Montessori school at five or above, catch-up, and
benefit greatly.
We start where children are and keep building from
there. In Montessori, we call it ‘learning how to learn.’
There are things that you can learn at age three that
change you for the rest of your life. The same thing
is true of a child who starts even younger at age two.
It isn’t about core knowledge. It’s not about reading
and writing and arithmetic. It’s what is now being
called ‘executive-function’ skills. It’s eye-hand-coordination.
It’s vocabulary. More than anything else,
it’s a sense of self.
Children are learning all the time. The question is
whether the messages they’re receiving, the things
they’re learning are destructive to their long-term
ability to learn; whether it’s sowing seeds of selfdoubt,
worry about whether you’re smart enough,
fast enough, wealthy enough, whatever. Most
humans are filled with self-doubt about whether or
not it’s okay to make mistakes, but humans make
mistakes all the time. It doesn’t mean that we should
encourage kids to spell things wrong or get mathematics
problems incorrect, but we have to teach children
not to be afraid—to try to teach them that they
can do it.
KELLY: I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit
about the misconceptions people have of Montessori.
TIM: One of the most basic is that Montessori is
a brand name like Chick-fil-A, and they expect
every Montessori school to be the same. At the
Montessori Foundation, we get calls and emails
every day asking, “How do I know whether I have
found a real Montessori school?” People will ask,
“Should I go AMS, AMI, or IMC?” and you’ve already
heard my answer there. To me, that’s silly
to think only in terms of these brands because if
you take five schools, they will not be the same.
They’re different.
Instead, let’s ask, “What is Montessori supposed to
be? Do you find it in the school you’re considering
for your child? Frankly, is it good enough? Because
no school is perfect. As a parent, you really have to
be an unusual person to choose Montessori for your
children. I mean, we can talk all we want about the
Google guys and the founder of Amazon and all the
other famous Nobel laureates and so forth that went
to Montessori.
When you’re sitting there looking at your child and
another parent says, “Well, Kelly, your child’s reading,
but my child’s not, so something’s wrong with
my child. She’s clearly not right for Montessori. She
needs more structure. She needs to be pushed. I need
to send her elsewhere.” Lots of people think like that
and there’s nothing we can do to change them. Parents
ought to be asking themselves this question, “Is
Montessori right for me?”
The other thing with this, by the way, is competition.
A lot of people think Montessori as opposed
to competition. We’re not. We simply say competition
is rather silly. When you’re trying to motivate
children to learn, they’re going to compete with each
other naturally.
They don’t need outside adult interference. Instead,
let it happen naturally. Let them learn about the real
consequences of the real world step by step. At three,
four, and five this is silly. It’s not the way it works or
shouldn’t work. Any school that’s playing high stakes
testing with three-, four- and five-year-olds really
ought to be thinking about what it is doing.
KELLY: What is the most important thing in the
first plane of development, like zero to three? What
should a child be exposed to or doing? I think this
book had some amazing stuff for the early years, I
referenced myself, but if you could just talk about a
couple of things that are really important.
TIM: Well, in the first three years, a child is going
from infancy through the toddler years. Many of
us call the toddler years the ‘terrible twos.’ I would
suggest to you that they don’t need to be terrible
at all. They can be the ‘terrific twos.’ What children
are doing at that age is they’re beginning to
become independent, beginning to get control of
their bodies. They’re beginning to get control of
their emotions. They’re beginning to learn how to
operate in society.
A lot of it has to do with the neurological development
of the brain, learning how to make their body
work. Much of what we do from birth to three is
teaching language. We’re helping kids to communicate
their thoughts.
We’re teaching them to be part of a group. We’re
teaching them how to make their hands work, which
you might call fine-motor movement. We’re teaching
them how to move about the environment and
not bump into and drop things. We’re also teaching
them a work cycle, how to select something from the
shelf. They work with it typically on a table or on a
rug; many of us use small rugs to define a work area.
We’re going to teach them how to do things for
themselves because the goals, of course, are to be
able to operate throughout the classroom on your
own, to prepare your sleeping mat, to get food when
“CHILDREN ARE
LEARNING ALL THE
TIME. THE QUESTION
IS WHETHER THE
MESSAGES THEY’RE
RECEIVING, THE THINGS
THEY’RE LEARNING
ARE DESTRUCTIVE TO
THEIR LONG-TERM
ABILITY TO LEARN,
WHETHER IT’S SOWING
SEEDS OF SELFDOUBT,
WORRY ABOUT
WHETHER YOU’RE
SMART ENOUGH, FAST
ENOUGH, WEALTHY
ENOUGH, WHATEVER.”
TOMORROW'S CHILD © OCTOBER 2020 WWW.MONTESSORI.ORG 9
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