Comment by tjansen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tjansen | Hacker News Reader

My oldest daughter is going to a public Montessori elementary school, and my youngest daughter will start this summer. To understand the following points, you need to know that German elementary school is grade 1 to 4, usually starting when kids are 6, and in Montessori schools the students are in mixed-age classes.

Some things I noticed:

- there are kids who are doing really well, and there are other kids who (I think) have more trouble than I'd expect in a classic elementary school

- a few kids are learning at a faster pace, like my daughter who skipped 2nd grade.

- there is a shocking number of kids who are having trouble and have to repeat a grade, usually 3rd grade. Last year, 3 out of 6 third graders had to repeat third grade. Not sure how statistically relevant it is, and it feels closer to home as those three are my daughter's best friends, but it was quite surprising and made us wonder whether it's the right school for our younger daughter (who's a bit wilder and has less patience and discipline).

- in addition to the usual ADHD stuff, there is a surprising number of kids who are diagnosed with dyscalculia. Not sure what's normal, and of course this is a small sample, but still makes us feel a bit uneasy.

- a possible reason why some kids are struggling could be the student/teacher ratio. There are 27 kids per teacher. I think that's way too high to support kids who are having difficulties.

- I should also mention that Covid interrupted Montessori schools more than traditional schools. Kids are supposed to work with Montessori materials, and they weren't available in home schooling. Teaching via video was difficult in mixed-age classes. Even today, kids do not experience the school as intended, as the class needs to stay together all day and they are not free to roam to other rooms, like workshops or the library.

My daughter is going to a private Montessori kindergarden.

First year was terrible, her educator constantly complained about her, she wasn't eating at all, a lot of days she wasn't sleeping, there were days they called us to pick her up in the middle of the day because she was inconsolable.

The moment she switched educators everything resolved -- she started eating, no more tantrums, sleeping, doing great in her activities.

Montessori is as good as the individual educators are.

Looking back I can see all the red flags -- the fact that I know about the on-and-off divorce of the first educator from her alcoholic husband tells a lot. And there were all sorts of passive-aggressive little things like "Dear parents, tomorrow will be my birthday, I will spend the time with my family and not at work, that is the way we do things here...."

> Montessori is as good as the individual educators are.

I think that's true for any school system. Of course society tried to capture and automate whatever it is that makes good education, but the simply fact is that it always requires individual attention. We need to invest more in good teachers, and in a system that's flexible enough that every kid ends up in a class where they fit.

One of the main problems with Montessori schools is that anyone can call themselves a Montessori school, since Montessori is more of a philosophy rather than a certified set of rules/guidelines.

So the quality of Montessori schools can vary greatly even down to the classroom/teacher level, due to a lack of standardization on teacher education, teacher training philosophies, and school philosophies.

An extremely heavy weighting to this experience is that there is serious developmental delays happening across all grade school children right now. Its really hard to validate any particular experience to any one system right now, I want your experience to be valid but before I sock it into my mind as something to watch out for I have to remember to check what how the non-Montessori options are doing and its struggling right now. All the kids are struggling.

> I should also mention that Covid interrupted Montessori schools more than traditional schools

Oof yeah thatll amplify this issue

It's just the impression I have, comparing the Montessori school to other schools the neighbour's kids go to. Typically they had several video lessons per day, with tasks for the students in between. Of course it's not easy, and the success depends a lot on the effort of both teachers and parents, but those teacher-centered lessons are still quite similar to what kids were doing before. While Montessori-style learning is practically impossible to do over video.

My daughter went to a Montessori school here in Canada from 18-months old until high school. About the class size...

As a Montessori class has students in three different year levels together (e.g. a Casa class would have children aged 3, 4, and 5) and part of the philosophy is for the senior students in a class to assist in teaching the junior students, the class has to have a sufficient number of students in order for this approach to work. Small class sizes don't have enough students to support the learning model.

In my experience 27 children in a class is very typical and not at all an over-populated class. I've seen larger classes work just as well.

The Montessori school my daughter went to would have a director/directress and an assistant in each class.

I'm not sure Montesssori students were affected more than traditional students -- Zoom school was a 100% failure for both my kids.

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