Is Montessori Right For Your Child?

With a single observation, Maria Montessori, the Italian educator and physician, ignited a revolution in education. She jump started what could loosely be called a new appreciation of childhood. Or, in other terms, a culture of education. She challenged us, as a society, to think differently.

What was Maria Montessori's original insight?

As one of the first female physicians in Italy, working at the turn of the twenty-first century, Montessori hypothesized that under the right conditions - with the right set of core values and principles at play - children would flourish of their own accord, with little or no overt didactic instruction from adults.

This radical idea is slowly making its way into mainstream culture. And, it is our belief that parents are the ones that will carry the torch and complete the movement that she enacted, now over one hundred years ago, by asking their children the simple question, "What do you want to learn?", and then "following the child".

While Montessori education is typically represented as brick and mortar schools with little to no technology usage, the method is increasingly being called upon for digital education. Those inroads are already happening with apps like Primary and Alpha Writer.

If we consider current trends in educational approaches, for instance, we only have to consider two of the most popular, the Alt School and the Kahn Academy, to readily identify their primary source of inspiration: Maria Montessori. As these types of programs, and others, work to offer digital solutions to education, the Montessori philosophy is near at hand, with its personalized approach.

For parents, this personalized approach is the big differentiator to consider. Instead of thinking about education as the transmission of knowledge by a teacher to a child, as centuries of educators before her had, Montessori promoted the idea that the teacher should be the one that follows the interests of the student.

The defining nature of Montessori, this personalized education, means that the classroom is designed for any and every child. The curriculum moves with the child, at their own pace. The teachers observe and present students with new information when they are ready, or give a guiding hand at the right time if a child is frustrated. Perhaps the real question is if Montessori is right for your family, and a good way to find this out is to observe a classroom in action and ask a lot of questions.

In closing, what purpose does following the child serve? "The sacred fire of culture," Montessori wrote, is when the spark of interest is coupled with the flame of enthusiasm.

You see, Montessori thought that a single student should be the exemplary case by which a personalized approach to learning would be developed. She thought that education should be based on interests and enthusiasms and not administered by administrators or those with administrative powers. In short, education should be reinvented. It should inspire a life long love and passion for learning. The question we should be asking is, "What do you want to learn?"