The Many Faces of Montessori in America
It is difficult to determine precisely how many schools in the United States follow the insights and strategies developed by Dr. Maria Montessori 89 years ago. The Montessori Foundation's computers show the names and addresses of almost 4,000 schools; yet each time we visit a new community, we discover dozens more.

In 28 years of traveling on behalf of Montessori, I've had the opportunity to visit, work with, and observe more than 650 Montessori schools. The diversity is astounding. Montessori schools are often found in charming homes; the outcome of an individual hobby of the owner/director. These hearty souls live and breath their work, creating wonderful intimate communities that radiate a sense of personal attention and family.

Most Montessori schools begin with three-year-olds and extend through the elementary grades. Every year many more open middle school programs at one extreme and programs for infants and toddlers at the other.Montessori schools are often found in affluent communities, but just as many serve working-class neighborhoods and the poor. You can find Montessori in Head Start, the inner cities, migrant workers camps, and on Indian reservations.Montessori schools offer a wide range of programs. Many are focused on meeting the needs of the working family. Others describe themselves as college-preparatory programs. Public Montessori programs pride themselves on serving all children, while many independent schools work hard to find the perfect match of student, school, and family values.

The diversity within Montessori is tremendous. Despite widespread beliefs and misunderstandings about what Montessori is or is not, no two Montessori schools are the same. Some pride themselves on remaining faithful to what they see as Montessori's original vision, while others relish their flexibility and pragmatic adaptation. Each school reflects its own unique blend of facilities, programs, personality, and interpretation of Dr. Montessori's vision.

The Montessori Foundation and our journal, Tomorrow's Child, welcome and celebrate the diversity to be found among Montessori schools. Just as each child is unique, so are the schools that we create as unique communities of parents and teachers.

The International Montessori Community
Montessori schools can be found all over the world. Montessori schools are found throughout Western Europe, Central and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and much of Asia. The movement is widespread in countries like India, Sri Lanka, Korea, and Japan, and it is beginning to mushroom in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and China. No accurate count of the total number of Montessori schools has ever been made, but a reasonable guess might be a hundred thousand.

Why is there so much variation among Montessori schools?There are more than 5,000 Montessori schools in North America, but every one is unique. Even within the same school, each class may look and feel quite different from the others, reflecting the interests and personalities of the teachers; however, certain characteristics will be found in all classes that are honestly following the Montessori approach. Dr. Montessori was a brilliant student of child development, and the approach that has evolved out of her research has stood the test of almost 90 years in Montessori schools around the world.

The Montessori approach has two great qualities: replicability (it can be translated successfully into all sorts of new situations) and sustainability (Montessori programs don't tend to self-destruct after a few years, as do many other educational reforms). However, the only truly authentic Montessorian was Dr. Maria Montessori herself. The rest of us have been forced to interpret and reinterpret her ideas and methods through the filter of our personalities and experience.

Many people assume that "Montessori" schools are essentially alike, perhaps a franchise like McDonald's or Pizza Hut. In reality, they can differ dramatically, in size, facilities, programs, and emotional climate. At the concep-tual level, Montessori schools share a common philosophy and approach, but there will always be tremendous variation among schools that use the name "Montessori."

How can a parent know if she's found a "real" Montessori school?Although most schools try to remain faithful to their understanding of Dr. Montessori's insights and research, they have all, to some degree, been influenced by the evolution of our culture and technology. Perhaps the a more relevant question in selecting a Montessori school is to consider how well it matches your sense of what you want for your child.

Before we established the Montessori Foundation, I served for 22 years as the Headmaster of the Barrie School outside of Washington, DC. In that role, every year I met with hundreds of families who were interested in enrollment. I always began each open house by reminding these bright, eager, and sometimes overly anxious parents that no one educational approach can be right for every child. The wisest goal is to seek out the best fit, not only between the child and the school, but also between parents' values and goals for their child's education and what a given school can realistically deliver. I believe that finding the right school for mom and dad is as important as finding the right school for the child.

In the end, the selection of a Montessori school comes down to a matter of personal style and preference. If you visit a school and find yourself in harmony with its ambiance and practice, it will represent at least one example of what you define to be a good school. In determining which school is best, parents have to trust their eyes, ears, and gut instincts. Nothing beats personal observation. The school that one parent raves about, may be completely wrong for another's child. Conversely, another parent may have decided that "Montessori doesn't work," while it clearly is working very, very well for your family. Rely on your own experience, not hearsay from other parents. There is probably no clear cut answer. Often one sign of a school's commitment to professional excellence is their membership in one of the professional Montessori societies, such as the Association Montessori Interna-tionale (AMI) or the American Montessori Society (AMS). Both organizations also offer schools the opportunity to become accredited. There are several dozen other smaller organizations. It is important to remember, though, that many excellent schools choose not to affiliate with any national organization. They are independent.

What makes Montessori different?
The Montessori approach is often described as an "education for life." When we try to define what children take away from their years in Montessori, we need to expand our vision to include more than just the basic academic skills.

Normally, Americans think of a school as a place where one generation passes down basic skills and culture to the next. From this perspective, a school only exists to cover a curriculum, not to develop character and self-esteem. But in all too many traditional and highly competitive schools, students memorize facts and concepts with little understanding, only to quickly forget them when exams are over.

Recent studies show that many bright students are passive learners. They coast through school, earning high grades, but rarely pushing themselves to read material that hasn't been assigned, ask probing questions, challenge their teacher's cherished opinions, or think for themselves. They typically want teachers to hand them the "right answer." The problem isn't with today's children, but with today's schools. Children are as gifted, curious, and creative as they ever were, when they're working on something that captures their interest and which they have voluntarily chosen to explore.

Montessori schools work to develop culturally literate children and nurture their fragile sparks of curiosity, creativity, and intelligence. They have a very different set of priorities from traditional schools, and a very low regard for mindless memorization and superficial learning. Montessori students may not memorize as many facts, but they do tend to become self-confident, independent thinkers who learn because they are interested in the world and enthusiastic about life, not simply to get a good grade.

Montessori believed that there was more to life than simply the pursuit of wealth and power. To her, finding one's place in the world, work that is meaningful and fulfilling, and developing the inner peace and depth of soul that allows us to love are the most important goals in life.

Helen Keller, inspired by Dr. Montessori, wrote: "I believe that every child has hidden away somewhere in his being noble capacities which may be quickened and developed if we go about it in the right way, but we shall never properly develop the higher nature of our little ones while we continue to fill their minds with the so-called basics. Mathematics will never make them loving, nor will accurate knowledge of the size and shape of the world help them to appreciate its beauties. Let us lead them during the first years to find their greatest pleasure in nature. Let them run in the fields, learn about animals, and observe real things. Children will educate themselves under the right conditions. They require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction."

Montessori schools give children the sense of belonging to a family and help them learn how to live with other human beings. By creating a bond of parents, teachers, and children, Montessori sought to create a community where individuals could learn to be empowered, where children could learn to be a part of families, where they could learn to care for younger children, learn from older people, trust one another, and find ways to be properly assertive rather than aggressive.

To reduce these principles to the most simplistic form, Dr. Montessori proposed that we could ensure world peace by healing the wounds of the human heart and by producing a child who is independent, at peace with herself, and secure. Dr. Montessori envisioned her movement as essentially leading to a reconstruction of society.

Montessori schools are different, but it isn't just because of the materials that are used in the classrooms. Look beyond the pink towers and golden beads, and you'll discover that the classroom is a place where children really want to be - because it feels a lot like home.

The Children's House
In her research, Dr. Montessori noted specific characteristics associated with the child's interests and abilities at each plane of development. She argued that a school carefully designed to meet the needs and interests of the child will work more effectively because it doesn't fight human nature. Montessori taught teachers how to "follow the child" through careful observation, allowing each student to reveal her strengths and weaknesses, interests and anxieties, and strategies that work best to facilitate the development of her human potential.

This focus on the "whole child" led Dr. Montessori to develop a very different sort of school from the traditional adult-centered classroom. To emphasize this difference, she named her first school the "Casa dei Bambini" or the "Children's House."

There is something profound in her choice of words, for the Montessori classroom is not the domain of the adults in charge, but rather it is a care- fully prepared environment designed to facilitate the development of the children's independence and sense of personal empowerment. This is the children's community. They move freely within it, selecting work that captures their interest, rather than participating in all-day lessons and projects selected by the teachers.

In a very real sense, even very small children are responsible for the care of their own child-sized environments. When they are hungry, they prepare their own snack and drink. They go to the bathroom without assistance. When something spills, they help each other carefully clean things up. Four generations of parents have been amazed to see small children in Montessori classrooms cut raw fruits and vegetables, sweep and dust, carry pitchers of water and pour liquids with barely a drop spilled. The children normally go about their work so calmly and purposely that it is clear to even the casual observer that they are the masters in this environment: a "Children's Community."

Montessori's first "Children's Community," opened in 1907, was made up of 60 inner-city children who largely came from dysfunctional families. In her book, The Montessori Method, Dr. Montessori describes the transformation that took place during the first few months, as the children evolved into a "family." They prepared and served the daily meals, washed the pots and dishes, helped the younger children bathe and change their clothes, swept, cleaned, and worked in the garden. These very young children developed a sense of maturity and connectedness that helped them realize a much higher level of their potential as human beings.

While times have changed, the need to feel connected is still as strong as ever. In fact, for today's children it is probably even more important. Whether it's an inner-city child or a child from an affluent suburb, the sense of community has all but disappeared from our children's lives. Families regularly move from house to house and from town to town. Grandparents usually live in other cities or other states. Both parents work out of necessity, and when they are at home, they are very, very busy. The "latch-key" child has become the norm for this generation. Many children have the sense that they do not belong to anything or anybody, which is why gangs, which give a sense of belonging, have always had a certain appeal for some children.

Along with whatever else Montessori gives our children, it definitely gives them the message that they belong - that their school is like a second family. Studies on the moral and emotional development of children strongly suggest that while there are probably a few children in every thousand who are truly little "gangsters" at heart, a child's sense of moral reasoning and sense of self are directly related. Children will normally grow up to be productive, happy, positive individuals if given the right emotional environment. It seems clear that our attitudes about people, the ability to overcome our tendency to be ego-centric, our willingness to share, to compromise, to resolve conflicts non-violently, and our ability to discover a basic sense of self-worth are not qualities that human beings develop spontaneously but rather through years of experience with caring people, who convince us that we belong and give us the opportunity to practice and master these skills of everyday living. As in all things, children learn to be kind and compassionate.

Reprinted with Permission by the Author
© 1996 The Montessori Foundation

Tim Seldin is the President of the Montessori Foundation. He is the Headmaster Emeritus of the Barrie School, Co-Founder of the Institute for Advanced Montessori Studies, and coauthor of two books, The World In The Palm Of Her Hand and Celebrations of Life.