages and for it to be very meaningful when we've moved from one project state to the next.
Looking forward to seeing future iterations of this project! I've been amazed at how hard it is to find a software solution for my needs, and am very glad to see new promising new development in this area.
Thanks for taking the time trying out our product.
1.The product so far is in its early days. A better overview across projects will definitely be developed.
2. In the backend, a project is based on a template system. It's not visible to the user yet as this concept further needs adjustments before we can roll it out . In fact the current project design is just our first "plugin" of how a project can look. We hope to offer multiple ways to visualize a project in the future.
The state field is a system state (not changeable) that is used for triggers and in the future reporting. When you tick of a Task as finished, a trigger occurs that will look up the column with the system state "Completed" and move the task there. It's a bit rough at the moment, but could be a handy way to automate certain tasks later on and provide reports across projects.
I’m part of a now-large-ish Montessori startup and am a sort of Montessori scholar. The biography reviewed here is very good and worth checking out. Overall it’s the best of the biographies available, and is a significant improvement over Kramer’s from a few decades ago.
Just an aside: the extended tangents in the review about Montessori’s entrepreneurialism turning her method into a classist privilege are, uh, really strange. The idea in the review seems to be that the rarity and expense of Montessori in the US is because she charged for trainings and tried to parent some materials. Purely as a matter of historical fact, this is a narrative in search of evidence that isn’t there, and a narrative that isn’t really face plausible. Montessori education is rare because the progressive intellectuals that built the US school system adamantly and vociferously rejected Montessori for pedagogical reasons. There are just way better explanations available for why her work didn’t take hold more widely.
Glad to see Montessori and Stefano’s biography in particular getting coverage though. I’ve enjoyed reading the many comments here about people’s experiences with Montessori!