Ask HN: Anyone go through Montessori education until age 12 (end of grade 6)?

I go with montessori with my kids. My older started at the age of 4 and is now 7, I'm very satisfied with results I see (and I don't push for results, I still remember my education and so I take it easy with my kids). My older could read, write, count and do simple math before he went to primary school (which is also following montessori principles). He now picks up simple programming and not because I push him (I encaurage whatever he feels like doing, like playing the piano or playing chess or doing ice scating or football)

My mom is a Montessori teacher of many many years and I did summercamps as a swim instructor in one. While they are all reviewed by the Montessori board and certified, they are all a bit different. Shop around, the gap in quality between different schools can be quite apparent.

That being said, I would not hesitate to put my kids in one, especially over public schools which are a disaster.

> The Montessori method of education involves children's natural interests and activities rather than formal teaching methods. A Montessori classroom places an emphasis on hands-on learning and developing real-world skills. It emphasizes independence and it views children as naturally eager for knowledge and capable of initiating learning in a sufficiently supportive and well-prepared learning environment.

I was a troubled kid. Expelled from 2 kindergartens for disruptive behaviour. My parents tried Montessori, and it worked. They found out I was interested in mythology, so I apparently learned to read from the Greek myths. One of my friends was into cars, so they got him a pile of car showroom brochures and he learned to read from that.

There was a non-verbal autistic kid there, too. I played "clap-hands" with them every day, apparently the only human interaction (apart from their parents) that they had.

We moved when I was 5, and I went to a normal school after that. I don't remember much about it (all the above is stories my parents told me later). Luckily we moved to a small village where the teacher had enough time to continue giving me the personalised attention I clearly needed. Then I got shipped off to boarding school and the rest of my schooling is a dark, terrible mess of anger and violence.

It totally worked for me. I hated school, except that one.

I went as a kid and remember it as one of the most fun moments of my life. I remember being able to do whatever I wanted. I was binge-reading some weeks, playing with fun toys with other kids other weeks, or just laying outside on the grass. This was preschool though.

The CEO at a previous company went to a Montessori school until middle school. He said he could barely read when he got there. He still had major problems spelling basic words in his late 60s. I guess it didn't hurt him but he was already a smart guy. It's hard to tell how much it mattered.

I have two kids in it, one 11 year old boy and one 8 year old girl. The school we were in switched to Montessori 4 years ago. The younger loves it. The older very much dislikes the open nature of the school day and struggles to complete tasks. His teacher has had to modify and provide him with much more structure than you would normally receive. You might say that’s because he didn’t start in Montessori from the beginning. But knowing my child, I think Montessori doesn’t work for some kids, in the same way rigid traditional schools don’t work for others.

I went through 4th grade. Afterward, I found school boring, and refused to do rote homework (because it was not how I learn things, and thus a boring waste to me).

I attended a private Montessori for elementary school, then was home-schooled for middle school/junior high. I then went to a public (magnet art school) for high school.

The gap did provide a bit of a buffer, but I nonetheless did not care for the transition. While the systems were quite different, I believe it was more the difference in the teacher quality that had the largest impact. I was fortunate to go to a small, exceptional Montessori school before such things became ridiculously expensive, while the public school, although it had a few very good teachers, also had some very marginal ones (basically, tenured and terrible).

If the quality of teaching is similar, then I expect the transition would have been much easier. As others have noted, shop around since the teaching quality, rather than the teaching structure, is ultimately what was the starkest change for me.

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

Sent my kid to a Montessori in kindergarten. The thing I liked about it is that they put kids of different ages together. From what I've seen, kids learn fastest when they're put with kids slightly more proficient than themselves.

I was put into montessori preschool at around age 4 after my mom caught daycare workers abusing me. I liked it, was a fun time and I figured out how to read at around a 4th grade level at 5. The issues started when I got taken out of that environment and put into a normal one when I started grade school. You see, my preschool teacher noticed that I had ADHD, but that didn't really matter in a Montessori environment. But in traditional school, this means you get in trouble a lot, get terrible grades, and I've been almost kicked out of every school I've been to. I found the transition to traditional structured school traumatic. This was in early grade school too, I can imagine the experience of going from Montessori school to traditional school in later grades to be impossible, like trying to socialize a feral cat or something.

Look OP, if you think school is about your kids learning you've got it very wrong. Wikipedia and arvix are for learning. School is state subsidized daycare, and social conditioning. Industrial society requires discipline, structure and obedience. Those values are not driven into a child's head in the Montessori, model. Do your kids a favor and get these things drilled into their heads early, before you have a bunch of intellectual bums laying around your house. Don't send your kids to Montessori school.

Both my kids transitioned from Montessori to public school at 11 (grade 5) in the US. 13 and 16 now.

+ Love of learning and self-driven discovery

+ Top of class in pretty much all subjects

+ Comfortable giving presentations

+ Comfortable working in groups

+ At ease working with younger students/children and essentially mentoring them

+ Excellent handwriting

+ Respect for teachers

- Difficulty with testing that involves framing the questions in an intentionally deceptive manner

- Difficult transition to the cliques and more aggressive social dynamics of public school

- Tough for them to deal with the way many students treat their teachers and behave in general in public school

I would recommend, that a year or 2 before the kids transition they start doing standardized tests and worksheets to get acclimated to that. It's a big shock otherwise.

Overall my kids loved their time in Montessori and wish the program had gone through high school.

I have a lot of experience with public Montessori, wife taught as a middle school Montessori teacher for the past 3 years and both my kids went through the same school. My youngest is still there at grade 5 and my oldest is in 7th grade at a traditional middle school. My wife has taught traditional high school for about 10 years and then did a summer of training to be a certified Montessori teacher.

One thing we learned is that Montessori isn't for every child. My oldest did OK but he much prefers traditional schools and is thriving at his middle school (a public magnet). My youngest, on the other hand, loves the self-guided learning and pace. He's more organized and self-motivates better than my oldest which makes a big difference. He reads like crazy and finishes books in a week that would take me a month at least, not sure where that came from but he gets a lot of free time at school when his "works" are finished. Both kids are diagnosed with ADHD and so am I (my poor wife heh).

Another thing, the Montessori we attend is public so it still has to meet district and state testing requirements. That put it in an awkward spot where it could never be pure Montessori because of the district and state mandated testing. It also puts the teachers in an awkward spot because they're rated on testing results which contradicts the Montessori method. My wife got fed up and left last year and no teaches at a traditional public high school.

I live in DFW and the Montessori i'm referring to Mata Elementary. DISD is a notorious hellhole of a district but Mata is hanging in there. It's not perfect by any stretch but they're hanging in there and doing their best with what they have. https://www.dallasisd.org/mata

Did it for one year. Best year of my school life. But it's a shock to go back to the public system where dynamic are adversarial and artificially oriented around superficial metrics, both for tests and social life.

You probably need both to be well adapted because the public system teaches you to defend yourself, which us necessary IRL. Montessori teaches you collaboration and thinking outside of zero sum mindset.

not montessori, but i was in an "applied scholastics" (scientology) school for a few years. what a trip that was.

Have some experience with Montessori schools, but naturally all schools are different. Like previous posters have said, it can be very good at not beating the curiosity out of kids like some public schools can. They have a pretty good way at teaching reading too. Math is more interesting and one downside is that the skills don't always translate 1:1 if you ever transition to public schools. They will be ahead in some areas, but behind or at a loss in others. Mainly due to the order and way things are done which are very, very different.

One thing that may also be a factor is any learning differences in the child. Montessori teaching is rigid in its own way and not the best for children with dyslexia/dysgraphia (though neither are standard public school curricula). Although early Montessori math is friendlier for dyscalculia with all the use of physical objects. Depending on the school and individual guides, things like ADHD, autism may also lead to issues with the school. Thought that could be said of any private school.

The biggest thing we saw with people pulling their children out of Montessori schools were fears about academic progress and measuring their children against their neighbors' kids in public school. That's on the parent though: some needed constant feedback and validation via grades to feel like their kids were competitive with public schools.

My son went through Montessori from ages 2 until 11 (finished grade 5). As with any other institution, it depends on the quality of teachers. He had 1 great teacher, one good teach, and 1 not so good teacher during his schooling. There are a couple of key factors which made us choose Montessori:

- mixed aged group classrooms. So in one year of the 3 year cycle, he is the younger child (and receives mentorship from his older buddies), and in year 3 of each cycle, he is the older buddie mentoring younger pupils. Since he has no siblings, this is a benefit to his development.

- Montessori follow the state curriculum, however they allow children to manage their own time. So if he wants to do math all day, he can, and the teacher is there more for project management and giving him assistance than to drive him by a strict 45 minute schedule. At the end of the week, he is supposed to accomplish the assigned work (regardless of which order he wants to do it in). This will help him in the future with his own project management and prioritising work loads (we hope).

- the parents sending their kids to Montessori are not of the Elitist breed. I wont explain what I mean by that here. Its better than Steiner type schools (my personal opinion).

Other than the above, there wasn't anything particular about Montessori compared regular State run schools.

tldr went to Montessori, thumbs up.

I went to a Montesorri school from 1st through 4th grade. I enjoyed the atmosphere. In recent years I've read about Montessori and found that my Montessori experience was different, but much the same wrt a gentle focus on practical individual learning.

Non Montessori school was a process of checking boxes and actual thinking inbetween, while Montessori was a cycle of thinking through problems for yourself, sometimes as a group.

One thing I didn't appreciate until later school years is that Montessori blends different ages and skill levels together. I neither felt the need to keep up nor to excel, just to figure stuff out. For example, I remember a a classmate writing an essay using movable letters on a mat, but he didn't space them out so it was hard to read. I asked why he was doing it like that and the teacher responded that he had chosen to do it that way, I felt it was wrong, but instead of letting me get on a high horse, the teacher drew my attention to what I was already on my way to do. He continued to write without spaces, and I continued to think someone should correct him. Lo and behold, he learned to use spaces, all without someone, teacher nor child, scolding him, with words or with red marks. That's hard to do in typical bureaucratized classroom.

If I were pressed to find fault in Montessori itself, I'd say, it cannot succeed at all without good teachers/emotion/energy conductors, while a common classroom can get ok enough outcomes with an authority figure and good textbooks.

Yes, I went to a Montessori school through 6th grade (now 25 years old). I have mixed feelings about the experience.

I agree that it did well to set my up academically. I ended up going to middle/high schools that were relatively average academically, so I was pretty strong in all subjects in comparison to my peers. Ultimately I went to a very prestigious college and now work in a wonderful finance job I love. However in the many years of therapy I’ve had as an adult, I continue to identify Montessori school as a foundational contributor to my social anxiety, and ultimately my ensuing clinical depression over a lack of social life which haunted most of my college years.

My Montessori school had about 15-25 kids / class year. Some of the larger years were split into two groups with separate teachers. Every year, maybe one or two kids left to go to other schools and one or two new kids joined, but for the most part I grew up with the same core set of children for seven years. I honestly believe this had a permanent negative effect on my ability to socialize and form new friendships that I am only barely beginning to correct over a decade later. Admittedly I did not participate in any extracurricular outside of Montessori school (particularly because it had its own after-school programs). So when I transitioned to a public school for middle/high school, it was a sharp culture shock and I definitely struggled to fit in.

I think Montessori schools are worthwhile academically, but you should be careful to keep your children in contact with other kids outside the Montessori bubble.

I have very old memories (6? or earlier) for attending for a approximately a year. It might have been Waldorf, it might have been Montessori.

There were several young people who I later transferred in HS back into their district and remembered.

Lots of little learning puzzles and nap time. LOTS Of stories. In fact I would say the curriculum, and this is a long time ago, was primarily fables besides what was self-directed and puzzles. The teachers were mostly kind.

I did Montessori between ages 6 and 15, then transitioned into more traditional education for the last three years.

The main difference was how much more challenging Montessori education was. The teachers really observed me and how I performed on assignments, and they could tell when I needed more of a challenge, and assign something to me that was just at the edge of what I was able to do. In the traditional education, if I consistently just did the bare minimum expected of everyone, I was a double-plus A plus student.

I was also allowed to explore subjects that interested me in greater depth, as long as it didn't come at the expense of subjects I found less interesting. I learned a lot of English and maths in the first few years!

If I had a disagreement with a Montessori teacher, we would sit down together and have a mature conversation about it and reach some sort of mutually beneficial solution (yes, even when I was under the age of 10!) In the more traditional education, there was the assumption that if I disagreed with the teacher, I was wrong and should shut up. (I ended up not passing a few classes in the traditional school because of disagreements with the teacher – I simply stopped attending the class at that point. Didn't seem productive to go on.)

I also had a lot more spare time in the Montessori school. As long as I did well on the work assigned to me and didn't bother my classmates, the teachers didn't really care how I spent my time. I could sit in a corner and read or do long multiplication, or go out and kick around a soccer ball. I would like to think this helped me learn independence.

On the other hand, I also have a notable lack of respect for authority figures. I like to think this is good, but it has also gotten me into trouble for disagreeing with hardline managers, refusing to do things I think are unethical, etc. I think some of this can be attributed to the Montessori school, where respect was based on fact, rational argument, and patient listening, rather than who should be commanding whom.

> Am curious what peoples experiences from Montessori transitioning to other education systems was like and how they perceived the school worked or didn't for then? Have some children decisions and looking for outside opinions! Thanks!

I went through something similar through the end of high school. I did, however, go through public school for elementary.

My experiences mirror a lot of what others on here have already written. The transition to back to traditional education (university) wasn't an issue.

If you are already motivated, going from a low to moderately more rigorous style of learning is easy.

The issue is going in the other direction, which is why so many first year university students fail.

Very small anecdotal experience, but I was in Montessori school for grades 2-3 (in the late 80s) and it ruined my math education. When I should have been learning the standard ways to do basic math, they were teaching me nonsense like "skip counting" with rhymes. Despite coming from a family of people very good at math (which also put a focus on math education at an early age), I fell behind and never caught up.

My child has been homeschooled and many of the other homeschooling families I have talked to have used Montessori. My primary impression is that it varies a _lot_ from one Montessori school to another, and there isn't much preventing someone from claiming that their private school is "Montessori". So while it's great that you are asking for feedback on HN, make sure also to find out the inside scoop about the _particular_ Montessori school you are considering.