Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

Yes

My oldest daughter attended private Montessori until age 12 when she transitioned to an exurb public Middle school in an extremely high income area.

Transition was easy because the Montessori middle school she was going to was new and hadn't gotten their legs yet, so had a pretty lackluster program. Adding to that the lack of extracurricular and club/team opportunities, and small class sizes, Montessori method starts be become a hindrance to learning the complex social dynamics you need to survive IRL.

My other kids transitioned to US public education at 8 and 10 respectively with no issues

The most difficult transition was for the 8 year old, simply because her personality fits the more loosely structured method of Montessori better, however this faded pretty quickly

Should be noted also that my kids are extremely naturally gifted and generally live in the "AP/Honors" world, so would most likely flourish anywhere. YMMV

“ Should be noted also that my kids are extremely naturally gifted and generally live in the "AP/Honors" world, so would most likely flourish anywhere. YMMV”

All children are extremely naturally gifted, it’s the world around that always manages to grind it out of most of them. I think that also represents what Montessori was aiming for when re-thinking education.

"All children are extremely naturally gifted, it’s the world around that always manages to grind it out of most of them."

What a load of horseshit. Say that in the special education class with 8th graders that can't read or use the bathroom on their own, despite the best efforts and attention of their teachers.

Responding to a post saying children are naturally smart and gifted with "Well what about the disabled children?" isn't helpful to anybody, and purposefully misses the point of what they are saying.

“What a load of horseshit. Say that in the special education class with 8th graders that can't read or use the bathroom on their own, despite the best efforts and attention of their teachers.“ - and that comment right there is exactly what I mean by the world around them always manages to grind out the gifts.. some people never get to see it.

I love the charity of this, and I think as a Heuristic this is a good way to approach pedagogy.

Worth recognizing however that natural variability means there's going to be people with harder times in certain areas.

Our job (collectively) as educators is to make it easy to integrate the wide range of human diversity into regular life, so as to make life easier for everyone in total.

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