Real Learning in Montessori: What a School Gives an Adolescent and Why
Real learning Montessori is a phrase the movement uses often enough that it has started to lose precision. Schools market real learning. Curriculum brochures promise real learning. Parents looking for an alternative to conventional schooling are asked to recognize real learning when they see it. The word does honest work — but only when the […]
What Happens When a Teenager Asks for Summer Homework: Research Identity in a Montessori Adolescent Program
In the final session of a four-week palaeontology program I ran for the Erdkinder cohort at our school, one of the students asked me if she could have summer homework. The school year was about to close. She wanted, before it did, to know what she could keep working on through the holidays. She did […]
Why Twelve Adolescents Started a Palaeontology Program and Three Finished It: Attrition as Evidence in Erdkinder Montessori
Twelve adolescents at our school joined the first session of a four-week palaeontology program this April. Eight returned for Session 2. Four returned for Session 3. Three completed Session 4 and continued working with us after the school year ended. The numbers are the most useful single data point in the case study, Blue Blocks […]
Why Educational Programs That Cannot Fail Are Not Educational
For most school innovation programs, the honest answer is no. It is structured by deadlines, by adult oversight, by pre-screened material lists, by exhibition formats designed for parental approval — to ensure that what the children produce is presentable. The risk of real failure has been engineered out before the children begin. An educational program […]