Ask About Montessori

[HumbleThinker]

Most Montessori schools here in Cincinnati are not religious but simply public schools. For the sake of the thread, I will attempt to ask some questions that may be concerns for someone exploring a Montessori school, so almost like a role play.

I didn't know Cincinnati had such a good public Montessori presence. That's cool.

Is it wise to have students in multiple grades in the classroom? If it were 4th-6th grade, that could potentially be a big developmental difference, and could cause problems with bullying within the classroom. Thoughts?

It's actually the opposite, particularly when a Montessori environment is experienced in early childhood (0-6, but usually 3-6). I'm taking Primary training and thus know more about that age range, so if you don't mind I'll speak from this perspective instead of the Upper Elementary perspective though what is learned in the Primary environment will carry over. In a mixed age environment, the younger children happily learn and are inspired from the older children and the older children become role models to the older children. A decrease of competition, envy, hautiness, etc. is observed, whereas an increase of these traits are typically observed in a single age classroom. Here's an excerpt from the Absorbent Mind on the subject:

"All the older ones become heroes and teachers, and the tinies are their admirers. These look to the former for inspiration, then go on with their work. In the other kind of school, where children in the same class are all of the same age, the more intelligent could easily each the others, but this is hardly ever allowed. The only thing they may do is to answer the teacher's questions when the less intelligent cannot. The result is that their cleverness often provokes envy. Envy is unknown to little children...In the old type of school, the only way to raise the level of the class was by emulation, but this too often aroused the depressing and antisocial feelings of envy, hatred, and humiliation. The brighter children became conceited and dominated the others..." (226-27) Chapter 22 as a whole is a good read for this topic. From the perspectives of a traditional public school teacher and a Montessori teacher-in-training that has observed several Montessori environments including Primary and Elementary, I've observed this myself.

 

[Navigator]

I didn't know Cincinnati had such a good public Montessori presence. That's cool.



It's actually the opposite, particularly when a Montessori environment is experienced in early childhood (0-6, but usually 3-6). I'm taking Primary training and thus know more about that age range, so if you don't mind I'll speak from this perspective instead of the Upper Elementary perspective though what is learned in the Primary environment will carry over. In a mixed age environment, the younger children happily learn and are inspired from the older children and the older children become role models to the older children. A decrease of competition, envy, hautiness, etc. is observed, whereas an increase of these traits are typically observed in a single age classroom. Here's an excerpt from the Absorbent Mind on the subject:

"All the older ones become heroes and teachers, and the tinies are their admirers. These look to the former for inspiration, then go on with their work. In the other kind of school, where children in the same class are all of the same age, the more intelligent could easily each the others, but this is hardly ever allowed. The only thing they may do is to answer the teacher's questions when the less intelligent cannot. The result is that their cleverness often provokes envy. Envy is unknown to little children...In the old type of school, the only way to raise the level of the class was by emulation, but this too often aroused the depressing and antisocial feelings of envy, hatred, and humiliation. The brighter children became conceited and dominated the others..." (226-27) Chapter 22 as a whole is a good read for this topic. From the perspectives of a traditional public school teacher and a Montessori teacher-in-training that has observed several Montessori environments including Primary and Elementary, I've observed this myself.

Could that work backwards, however? I'm worried that if I have a younger child, say 3rd grade, and they are looking up to a 6th grade student, there is a good chance that that 6th grade student is not a good role model, and my child would then end up being inspired by that. I don't want that to happen. Wouldn't just having them all in the same age classroom be better, so that the only older voice would be the teacher? We would be decreasing the odds of there being a poor role model, correct?

 

[HumbleThinker]

Could that work backwards, however? I'm worried that if I have a younger child, say 3rd grade, and they are looking up to a 6th grade student, there is a good chance that that 6th grade student is not a good role model, and my child would then end up being inspired by that. I don't want that to happen. Wouldn't just having them all in the same age classroom be better, so that the only older voice would be the teacher? We would be decreasing the odds of there being a poor role model, correct?

This is certainly an understandable concern. However even in traditional schooling there will always be more student models than teachers (for example 1:30) . This is only natural because the mind of a child is closer to that of another child than that of a teacher. Even some methodologies in public school are recognizing that 29 peers hold a greater influence than 1 teacher such as Fred Jones' Tools for Teaching.

If we accept this then we only need to ask which approach has a better chance of producing good role models. This would be Montessori. And in elementary it its very uncommon to have a child who has not come up through primary for the very reasons you describe above. They would very likely not be normalized as Montessori puts it and thus not have developed the traits necessary to succeed in an elementary environment. Montessori observed that it is much harder to develop normalized behavior from scratch after 6 because the child has moved on to the second plane of development. Let me know if this doesnot answer your question.

 

[farouk]

Sounds like regular education, but smaller class sizes so the teacher can pay more individual attention.

Smaller classes can be better for individual attention, although the teacher needs to be good, too.

 

[HumbleThinker]

Smaller classes can be better for individual attention, although the teacher needs to be good, too.

That being said, Montessorians typically see smaller class sizes as undesirable. The fewer children there are, the less opportunity for social learning. Probably more importantly, the guide's presence will be much stronger even if he is not directly interfering, which can negatively impact independence and concentration.