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<p>Agree. This seems useless for people that aren’t yet motivated to learn, and there often doesn’t seem to be sufficient incentive to change that.</p>
<p>I’m not trying to contradict anyone or anything, I’m really just curious about this. If somebody is not motivated to work but does well when forced to work, how will that person ever survive in the real world where there not forced by anyone to do anything? How can you teach self-driven motivation? I guess you can’t, but then how do schools seem to turn out brilliantly lazy, but succesful students?</p>
<p>I went to a Montessori school from kindergarten to 4th grade. I loved it there! I had gone to a public school for 2 weeks in fourth grade and it was terrible. It definitely paled in comparison. I think the Montessori schools teach you a lot more at such an early age, which allows for generally more advanced students.</p>
<p>I think there are a lot of people that need to have the rewards education can bring demonstrated to them before they’re motivated. That doesn’t mean they’ll never have self-motivation, they just won’t have it in preschool.</p>
<p>raiderade, the motivation in normal schools comes from evaluation. i felt okay screwing around in preschool because I wasn’t being compared to anyone. but in kindergarten, I felt humiliated being placed in a group with stupid kids. I felt humiliated getting a 75% on a test. and the possibility of failure pushed me to work harder. in the montessori school there was no penalty for failing(and no reward for succeeding)</p>
<p>^Yeah, I guess that makes sense, but I don’t really like the whole competetive fear of failure idealogy of traditional schools which is I guess why I liked how my Montessori school was run a lot more?</p>
<p>i went to montessori for pre-school and kindergarten. my teacher thought i was smart so i did kindergarten for a full day (1/2 there, 1/2 at the public elementary). i remember always drawing and doing a lot of creative things like singing and learning spanish and other crazy things hahaha. but i guess it helped to make me smarter. i was reading novels on my own by 1st grade and by hs i was on the ap track and such. idk i remember it being fun =]</p>
<p>In montessori school it’s true that you are not motivated by grades or any kind of evaluation. You are motivated by a love of learning. I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true. Being motivated because you want to learn and know things is a lot more powerful than just being motivated because you don’t want to be humiliated. I still keep in touch with a few of the kids I went to Montessori school with. Most of them continued into a Montessori elementary school and they are now some of the most successful kids you could imagine. One just competed in the olympics for kayaking (at age 18!). Another is a nationally ranked debate champion. Motivated? I think so.</p>
<p>Montessori will require massive reform in how we develop children.</p>
<p>Montessori belongs a private school. For now. Public integration will not happen.</p>
<p>What 5 year old boy honestly prefers reading over playing with plastic dinosaurs?</p>
<p>Claire1016’s last post is so true! I don’t see any other type of method being nearly as successful in developing self-motivated students who just love to learn.</p>
<p>I went to Montessori from Preschool to 6th grade and loved it. The first Montessori high school is in my city, so I still know a lot of people who do it.</p>
<p>It was really fun. You’re in each classroom for 3 years, unless there’s an issue with a teacher like these was for me in first grade, but anyway, you get to know your teacher and the students you’re with really well. Sometimes I would mess up and call my teachers “mom” or “dad,” and it wasn’t that weird of a thing to do. You just felt really close to them.
Teachers can really easily skip you to the next level when you’re in a class with three different grades. When I was in 1st level (3 to 6 year olds) I would go read with the older kids. It wasn’t like going to a different classroom because the older kids were your friends, as were the younger kids. You’re working with kids on really different levels. There were some children in my classrooms who had mental retardation, some who were incredibly bright, some who were confined to wheelchairs, and so on.
Teachers really met your needs. One of my teachers bought me some more difficult books. Another got more difficult math problems and had me and a few other students (with whom I still go to school, taking advanced math) work on them.</p>
<p>It was just really nice, really casual. You came into class in the morning, and you sat down either at your desk or in the circle outlined on the floor. Then the teacher would talk to you a bit. If you were in the upper level, you might have had homework (maybe 20 minutes a night) and you’d just put it in a box somewhere for the teacher to check and return. The teacher might have a conversation with the whole class, or meet in a smaller circle with just one grade to teach a short lesson. Some teachers assigned a list of tasks, a certain number of which had to be completed within the week, while some just gave you completely free rein. After you’d finished, your time was yours to experiment and learn. I usually played games of probability with my friends.
We didn’t really have tests. Evaluation was more about projects, which were always great. There weren’t very stringent limits, so you could do the bare minimum, or be like me and, as a 5th grader, read a 500 page book on the Medici and then write a 20 page paper (by hand, in cursive, and my writing was tiny).</p>
<p>In general, it was great. It seemed to work for pretty much all the students when they were young, but when they got older, some tire of it, and some long for a more classical education. But, at least for those coming to my school, Montessori students do better, whether they continue with Montessori or move onto other forms of learning. I think it has to do with the fact that usually, we get started on things like reading and math earlier than traditional schools like the ones in which I’ve tutored. We usually are self-motivated, because we have to be, and have high standards. We also seem to often go about things in a different way than the norm, because we teach ourselves a lot.</p>
<p>Oh, as for Montessori not being public, my elementary school was public and the first Montessori high school was and is public.</p>
<p>@choklitrain: I know plenty. And anyhow, Montessori allows you to play with dinasours, it just would probably relate to paleontology or something like that.</p>
<p>^Exactly.</p>
<p>I’m not going to pretend like I’m 100% well versed in the montessori method or anything, but my aunt still keeps in touch with a lot of the students she taught and tells me about some of my classmates. My belief in the montessori method stems from seeing their successes. When I heard that almost every kid I went to school with is doing something spectacular, I had to assume that Montessori School was doing something right. What Millancad said about working with different kids is right too. I think it’s such a great experience to have at a young age.</p>