Reply to Breakthrough Montessori Family Orientation

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It's funny how people say they want fidelity Montesorri, and yet demand smaller class sizes.. make up your mind, please[/quote]

I am the one who talked about class size.  Actually I don't care about fidelity to Montessori.  I think it's better to meet the needs of children than to have strict fidelity to a certain model.[/quote]

Well, Montessori herself designed class sizes and everything else with children's needs in mind, and large class sizes are in fact tailored closer to children's needs than smaller ones.. So I have hard time interpreting your comment other than thinking that people rarely know what Montessori is really about, they are just impressed by how Lee and others perform, and assume for whatever reason that they know better than these guys who have spent their lives thinking about these.. that it is still better to have smaller classes, and that it is still better to have half-days, etc.. This is why you end up with weird combinations of traditional and Montessori that make very little sense and based on opinions of parents who have much less knowledge in education than any of those guys that designed these systems.. It's just sad[/quote]

Montessori lived 100 years ago, so I don't think it's inappropriate to update or tweak her model.  For example, it probably works very poorly with special needs kids ... yet ALL schools have an obligation to meet the needs of special needs kids if they can.  Plus with the space limitations in DC it would be very tough to have 35 kids in a primary class together and not have it be unbearably (and perhaps unsafely) crowded.  [/quote]

It is not "inappropriate" to tweak her model, of course, but it is no longer her model if you tweak some of the key things, such as class size, and uninterrupted long work periods. These two are really key in her approach. As for special needs kids, you don't think they did not exist 100 years ago, do you? Plus Montessori started with low income and at risk kids initially and transitioned to better-off families after the success of its structure, so it is nicely tailored for these issues.. If you don't like original Montessori, why stick with Breakthrough or Lee, go with SS, or Logan, or any other Montessori apart from these two for that matter, they have what you want - Montessori tweaked to resemble traditional.. [/quote]

Well, these are public schools, not private schools.  So they have to meet the needs of their populations, rather than "fidelity" to a person who died 100 years ago.  There is a degree of tension between a bespoke and fairly rigid educational philosophy, and the needs of the public sector.  If what YOU want is 100% fidelity to Montessori, then you should probably go private.  [/quote]

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