Opposite the Traditional or Factory Method

The child is not an empty vessel the teacher pours information into.  The child is a absorbing sounds, feelings, sensations and images, even before birth!  This is how they learn language, crawling and then walking - no one "teaches" them.  A Montessori environment facilitates this learning to higher, broader levels and abstraction like math, reading and writing.  All that Dr Montessori observed and incorporated in her system has been proven in thousands of schools all over the world and in the US.  Education research has also shown her methods to be the most effective as more and more research has been done in the 100 plus years since she opened her first school.

Learns by Doing 

A young child learns moving around, feeling, touching and pursuing things that interest him.  Observing this, Dr Montessori developed an environment that provides the materials for the child to continue his growth with freedom of choice, movement, experimentation, discovery and hands-on materials. Her system develops the whole child – physically, mentally, spiritually and socially.  This is the opposite of the current education system which sits children at a desk, they can’t move and all are fed the same material – a factory education.

The Montessori environment allows the child to develop at his pace and his learning style – it is tailored for the child to continue to develop himself as he has been doing since birth.  This helps the flame of curiosity and creativity to burn brighter as they grow.  Learning is a joy and brings great satisfaction to the child.  They learn faster and with much greater depth and retention.  They do not want rewards or incentives – they want to learn.  I like when a student comes to me and says "Mr Bill, will you show me this?" or "Mr. Bill, come see what I did!!"

Beyond Elementary

A Montessori education through elementary would then transition to inquiry/project-based learning at the high school level.  These are the most effective methods promote learning. Dr. Montessori said that she would model high school education after the Boy Scouts with their badges - this is project/inquiry based education. This is the trend in higher education - Olin College is an example of this.