As a good libertarian, I feel I ought to like the emphasis that the Montessori method of education places on giving children maximum freedom. On the other hand, what I said on Tuesday, October 17, 2006 was – what is that word they used to use? – that’s it, right.
It’s been called discovery learning, experiential learning, problem-based learning, inquiry learning and now (heaven help us) “constructivist instructional techniques”.
Whatever you call it, it gives worse results for most people most of the time than just telling them.
It would save you time to take my word for it, but, if you are so inclined, you can click on the link to my old blog to discover my reasons #1, #2, #3a, #3b and #0 for saying that teachers consistently overestimate the effectiveness of discovery learning. The individual links no longer work; you’ll have to scroll down. The process will be good for your soul.
So why am I sitting here wincing as I think about the Montessori method for the first time in decades?
Because of these three tweets that form part of a long thread by Samantha Joy, an advocate of the Montessori system. She writes,
How should we help young children develop positive social skills? The typical answer:
>put children in groups
>enforce norms like sharing
>encourage collaborative playBut this approach *backfires*… often tragically. Montessori saw this, and developed a new approach:
Most people think the focus for ages 0-6 should be socializing.
Learning can wait, they say.
This is the time to meet other children and do things together: play outside, pretend, build things.
There’s just one problem with this strategy …
young children, by and large, aren’t all that interested in one another.
They *prefer* to work and play alone.
True? Or just true for the sort of anti-social little freaks who were destined to still own the set of felt tip pens* they got at the age of ten half a century later?
*Most of which still write. That’s because I put the lids on properly.
When someone is young their brain is most able to learn – to waste this precious time being forced into groups and being pushed into mindless “collaborative play” is a horrible waste of the best years for learning – years that a person will never get back.
It is also sinister – as well as “put children in groups” (why? so they can gang up and bully an independently minded child?) and “collaborative play” (i.e. boring and mindless play), there is also the “enforce norms like sharing”.
“Enforcing” is not “sharing” it is STEALING (or extortion – being forced to give up one’s property under threat of violence) – I still remember teachers lying to me at St Andrews Junior School, “bring food to share with your friends” they said, so I asked my parents for this food and they voluntarily gave it to me for this event – but then the teachers took the food, by force, and gave it to my worst enemies, people who tried (every day) to do me harm.
Still the teachers did teach me something – not how to read or anything like that (that I had to learn outside of school), but they taught me (more than 50 years ago now) to never trust people in authority and that that power rests on two things – force and lies.
Sometimes I have forgotten those lessons – and each time I have forgotten them, forgotten to NOT trust people in authority (or the fake “rebels” who are really their gang stooges – gangs of bullies who only pretend to be rebels), and that power rests on force-and-lies, bitter experience has reminded me of the truth.
Remember those in power tend to be thieves and bullies – and their justifications are lies.
That’s why they call it socialization.
If you don’t take your dog out and intro him to new doggie faces, you stand a good chance of having one of those dogs that can never play well with others.
Kids are the same. I can look around my life and see those adults who clearly never went through that socialization process. They still can’t play well with others.
I had a hippie-ish friend who told me she loved to do her craft fairs in or near Montessori schools. The parents were always into her healing crystals.
Just because it’s in the Onion doesn’t mean it’s not true.
https://theonion.com/new-study-reveals-most-children-unrepentant-sociopaths-1819571187/
enforce norms like sharing
Sharing isn’t a norm.
Quite right. “You scratch my back I’ll scratch yours.” is a norm. Sharing requires coercion.
I’ve (re)learned a lot about early childhood by listening to my neighbours’ children at play. Early on, there are lots of squabbles, basically about the collision of interests that arise because each of them subscribes to the principle that “I am entitled to first dibs on everything”. It’s called sibling rivalry for a reason.
I’m hoping that maturity will foster “You scratch my itch I’ll scratch yours”
bobby b
I still have some scars from my “socialization” – although, it is true, I also inflicted some damage myself.
As for wasting the best years of my life, in terms of ability to learn, in a nightmare of pointless “socialization” (I repeat – my schooling taught me nothing, not even how to read), a pox on that.
Horace Mann, who introduced the first state-wide and compulsory State schooling system in the United States (in Massachusetts in 1852) admitted that it was nothing to do with improving literacy and-so-on – it was a measure of social-control to push pro government attitudes.
E.G, West in “Education And The State” (1965) shows that government schools were not really about improving literacy, and so on, in England and Wales (Scotland had locally controlled church schools – till 1872 when the state took over).
Ireland had a system of state schools imposed upon it after 1831 – on a whim of Lord Stanley (later the Earl of Derby) – the Irish taxpayers had no choice in the matter, any more than they had any choice about the imposing of the Poor Law Tax on Ireland in 1838 or the massive increase in the Poor Law Tax in the late 1840s. Anyone who claims that a “laissez faire” policy was followed in Ireland is either ignorant or a liar – people like Lord Stanley (Earl of Derby) and Lord John Russell (an ancestor of the socialist totalitarian Bertrand Russell) were not about rolling back the state – they were about coming up with, or pushing, ideas for state intervention.
But none of the above people were the first to push through a system of compulsory state schools.
The person who first introduced such a system of education was Frederick “the Great” of Prussia. There is a sort of cult of Frederick in the English speaking world, and has been for some centuries. He is, somehow, seen as a champion of reason – one of the few English language writers of the time who understood that Frederick of Prussia was a tyrant and that his rule was a nightmare, both for the neighbours of Prussia, and for the people of Prussia itself, was Edmund Burke.
The cult of Frederick “the great” and the “Enlightened State” “improving the people” has had terrible effects in the world.
Just two glimpses into how the image of Frederick’s regime differed from the reality…..
Visitors admiringly said that one did not see many crippled ex soldiers on the streets of Berlin, in spite of all Frederick’s wars (his wars of unjust conquest – which would have ended in total defeat for Prussia had not Elizabeth of Russia not died just when Frederic’s regime was collapsing – the Cossacks were in Berlin) – but they did not understand the reason for that.
The reason that there were not many crippled ex soldiers in Prussian towns in the time of Frederick is that the medical service of the Prussia Army did not normally bother to treat soldiers who they did not think would be fit to return to combat.
They let you die.
No doubt this was very good for “socialization”.
We are also told that Frederick “codified Prussian law” – and so he did, it was perhaps the most twisted and bizarre legal code produced in the modern world before the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century.
But, as long as one does not actually look at it, one can say “Frederick the Great reformed the law – he produced a legal code”.
I have a bit of a morbid fascination with NotAlwaysRight.com a website mainly devoted to people in customer facing jobs venting about the most stupid, ignorant and obnoxious customers that they get to deal with. The stories come from all over the Anglosphere and beyond but a majority are from the US. Low educational standards are a constantly recurring theme, people unable to do the most basic arithmetic, borderline illiteracy, the most profound ignorance about geography and getting angry about anything vaguely unfamiliar which must
be the fault of immigrants. The comments often allude to the US education system being totally awful.
@Natalie I’m glad you kept the tops on-that’s very important.
Children 0 to 2 do socialise-they just do it with adults and anything else is crazy. After that, gradually increasing amounts of mixing with children of a similar age is good, but start v small.
I remember my own experiences with other 3 year olds very well. Most of them had learned to pretend to be nice until adult supervision was absent and then they got, shall we say, real. Mind-boggling amounts of petty violence (I used to be very slow to anger, which was a big mistake), a total lack of the ability to empathise and a general propensity to solipsism. Certainly they need to be educated out of it, but slowly.
All these subscribe to a one-size-fits-all thinking, which is what we really need to guard against.
Some kids are naturally sociable, some prefer to be on their own. Some learn faster. Some slower. Some are interested only in playtime. Others want concepts. There are all kinds.
Nevertheless, childhood is the correct time for children to start learning how to socialise. They might not want to, but they need to know what the norms are, at the very least.
It’s also good for the kids to learn at a young age that, no matter how smart or strong they are, there comes a point when they need to harness the potential of a group to achieve something, instead of trying to do everything on their own.
The author was referring to very young kids (<2 years). With the appropriate guidance and instruction, they can and will learn. And playing in groups is generally more fun.
My own kids did fine with instruction that was very similar to Montessori during their pre-school. There's a good mix of content and social skills taught so that they can grow to become competent and functional members at the next level (primary school).
My boy's pre-school teachers had an interesting anecdote for me: a few weeks ago they all went to the zoo, and one of the activities required the kids to draw something at one of the enclosures. My boy, having mild ASD, was hyper-focused on getting it to his satisfaction, to the point that the other kids were already eager to move on. Thankfully, his teachers were kind enough to ask him how much more time he needed, and he also understood the importance of moving together, so he compromised with a 'five minutes', then happily rejoined the main group once time was up.
Isn't that a microcosm of what we deal with as adults? Negotiating our personal goals and preferences with that of the group, whether at the workplace, or in a social setting. It cannot be 'me, me, me' all the time – you become an isolate, and if the condition persists, a social outcast.
Given the academic achievements of the Singapore system, we're doing something right. I don't know what's going in the West, but you guys seem seriously messed up.
I thought that I should return just to mention that for every story of people being stupid, in the comments it’s often pointed out by his compatriots that we’re not all like that.
I don’t want my kids socialized. I want them to be civilized.
I had a 4 year science teaching career in the 80s before I opted for the easy life and big money in IT.
At teacher training college discovery learning was deemed the most effective way forward. We were told, in all seriousness, to present children with equipment for practical experiments and to wait for them to arrive at conclusions such as Newton’s laws of motion or various rules of electricity etc all by themselves with only the absolute minimum of teacher help and prompting.
The reality was that most children had difficulty grasping these things even when explained in detail to them again and again.
After a couple of years in teaching I met with my old teacher trainer and told him that discovery learning was idealistic nonsense. He told me he’d known that all along but as an employee he did what he was told safe in the knowledge that all his students would never be required to put such silly theories into practice in their teaching jobs.
“I don’t want my kids socialized. I want them to be civilized.”
I don’t think you can get the latter without the former, since civilization is a social thing, no?
One of the most depressing things is how private schools, at least in Britain and the United States, have embraced the same far left doctrines as the state schools.
So parents desperately sacrifice to send their children to private school – only to have the children taught the same DEI, and all the rest of it.
There are some good private schools – but, at least in the United States, even many Catholic schools have been taken over by the left.
Home Schooling is the only real alternative for many people.
In a blatant and self-serving Appeal To Authority, let me suggest that you don’t see the worst of what happens to “unsocialized kids” until you become a criminal-defense lawyer.
Individualized learning plans will always be best, of course – match the kid to the need – but we barely get the kids to sit down quietly. For society’s sake, we do need to hit at least a bare minimum of throwing kids together in a supervised situation and letting them learn about how to coexist, to ensure that we at least get a start with the true outlier kids.
“What does Jane need” is always going to produce a different (and individually better) answer than “what do these 250 first-graders need.” But that’s a luxury.
@Stonyground
The comments often allude to the US education system being totally awful.
FWIW, I don’t think that is true. Some of the US education system in spectacular some of it borders on child abuse. It depends on where you live, how involved you are as a parent, the type of local government and the strength of the teachers unions.
My kids got a fantastic education. Not perfect, for sure they were taught some bullshit, but overall excellent. Some kids go to school for eight or nine years and can barely read. FWIW, some of my neighbors kids went to Montessori for the first six years of their lives and the three of them are fantastic, well socialized delightful kids. Anecdote isn’t the singular of data, but FWIW.
American education would transform for the dramatically better if parents could take the tax money paid for schools to a different school. Competition is a cleansing and optimizing process.
bobby b – are you saying that Home Schooled children behave in this way when they become adults? Most of the criminals I am aware of were NOT Home Schooled – indeed I do not know of a single criminal around here who was Home Schooled.
I remind you that for the vast majority of human history most children were taught by their parents – they were, in modern language, Home Schooled.
Fraser Orr – then why do most of the private schools teach the same leftist doctrines as the state schools?
Teachers trained in the same ideology – and sending children off to the same “good universities” and Corporate employers.
Still, Fraser Orr, I am glad that your own children went to a good school.
Not all state education systems are equally bad – for example Bavaria (I am told) has much better schools than most places in the modern West.
WRT education systems, i’d like to point out that, in the most recent assessment, Estonia is the highest-ranked European country in math & science, and 2nd-highest in reading. Only some East Asian nations (Singapore, Macau, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea) and Ireland wrt reading, do better than Estonia.
Whether the assessment is sound, is of course debatable.
“That’s because I put the lids on properly.”
How wonderful.
I trust you also arranged them in the box in the correct colour order?
And that, even now, you are careful to centre your wineglass exactly over any knot that may appear on the tabletop?
And align your cutlery in perfect parallelism?
It’s all so familiar…
Peter MacFarlane,
I used to arrange the pens in the order of the colours of the rainbow, with a separate section for mixed colours like brown and pink. But I’m not that perfectly organised, and despite my efforts, some of them have been lost over the years (I maintain this must be because other people borrowed them and did not put them back), and others just stopped working.
Regarding the wineglasses – actually, no, and much of my house is a mess! I have certain areas of my life in which order reigns, and others where it very much does not.
There are also people, both children and adults, who have no interest in learning. You can lead a horse to water…
I’ve never understood that mindset, I just love to be continually learning new stuff.
And Singapore tops the list for all the categories. Like I said, we’re doing something right, and you guys are seriously messed up.
Here’s a look at what our pre-school does.
https://www.myfirstskool.com/our-approach/curriculum/
Nothing out of the ordinary, everything makes sense. That’s all you need to do, it’s not rocket science.
What cultural effect do organised schools, as opposed to the old practice of parents and others teaching their children, have?
Well even with traditional schools, let alone the “Woke” (Critical Theory) modern ones, the effect does appear to be a very radical one.
Frederick the Great believed that such a system would produce a population that was pro statism – and in the case of Prussia he appears to have been successful in his plans.
Horace Mann, who introduced such a system into the United States, was open about his copying of Prussia – and he seems to have had a similar objective to Frederick the Great, it was not really about improving literacy or skill in mathematics – it was about making people, over the generations, more pro-state.
In the 1930s the Federal Government took, by the threat of violence, the monetary gold of the people – and voided the gold clauses in all contracts, public and private.
There was no real resistance – indeed the American people reelected President Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 with 60% of the vote.
Now we can talk about the Great Depression and how it terrified people – the bursting of the (government pushed) Credit Money bubble, ironically, leading people to desperately turn to the government for help – but imagine if the government had tied to do this before the state education system had “socialised” the population.
Credit Money bubbles had burst many times before, from 1819 onwards. Imagine the American government demanding the monetary gold of the people in 1833 rather than 1933. Let us say it was not Andrew Jackson who was President – but, say, Henry Clay – a statist (by the standards of the time) and say he had tried to do what President Franklin Roosevelt did in the 1930s.
The President would have been dragged out, tarred and feathered, and then hung from a tree.
In the 1930s not only was President Roosevelt not tarred and feathered and hung from a tree – he was reelected by some 60% of the vote. That is a rather radical social, cultural, change.
What had so radically changed the population? The schooling system had – just as it was intended to.
As for the United Kingdom – the supposedly wildly popular war leader, Winston Churchill, was voted out of government in 1945 – and about half the population (not just in 1945 but in several other elections as well) voted for a Cult (the word “Cult” is justified) whose objective, proudly written on every Labour Party Membership Card (since the conference of 1918) was for the collective control of EVERYTHING – EVERYTHING.
The left often pretend that the system of state schools in Britain was created to make people pro “Capitalist” – the truth is far more like the opposite, it was, perhaps, created to make the population pro statism. And that, whether this was the intention or not, is what it did.
People were taught to look to “Social Reform”, to the state, to deal with every problem in life. People were taught to see every expansion of state power as a Good Thing (TM).
Estonia has just adopted a Hate Speech law – it was the last European Union country to do so, to be a “member state” of the European Union a country must adopt such “laws” of tyranny. Almost every other nation is the same – with the possible exception of the United States.
There has been no real resistance – no people getting their firearms and fighting on the streets for Freedom of Speech.
It was the same in the United Kingdom – no real resistance.