education by design

What's wrong with the teenage mind?

2012-02-01T10:16:00.005-06:00

Alison Gopnik's catchy title for a Wall Street Journal article about the balance/imbalance between the motivation system in the brain and the control system -- before, during and after puberty.

Here's a sample:
At the same time, contemporary children have very little experience with the kinds of tasks that they'll have to perform as grown-ups. Children have increasingly little chance to practice even basic skills like cooking and caregiving. Contemporary adolescents and pre-adolescents often don't do much of anything except go to school. Even the paper route and the baby-sitting job have largely disappeared.

The experience of trying to achieve a real goal in real time in the real world is increasingly delayed, and the growth of the control system depends on just those experiences. The pediatrician and developmental psychologist Ronald Dahl at the University of California, Berkeley, has a good metaphor for the result: Today's adolescents develop an accelerator a long time before they can steer and brake.

This doesn't mean that adolescents are stupider than they used to be. In many ways, they are much smarter. An ever longer protected period of immaturity and dependence—a childhood that extends through college—means that young humans can learn more than ever before. There is strong evidence that IQ has increased dramatically as more children spend more time in school, and there is even some evidence that higher IQ is correlated with delayed frontal lobe development.

All that school means that children know more about more different subjects than they ever did in the days of apprenticeships. Becoming a really expert cook doesn't tell you about the nature of heat or the chemical composition of salt—the sorts of things you learn in school.

But there are different ways of being smart. Knowing physics and chemistry is no help with a soufflé. Wide-ranging, flexible and broad learning, the kind we encourage in high-school and college, may actually be in tension with the ability to develop finely-honed, controlled, focused expertise in a particular skill, the kind of learning that once routinely took place in human societies. For most of our history, children have started their internships when they were seven, not 27.

Natural talent?

2012-01-30T17:46:00.000-06:00

The Talent Code.

The missing voice

2012-01-30T10:06:00.002-06:00

Laura Flores Shaw used to be a school psychologist. She became a Montessori school leader because she wanted to dedicate her life to helping children develop the personal strength and resilience that would make therapy unneeded.

Read her article in the Huffington Post.

Parent Stories

2012-01-12T09:05:00.006-06:00

An invitation to parents from Mark Berger:

I've launched a new website to capture all those stories parents love to tell about Montessori and their child/family. Parents are always talking about their experience with Montessori- how it helped them be a better parent, how their child emerged so capable and confident, etc. Well, here's a place to gather those stories- from parents around the world.

Share your own and pass this on to others. http://www.montessoriwords.com/(hint: open in Firefox)

Cheers,

Mark

Montessori and Macintosh

2012-01-09T10:25:00.003-06:00

Another Alan Kay comment about Montessori education. This one before congress: "The Macintosh user-interface used Montessori's ideas..."

"the inside sort of things"

2012-01-04T08:59:00.003-06:00

Writer Rick Ackerly tells Maggie's story.
"Maggie awoke one morning at the age of eighteen with the profound fear that after 13 years of school, 'I knew very little about myself and what I wanted in my life.'”

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

2012-01-03T08:10:00.002-06:00

That statement is from Alan Kay. So is this one:

"For me, the key is education. And in my mind the patron saint of how to teach kids is Maria Montessori. A hundred years ago, Montessori understood that children always are trying to learn about their environment, and so the best way to help them was to give them carefully organized, rich environments, where the toys and the play have 20th-century side effects. In my opinion, this is one of the great ideas in the history of education. Even today, most of the best cognitive science about education harks back to Montessori's original insights."

To read the whole article about Alan Kay's work at Xerox PARC and the Dynabook, go here.

the plaid avenger

2012-01-02T17:49:00.003-06:00

Check it out: The plaid avenger + Aung San Suu Kyi + an auditorium full of university students.

Does student engagement matter?

2011-12-20T09:13:00.006-06:00

Two readings this morning:

first this: "What is college for?" which includes this acknowledgement:
"...university curriculum leaves students disengaged from the material they are supposed to be learning. They see most of their courses as intrinsically 'boring.'"

then this: "Teaching innovation key to propelling economy." Here's a sample:

"While we often think of creativity as the domain of music and art classes, most educators know that it’s what brings students alive in every class. Writing a play about a historical event. Designing and creating a certified Wildlife Habitat on campus. Developing a new application for a concept in math. That’s the kind of learning that really stays with kids—when they create something of their own, drawing upon different disciplines, often in a hands-on project. What doesn’t stick is preparation for standardized tests."

Does student engagement matter?

Montessori Glee

2011-12-20T08:46:00.002-06:00

Cincinnati's Clark Montessori School wins Glee Award. Very cool!

Clara doesn’t do ‘pretty'

2011-12-15T11:22:00.003-06:00

11-year-old girl’s molecular creation is an inspiration

top 11 kids who made a difference in 2011

2011-12-09T09:45:00.002-06:00

just kids?

When an adult took standardized tests forced on kids

2011-12-06T13:19:00.002-06:00

“I won’t beat around the bush,” he wrote in an email. “The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, that’s a “D”, and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction."

See the whole story here.

Welcome to the age of overparenting

2011-12-05T11:33:00.003-06:00

"Mom, we're bored."
"I know that if I continue on this path, not only will my kids never have the wherewithal to build an igloo after a snowstorm, they won’t even have the freedom or imagination to try. Watching them play halfheartedly in their meager little forts, I knew I had to change."

Why Montessori can help executive function skills

2011-12-05T10:39:00.004-06:00

My own executive functioning skills fell short this time. On December 1st, you could have tuned in to Adele Diamond as she presented a "Distinguished Visiting Scholar" lecture at Virginia Tech.

Or you could watch the tape now. Or read excerpts.

"The prefrontal cortex is overrated." Knowing and doing are not the same thing.

Montessori to the rescue

2011-12-05T09:28:00.008-06:00

Jack Creeden spoke to board chairs of ISAS schools. Prestigious private independent schools. Topic: "Trustee Governance: Beyond the Basics".

After speaking about the threats to traditional private schools (on-line learning, charter schools, home schooling), here was his first ray of hope:

Don’t Despair, Montessori to the
Rescue (B.Globe, 8.26.11)

Montessori Alumni
Wikipedia founder – Jimmy Wales
Amazon.com – Jeff Bezos
SimCity – Will Wright
Google – Larry Page & Sergey Brin

“Brain research shows that all the characteristics
Internet entrepreneurs value – divergent and
innovative thinking, intellectual self reliance . . .
are the primary focus of Montessori classroom.
Mistakes are opportunities to learn.”

5 best toys of all time

2011-12-01T08:49:00.004-06:00

just in time for Christmas!

Superwoman was already here

2011-11-30T17:00:00.002-06:00

Montessori in the mainstream media yet again.

not acquired behind a desk

2011-11-18T23:25:00.003-06:00

Great college essay by a Montessori alum.

"Happiness enabler"

2011-11-18T11:07:00.003-06:00

From the International Journal of Well Being.

5C's + 1

2011-11-18T09:52:00.006-06:00

Not 3 R's anymore?

It used to be we only needed to remember 3 key words. Now life has gotten to be so complex we need to remember twice as many.

5C's + 1.

There's a revolutionary rallying cry!

Of course when it comes to education, we are fighting a huge entropy-maintaining flywheel. Despite a chorus of Voices for Change, there's a huge body of literature attempting to explain why it is so hard to reform schools.

And perhaps the most significant change in conventional schools has been the shift from the 3 R's to High Stakes Testing. Fear is a great motivator. But the lizard brain, center of our fear response, does not lead us to innovative solutions.

Private independent schools are immune from most of the High Stakes Testing requirements, but they are still "teach and test" environments; geared less toward Learning and more toward Knowing. And blind to the impact such a worldview has on the formation of character and personality.

That brings me to Pat Bassett, Executive Director of NAIS, the National Association of Independent Schools. He is a student of education as well as a leader, and he speaks from the bully pulpit: 5C's + 1? What's not to like here?

fired for requiring students to think?

2011-11-10T16:58:00.005-06:00

Cut the lectures?

"The Socratic method is increasingly unpopular on college campuses 'because we are in a test-based education system.' Students are no longer used to such a process-oriented way of learning, and are 'increasingly impatient where the answer is not clear and when the professor is not giving it to them immediately.'"

international entrepeneurs seeking...

2011-10-31T11:27:00.005-05:00

"Indian educator Guarav Singh takes a break from observing classes at the Metropolitan Montessori School in New York City. He is one of a group of international entrepreneurs seeking American educational models to bring back home."

front page photo from last week's Education Week.

Montessori kids saving the world one pumpkin at a time

2011-10-27T11:13:00.003-05:00

Halloween for innovators.

A home-schooler goes to college

2011-10-12T10:59:00.004-05:00

The following article was sent to me by Stephan Kinsella (thanks, Stephan). From the feedback I've heard over the years from Montessori grads, some colleges are like this, some aren't. Some Montessori grads describe their college experiences as "getting back to a Montessori-style education after the wasteland of high school."

That's the prime reason we are starting our own high school next year.

It wasn't the schoolwork or social life that threw me. It's that I never realized how dull a classroom could be
BY KATE FRIDKIS

I went to college when I was 18, like everyone else. But unlike other people, I had never been to school before. The first standardized test I ever took was the SAT. The day I took it was the first time I’d ever been in a high school classroom. It didn’t seem like a fun place.
I started college as a Music Ed major, because while I didn’t know what I wanted to study, I knew I liked music. The Intro to Music Education teacher, a woman I’ll call Mrs. Grimini, had taught kindergarten at a local school before joining the university faculty. She led us in songs like “The wheels on the bus go round and round!” She wanted us to share a memory of our own music teachers from kindergarten and first grade.
Everyone had one: The triangle. Holding hands in a circle. Those rainbow xylophones.
“Actually,” I said, “I didn’t go to school. But my dad is a jazz pianist?”
He played every day when I was a little kid. I used to sit under the piano and he’d ask if I could remember the melody, or he’d teach me how to play a few notes. Sometimes I sat with him on the couch in the darkened living room and we listened to Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” together, talking about how scary Mars was, and how big Jupiter was. We were almost never not listening to music.
But before I could say any of that, Mrs. Grimini interrupted me. “Home-schooled?” she said tightly.
“Yes,” I said, offering my politest smile.
“OK, you don’t need to participate.” And she moved on.
I was home-schooled. Unschooled, really, because my brothers and I didn’t follow a formal curriculum at all. But home schooling sounds radical enough, so I usually use that term to describe how I grew up. The latest statistics about American home-schoolers from the U.S. Department of Education were collected in 2007. They estimate around 1.5 million home-schoolers were in the country at that point, up from 1.1 million in 2003. No one seems to have any idea how many of those home-schoolers call themselves unschoolers, but it’s a pretty safe bet that there are more of us now than ever.
I look really normal, I promise. No one would think I’m a freak. Which is important, because if I didn’t appear normal, it would look bad for everyone in my group. We’re a very small group, and the world hasn’t had much time to get to know us. Like most minorities, we get stereotyped a lot. People think the wrong things about us and keep on thinking those things. Like that all home-schoolers are evangelical Christians who don’t believe in evolution, or that home-schooled kids can’t socialize, that we’re huge nerds who win spelling bees but can’t grasp simple pop cultural references. We’re all radical hippies or strange child prodigies. Whatever people think about home schooling, they’re pretty sure it’s emotionally damaging. We make people uncomfortable, even angry, maybe because they just don’t know us well.
“How arrogant does someone have to be,” they say, “to think they know better than everyone else in the world?”
That part is about my parents, because they made the decision initially. Sometimes all of the anger is directed at my parents (mostly my mother), and I am force-fed bitter, watery spoonfuls of pity.
“You poor thing! You didn’t get to be like the other children …”
That’s definitely true.
“How arrogant,” people like to say of my parents, “to think you could educate your child better than qualified teachers!”
“I could never do that,” women often say, of my mother. “I don’t have the energy.”
“But how will they learn science without a lab?” everyone says in unison.
These people have no idea how unschooling works.
And it’s hard for me to explain it to them. Because unschooling, for me, worked a lot like living. It wasn’t a dramatic political statement about our broken society. My parents decided not to send me to school because they liked hanging out with me. It sounds too simple. Were they radical anarchists or free-love types? Nope. They were just two brave people who believed that kids are naturally smart, and will naturally learn the things people need to learn to get by. As a result I am very polite and pretty bad at math. My parents were entrepreneurs. They were running their own business when I was born. They thought they could probably make it work. They didn’t think they were smarter than other people; they just trusted themselves to figure it out.
For me, home schooling meant getting to read all day and then read all the next day. It meant being able to apprentice myself to the adults whose work I admired, spend a lot of time playing in the nearby brook, write the books I couldn’t find but wanted to read, try directing Shakespeare plays and competing in classical piano and learning some Greek, all without having to worry about what might happen if I failed. Home schooling was about making mistakes that didn’t have bigger consequences than momentary embarrassment. Because I didn’t have grades. I worked hard to get better, because I cared about being better, because, I think, maybe people just care about that.
And then there was the occasional math textbook and online biology course, which Mom researched and purchased when she got nervous. Sometimes she became overwhelmed with concern. What if I fell behind the school kids? What if I didn’t go to college? It was important that I could still be good at the things people were supposed to be good at.
I wasn’t worried. I was happy.
I thought college would be interesting, but it didn’t sound particularly necessary, and I only applied to one school, the state university, which I chose for its proximity to my job and its relatively low cost. Home-schoolers often already have jobs, and I’d gotten mine at 15. I led services and tutored bar and bat mitzvah students at my synagogue. I was the one who sang the prayers in Hebrew on the bima, at the podium across from the rabbi’s. Adults sometimes asked for my advice. I was a community leader. I was making more money than all of my friends (a lot of them went to school and didn’t have time to work as much as me). College was going to be a piece of cake compared to this. But I had no idea what that particular piece of cake would be like.
College, it turned out, was an ugly place with mismatching architecture, surrounded by a sagging, distracted-looking little city. I got a big scholarship, for my SAT score and my “class rank.” My SAT score was good, but then, it’s kind of a dumb test. I’d made up the class rank. I didn’t have a class, so I said first. Technically, I was last as well.
“We shouldn’t lie,” my mom said.
“Why not?” my dad said. “Look how stupid this is.”
I was naive. It’s embarrassing, but I was. I thought college would be full of students leaning forward in class, eager to learn. Mom thought that, too. Her family couldn’t afford it, so she hadn’t gone, but she always imagined it would be world-expanding and fantastic. Dad hadn’t gone because his family couldn’t afford it either, and he thought it sounded boring.
Since I was so naive, I didn’t think a music major sounded different from another major. Or a state university sounded different from a private one. College was college. As a home-schooler, I hadn’t learned to separate everything into its own categories and rank it according to some perceived value. I got better at doing that in college, but it made life less interesting.
That was one of the most jarring lessons I learned in college. Life is just less interesting in a classroom. In college, you don’t really have to contribute. Unless it’s one of those classes where participation is 15 percent of your final grade. I liked those classes best.
I also learned what it felt like to be truly bored. I learned it was much more important to memorize than to understand. I learned that it was cool to get drunk and not cool to admit, as my friend down the hall once did, that you were in AA because of all the getting drunk. I learned it was fine not to care about any of your classes and funny to lock someone out of a building they were trying to get into and important to band together in the hall of the dorm to scream, “Get out! Get out, bitch!” at a girl from another school who had come to see her boyfriend, and who, freshly broken up with, was crying hysterically, huddled against his locked door.
And I learned that I wasn’t allowed to talk in Mrs. Grimini’s class. The next time I raised my hand, she said to the other students, “Kate was home-schooled, she can’t participate in this discussion.” And she never called on me again.
“Can she really take points off this one?” I asked, holding out my recently graded test to a friend. “I think that’s the answer. What did you write?”
He showed me. He’d written the same thing. And she had not taken off any points.
I sighed. “Should I go to a dean or something?”
“I guess.”
I didn’t want to. I wanted to pretend that Mrs. Grimini didn’t actually narrow her eyes when she looked at me. I wanted pretend that in college, people were smarter than they’d been outside of college. They were supposed to understand more about the way the world worked.
I needed some advice. I picked the scariest, most renowned, most bearded professor I could find, and I asked if I could meet with him.
“This is hard,” I told him. “All this is very new for me. I was home-schooled.”
“Oh!” he said, squinting at me like a puzzle he might have a chance at solving. “Home-schooled. And then here. A trial by fire.” He shook his head and chuckled in a way that only very bearded, very revered professors are able.
“So,” he said, as though we were about to begin a long talk. “Is it mostly the socialization?”
“Well, not exactly,” I said. I didn’t sigh aloud; I sighed to myself. I liked him.
It was mostly that I had thought that college would be the beginning of an exciting new phase of life, and instead it felt like the end of one. Before, learning could happen at any moment, rather than waiting for a professor to get up in front of a blackboard and start talking. You could end up friends with anyone, not just people exactly the same age as you. There were lots of problems with being home-schooled, and they were all becoming apparent. Home schooling had made me expect too much. It had given me plenty of time to figure out who I was, so that I didn’t have to do it now. College, so formulaic to me, didn’t feel like the real world.
Which is sort of funny, because for my whole life, people have been telling me that I must not know what the real world is. People always think that home-schoolers live these small lives in a constricted little world. I don’t know how to explain my life to them. I don’t know how to clarify the open-ended world of my childhood, in which the rules made sense and I worked hard because it was fun to be productive. What world is that? It isn’t normal. There are no grades.
“So how is it?” Mom would ask. She was eager, much like any other mother, probably.
I didn’t want to disappoint her. I wanted her to feel that home schooling had been a success. The right kind of success that had prepared me for the next step. So I didn’t tell her that my little brothers were wittier than the students I was meeting. I didn’t tell her that they knew more about the Enlightenment than the upperclassmen in my history class. I didn’t tell her about Mrs. Grimini. But I didn’t lie to her, either.
“I’m getting really good grades,” I said.

little bets

2011-09-30T09:45:00.003-05:00

Daring to stumble on the road to discovery

by Peter Sims

INVENTION and discovery emanate from the ability to try seemingly wild possibilities; to feel comfortable being wrong before being right; to live in the world as a careful observer, open to different experiences; to play with ideas without prematurely judging oneself or others; to persist through difficulties; and to have a willingness to be misunderstood, sometimes for long periods, despite the conventional wisdom.

All these abilities can be learned and developed, but doing so requires us to unlearn many of our tendencies toward linear planning and perfectionism.

As the technology pioneer Alan Kay put it: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” It begins with a little bet. What will yours be?

the bubble test

2011-09-30T09:07:00.003-05:00

Fill in the circles. There is only one right answer. Stop when time is called.

Secret of success = failure?

2011-09-26T20:46:00.003-05:00

This article in the New York times created good buzz among the parents here at Post Oak. They've heard this from us before...

The power of "yes"

2011-09-26T09:45:00.002-05:00

A recent e-mail from Post Oak parent Deepa Poduval:

Aashna (4 1/2 years old) reminded us of a valuable parenting lesson this weekend and I thought we should share it with you since you will recognize POS' imprint in it!

Aashna's sister, Ashwini, is now 7 months old and has just started to crawl. She has been particularly attracted to the power outlets we have in the floor of our living room for our table lamps. Since she is still relatively unsteady and slow while she tests her new skills, Raj and I have had fair warning when she starts to approach the power outlets and have stopped her before she was able to get too close. We would look her in the eyes and say "No" firmly and repeat it a couple of times (for reinforcement!). Each time, Ashwini would look at us with those big, sparkling eyes, give us a toothless grin and set right off toward the outlet again. This afternoon I was at it again with Ashwini when Aashna walked by, saw us and went running to get Ashwini one of her favorite sqeak toys and held it out in the opposite direction from the power outlet and said "This is Yes!", "This is Yes!". And sure enough - Ashwini abandoned her journey to the power outlet and set off in pursuit of her toy. I'm pretty sure this will not be a permanent solution to Ashwini's fascination with the power outlet but we enjoyed and appreciated watching the way Aashna's mind worked while ours defaulted to saying "No"! Aashna saw the problem and as a Montessori child rushed to the rescue with a simple, yet practical solution - she instinctively offered choices and used the power of the affirmative.

Definitely a testament to her Montessori journey at POS every day!

Deepa

quick draw (superwoman)

2011-09-09T09:38:00.004-05:00

A second You Tube Quick Draw video done by a parent singing the value of Montessori education.

The Single Best Idea

2011-09-06T09:49:00.003-05:00

Steve Denning's latest blog for Forbes: "The single best idea for reforming K-12 education." He doesn't much care for conventional education which he compares to the management system that emerged from the 20th century factory model. He presents an alternative approach and says, by the way, that we don't need to reinvent the wheel. It's already been done.

EFs pt 2

2011-09-06T09:22:00.003-05:00

The Wall Street Journal has picked up the story about EFs. Here's Jonah Lehrer's version:

EFs

2011-09-02T12:08:00.006-05:00

Executive functions.

What are they? (hint: think self-management, self-control, self-direction)

Why are they important? (hint: success in school and in life)

How can we help children develop them? (hint: Montessori education is the most comprehensive school curriculum to do this.)

Read this article (be sure to scroll down the page for the article) in Science magazine for the full story.

or this article in the Weekly Post for my take on it.

Montessori Schools Do This

2011-08-22T11:31:00.009-05:00

When many of our best thinkers think about how to make creative and innovative thinking part of our schools, they automatically think of Montessori classrooms.

From an interview with Cathy Davidson in Salon:

In the book, you have this fascinating statistic that 65 percent of kids born today will have careers that don’t exist yet. Right now, under No Child Left Behind, the school system puts tremendous emphasis on standardized multiple choice tests, which, as you point out, don't exactly train kids to think creatively about the technological future.

The whole point of standardized testing was invented in 1914 and modeled explicitly as a way to process all these immigrants who were flooding into America at the same time as we were requiring two years of high school, and men were off at war and women were working in factories. The multiple choice test is based on the assembly line – what’s fast, what’s machine readable, what can be graded very, very rapidly. It’s also based on the idea of objectivity and that there's a kind of knowledge that has a right answer. If you chose a right answer, you’re done.

It's really only in the last 100 years that we’ve thought of learning in that very quantifiable way. We’re now in an era where anybody can find out anything just by Googling. So the real issue is not how fast can I choose a fact A, B, C or D. Now if I Google an answer I’ve got thousands of possibilities to choose from. How do you teach a kid to be able to make a sound judgment about what is and what isn’t reliable information? How do you synthesize that into a coherent position that allows you to make informed decisions about your life?

In other words, all of those things we think of as school were shaped for a vision of work and productivity and adulthood that was very much an industrial age of work, productivity and adulthood. We now have a pretty different idea of work, productivity and adulthood, but we’re still teaching people using the same institutionalized forms of education.

So what do we do to change that?

First I’d get rid of end-of-grade tests. They demotivate learning, in boys especially. Establish more challenge-based problem-solving kinds of education. This is hardly revolutionary. Montessori schools do this. I would like to see more attention paid to how you go from thinking something to making something.

LEARN

2011-08-17T16:35:00.005-05:00

Great tourist video. Not all tourists are learners, and not all learners are tourists.

But this is fun, maybe even inspiring.

Here's the question at the end of the chapter: What does this video tell us about the nature of learning?

Montessori in the blogosphere

2011-08-02T13:46:00.003-05:00

one more from Steve Denning...

what is it about this moment in time?

2011-07-29T16:26:00.006-05:00

Last week it was You Tube. Yesterday Harvard Business Review. Today in Forbes business writer Steve Denning blogs a wake-up call to Bill Gates who has spent $5 billion trying to improve education. "Think Bigger," Denning says.

If you read deep enough into his blog, you learn, "Schools practicing this new culture of learning don't have to be invented....the new culture of learning takes place in thousands of Montessori classrooms every day."

Montessori Builds Innovators

2011-07-28T16:30:00.003-05:00

Harvard Business Review. blog by Andrew McAfee, author of Enterprise 2.0.

"When I got too old for my Montessori school and went to public school in fourth grade, I felt like I'd been sent to the Gulag. I have to sit in this desk? All day? We're going to divide the day into hour-long chunks and do only one thing during each chunk?"

Kickstarter

2011-06-27T12:11:00.009-05:00

Here's a new idea: Kickstarter.

What is it?

A new way to fund creative projects.

Check it out.

Yancey Strickler is a co-founder of Kickstarter. A Montessori kid. Another creative enterprise from the Montessori mafia!

The Virtues of Play

2011-06-27T11:56:00.003-05:00

Here's a blog post from Jonah Lehrer, author of How we decide and Proust was a neuroscientist.

If you're not making mistakes, try harder

2011-05-20T11:20:00.005-05:00

Why wrong is not always bad. (from Education Week)
The privilege of being wrong. (from Seth Godin)
enjoy the fun of failure (from Gretchin Rubin in Harvard Business Review)

The New Culture of Learning

2011-05-09T17:01:00.003-05:00

Learning.
Culture of learning.
The new culture of learning.
An example of the new culture of learning.

Montessori is an example of the new culture of learning.

(Steve Denning's blog "Rethink" in Forbes.)

Montessori Mafia - posted on the web

2011-05-09T12:10:00.003-05:00

The Wall Street Journal says Montessori education is "the surest route to joining the creative elite." Meet the elite: Montessori grads, parents and supporters.

Send us names, conact information, and profiles of former Montessori students who ought to be added to this list. It is not complete...and never will be. This is a project designed to capture the impact of Montessori education as demonstrated by the lives and characteristics of our alumni.

in the plex

2011-04-21T17:29:00.005-05:00

"...both Larry and Sergey were Montessori kids....It's really ingrained in their personalities."

This is a powerful, profound statement -- and it is NOT about Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It is about the big picture impact of Montessori education. It is CAUSAL, not casual.

Montessori education shapes the learner. This is not about skills or information or test scores. It is about the formation of personal traits: the way we learn shapes us.

"This is really baked in to the way Larry and Sergey approach problems." BAKED IN.

"They're always asking, 'Why should it be like that?' It's the way their brains were programmed early on." THE WAY THEIR BRAINS WERE PROGRAMMED.

The way we learn shapes who we become.

Recently we interviewed parents of older children at our school. Some complained that they were tired of hearing my message about the significance of Montessori methodolgy. What they want to hear about is evidence of their own children's progress.

An interesting dilemma. How do we help them see our progress engraining personality traits?

Montessori Mafia

2011-04-06T15:19:00.003-05:00

Author, pilot, and Montessori dad, Trevor Eissler, bemoans Montessori's "peace, love, wimpy" image. "Montessori's not wimpy," he says. Montessori education is rigorous. Montessori education emphasizes personal responsibility -- and that is certainly not wimpy."

Now comes the perfect antidote: The Montessori Mafia toughens up the Montessori image in a "sticky" way.

this amputated view of human nature

2011-03-31T17:59:00.005-05:00

Melissa Cordero sent me this article by David Brooks, "The New Humanism."

Here's a sample:
"When we raise our kids, we focus on the traits measured by grades and SAT scores. But when it comes to the most important things like character and how to build relationships, we often have nothing to say. Many of our public policies are proposed by experts who are comfortable only with correlations that can be measured, appropriated and quantified, and ignore everything else.

"Yet while we are trapped within this amputated view of human nature, a richer and deeper view is coming back into view. It is being brought to us by researchers across an array of diverse fields: neuroscience, psychology, sociology, behavioral economics and so on.

"This growing, dispersed body of research reminds us of a few key insights. First, the unconscious parts of the mind are most of the mind, where many of the most impressive feats of thinking take place. Second, emotion is not opposed to reason; our emotions assign value to things and are the basis of reason. Finally, we are not individuals who form relationships. We are social animals, deeply interpenetrated with one another, who emerge out of relationships."

7 Sins of Forced Education

2011-03-31T16:47:00.004-05:00

Rakesh Agrawal often sends me stories to read. Here's another from Psychology Today: "7 Sins of our system of forced education."

Don't get hung up on the section about schools as prisons. If you're interested in Gray's argument, read it. He's quite convincing. Otherwise, skip ahead to the section on The Sins.

Author Peter Gray says, "It is not easy to force people to do what they do not want to do. We no longer use the cane, as schoolmasters once did, but instead rely on a system of incessant testing, grading, and ranking of children compared with their peers. We thereby tap into and distort the human emotional systems of shame and pride to motivate children to do the work."

Does direct teaching make children less creative?

2011-03-25T17:28:00.003-05:00

New research shows why teaching kids more and more, at ever-younger ages, may backfire

Here's an invitation I sent today:

2011-03-24T16:37:00.003-05:00

Faculty, Staff and Board:

Service is at the core of our mission. In my Weekly Post letter last week, I quoted Post Oak alumnus Nikkil Schneider who said simply, “That’s just what we do.” Service is baked in to Montessori kids from the earliest age. For us, service to others is more than a food drive at Thanksgiving. It is a character trait whose roots are nourished in the infant community classroom when one two-year old helps another put on a sweater.

Montessori kids learn to give help and to receive help in matters of practical life, and in their studies as well. What do you call it when one child helps another in class? Cheating? That’s what most schools call it. We call it the ideal. Business writer Steven Covey agreed. He said that the traditional American ideal has always been to move from the dependence of childhood to the independence of adulthood. Covey suggests that an even higher state of development comes when we recognize and embrace our interdependence. Once again Dr. Montessori was ahead of her time. In the Montessori elementary curriculum we present a chart entitled “Interdependencies” when we study the organization of society. That is an academic model, an intellectual construct, one that becomes a lens through which the Montessori student views the world. On a more concrete and practical plane, helping each other from the earliest age is augmented by service to the classroom community, to the school as a whole, and then service to the wider community as the child matures and their worldview expands.

Montessori graduates understand that their work is a part of the network of interdependencies that comprise our society. In that way, all work is service. Beyond that, Montessori graduates have learned to give and to receive help. They have learned that this is a core value of community, and so they look to serve. As Post Oak alum Lt. Will Treadway said when I asked him to connect the dots between Montessori education, West Point, and a career in the military, “Leadership and service.”

And so I am pleased to see that the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) is promoting service. Read about its “One Million Hours of Service Initiative” . NAIS Executive Director Pat Bassett frames service as part of the “public purpose” of private schools.

I would like to contribute our voice to this dialog and am asking for volunteers who are willing to lead this project for Post Oak. Please let me know if you are interested.

John

Baked In

2011-03-24T16:31:00.003-05:00

“You can’t understand Google,” vice president Marissa Mayer says, “unless you know that both Larry and Sergey were Montessori kids.” She’s referring to schools based on the educational philosophy of Maria Montessori, an Italian physician born in 1870 who believed that children should be allowed the freedom to pursue their interests. “In a Montessori school, you go paint because you have something to express or you just want to do it that afternoon, not because the teacher said so,” she says. “This is baked into how Larry and Sergey approach problems. They’re always asking, why should it be like that? It’s the way their brains were programmed early on.”

But the dominant flavor in the dish is his boundless ambition, both to excel individually and to improve the conditions of the planet at large.

From “Larry Page Wants to Return Google to its Start-up Roots”

Reason vs Emotions

2011-03-14T12:27:00.002-05:00

From Post Oak parent Melissa Cordero:

John,

I love reading about the “deeper talents” that some are just now recognizing the importance of as if revolutionary; and which have been the core of Montessori education for a century!

Enjoy your Spring Break,
Melissa

Talented Teenagers

2011-02-10T18:08:00.004-06:00

From a review of a 1995 book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:

"The authors conclude that learning to invest, and wanting to invest, in challenging tasks is indispensable to skill development. It is also important to have a social environment wherein students enjoy emotional and material support from their families while taking more responsibility for their own learning, especially in the area of their talent, and finding enjoyment in doing so. None of these elements, however, was much in evidence in the teenagers' schools; instead, the schools appeared more interested in "covering cognitive ground" than engaging the interest of talented students.

Parents, teachers, psychologists and counselors will find concrete information about conditions that cultivate talent in both "gifted" and "regular" adolescents."

We need to make better schools. Not schools driven by high stakes testing. That simply amplifies the orientation to "cover cognitive ground".

What kind of schools do we need? Schools that understand how to cultivate talent in both "gifted" and "regular" adolescents.

This is why we have accepted the challenge to expand our program into the high school level -- not just another conventional high school -- a Montessori high school, a Post Oak high school.

Be the best possible version of yourself

2011-02-04T13:02:00.008-06:00

A note from Post Oak parent Rakesh Agrawal.

John:

A blog reading...
from the guy who created gmail at google and then started another company which he sold to Facebook. A good response, I think, to Amy Chua's Tiger Mother book that's been getting a lot of attention (I read it a few weeks back and have enjoyed using it as a springboard for discussing parenting with Shonali and friends).

Rakesh

Social Animal

2011-02-01T12:37:00.005-06:00

I found the beginning of this article by David Brooks annoying, but the last ¾ was much more interesting. Implications for schooling are interesting to contemplate. Certainly the active, engaging, collaborative social environment of the Montessori classroom (as opposed to the teacher-directed seat-work environment of traditional schools) is a richer laboratory for the development of social skills.

Actually,that article amplifies the theme of Brooks' unique criticism of Tiger Mom Amy Chua -- see if this whets your appetite: "Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls."

"the stolen incandescence of a thousand young minds"

2011-02-01T12:09:00.003-06:00

From Theodore Gray's web site, Periodic Table.

At the end of one of those books, Uncle Tungsten, Oliver Sacks describes the process of growing out of his youthful enthusiasm for chemistry as a painful feeling of loss. I know exactly what he's talking about.

And I also know that there are a lot of kids who never feel this sense of loss, because by the time they are teenagers, they have nothing left to lose. Whatever enthusiasm, creativity, and focus they started with has long since been driven out of them, destroyed by television, video games, horrible schools, horrible opportunities, and horrible role models. The bright flicker of our television screens is the stolen incandescence of a thousand young minds.

One of the first things to go is a sense of mastery. Television, even the supposedly good stuff, is full cues that this is something other people can do, not you. Beyond the ubiquitous "Don't try this at home kids!" there are the slick production values and the fancy props to hammer home the lesson that nothing you could possibly do at home is as interesting or as valid as what you see on TV.

What makes kids creative?

2011-01-31T17:21:00.006-06:00

Two entries about creativity to bang against each other: an article from the Wall Street Journal (brought to my attention by Post Oak parent Lisa Eddleman) and a TED talk from "creativity expert" Ken Robinson.

Hi John

This is a very interesting article from Wednesday's WSJ on what makes children creative. Apparently "creativity" (as measured by particular tests) has fallen over the past several years--the article speculates that the focus on teaching to standardized tests in school, as well as too much TV and computer time have both contributed to the decline.

All the "solutions" to this problem discussed in the article appear to be what Montessori education already emphasizes: listening to children's ideas without judging them as good or bad; teaching children how to pick out the best ideas for solving problems through teamwork; avoid paying too much attention to "outcome" of creative work. None of these things are surprising or novel for Montessori parents!

Best
Lisa

The Montessori Ethos

2011-01-26T11:51:00.003-06:00

"What were your most important leadership lessons?" the NY Times asked internet entrepeneur Jeremy Allaire. "Being educated in a Montessori setting," he said.

Choice matters

2010-12-22T11:21:00.003-06:00

Research-driven school reform. That's what many are calling for.

Shouldn't schools follow practices that are backed-up by research showing what works best?

Erika A. Patall, an assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin conducted a study of high school students in 14 different schools. In one group students were assigned work by their teachers. In the other group they studied the same material but were given choices of what work to do. "For example, students in a science class may choose to write a research report or conduct and explain an experiment in front of the class."

Dr. Patall's conclusion? "When students were given choices, they reported feeling more interested in their homework, felt more confident about their homework and they scored higher on their unit tests."

What's not to like about this?

"One of the other things that became very evident was teachers found this study kind of an imposition," Dr. Patall said. "They're not inclined to do this sort of thing, because it's more work for them."

Once again educational research confirms Montessori practice as best practice.

Student engagement

2010-12-14T09:51:00.007-06:00

How do schools measure success?

Or perhaps, that is not exactly the question. A related question is, "What makes a good school?"

US News & World Report ranks colleges and universities. It is the ranking survey against which all others are measured, but it does not include any dimension of student experience. That seems like a glaring omission.

Over the past 10 years data has been collected by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) -- an attempt to focus on the student experience. (Want to read the NSSE survey?)
Does student experience matter?

"Teachers can increase engagement by providing more opportunities for student choice and voice in the classroom, and more hands-on activities that allow students to solve interdisciplinary problems, akin to what they will encounter outside of school." -Denise Pope, Stanford University School of Education

It appears that student engagement is an antidote to the kind of student stress portrayed in the film Race to Nowhere. More from the NYT Blogs...

Reading of the day

2010-12-13T14:05:00.002-06:00

Commentary
by Steve Nelson,
The Huffington Post (from December 8, 2010)

“Tests, standards, accountability, economic competitiveness, managers, vouchers, data, metrics... does anyone actually care about children?Public discourse about education is unbearably impersonal. Nearly all the heated rhetoric suggests that children are nothing but small units of future production, especially in the saddest precincts of South Central, Baltimore, Harlem, Cleveland, Detroit and the other abandoned parcels of our divided nation.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/lets-bury-the-cats-well_b_792044.html

we want to be engaged

2010-12-10T12:02:00.005-06:00

James Moudry and I just visited two Montessori high schools, Compass Montessori High School in Golden, Colorado and Grove Montessori High School in Redlands, California. Both are public charter schools and both have ten years experience with high school students in Montessori schools.

In each school we sat down with a dozen randomly recruited students to talk about their school experience. We asked, "How is the Montessori high school different from the conventional schools you attended previously, or that your friends attend now?”

Students spoke about academic content as well as the architecture of learning and how that impacts their personal development. They spoke about personal responsibility and freedom of inquiry. They spoke about the quality of experience as a learner. They spoke about the sense of community: the accepting relationship with their peers and the supportive relationship with their teachers.

Here are some of their comments verbatim:

Montessori school challenges us more.

I know everyone in the school, all the students and all the teachers.

We’re like a big family. We hate each other & love each other.

No cliques.

The geeks are the jocks.

No bullies.

Here you can be yourself.

People accept each other & their differences.

It’s a very accepting environment.

We’re all geeks and nerds here and proud of it.

We want to be engaged.

There are no cliques; we’re open to each other.

I like coming to school in the morning. My previous school was all about conformity. Here you can be yourself.

What makes your high school a Montessori school?
•There is a balance of self- directed work & teacher assigned work.

•The freedom let's people grow more than rigid structure of traditional schools.

•Working with hands-on materials. Learning is not just abstract.

•Montessori kids learn to ask why.

•We learn to see things in a different way, from different perspectives.

•We learn to use tools...practical life lessons.

•Our relationship with the teachers...trust. We’re on a first-name basis. The teachers know our strengths and disabilities. Their trust in us is inspiring.

•Trust among the students very high. (One student’s senior project is to serve as a study hall tutor. Another student said of him, “We respect him as a peer and as a teacher.”)

•We’re able to find our own talents. (One student has been working for 4yrs rebuilding a tractor owned by the school. Other students spoke about the variety of senior projects, many of which involved service to the school, all of which involved a gift of their personal talents.)

•We're not taught WHAT to think...but are encouraged to think independently.

•This is the kind of school where everyone wants to sit in the front of the class. There are no “cool guys” sitting in the back of the room doing their thing.

An inch deep and a mile wide

2010-12-09T13:56:00.004-06:00

Here is an e-mail conversation I had with one of our parents, John Reed, who is a high school teacher in a Houston suburb.

Friends,
The film (Race to Nowhere) is receiving a good bit of press. I am urging my principal to show the film and suggested we have a NO homework night once a week. (for honors students) (I'll institute it myself if she doesn't)

As an AP teacher and parent that is trying to stay aware of these issues, the film really caught my attention. Two quotes in particular stood out. "An inch deep and a mile wide" and "don't take 6 AP classes".

The first quote summarizes (for me) what is the absolute biggest problem in so many schools. That we throw a tsunami of facts and homework at the kids without slowing up to actually catch our breath and LEARN something.

The second quote was sort of funny but also serious in that 6 AP classes are ok for some kids but too many students are trying to take too many AP classes. They are just not right for everyone but there exists this invisible gravitational pull to take AP classes irregardless of other factors. (social, stress level, educational appropriateness,etc. )

I walked away from the film with a deeper appreciation of the type education my daughters are receiving now and also the film has made me take pause for the type of secondary education I would want them to experience in the future.
John Reed

Thanks, John Reed.

John:
Interesting to read The Times take on the film.
John Long

PS
James Moudry and I just returned from visiting Montessori charter school high schools in Golden,CO and Redlands, CA. Both schools have been in operation for 10 years and enroll approximately 100 students in grades 10 - 12 (they both keep the 9th year students in the middle school, maintaining Montessori's 3-year groupings.) Both were very inspiring. We learned a lot from them.

“You’re So Smart” ?

2010-12-03T17:36:00.001-06:00

One of our third grade boys finished his spelling assignment, closed his book, and declared himself ready to work on his math.

His teacher said, “Open your math notebook. There’s a subtraction problem ready to get you started.”

“I hope it’s nice and long,” he said.

I was sitting there at the lesson table and was curious why he said that.

“Because I want to get really good at subtraction and then I want to get really good at multiplication and division.”

Two girls in another lower elementary classroom were learning to use the checkerboard, an aid to multiplication. Here’s the problem they wrote for themselves: 377,734 X 72.

They were on the steep part of the learning curve, but they were fearless. In fact, as soon as they finished writing the problem in their math notebooks, one said to the other, “I forget how to do this.”

I was sitting next to them on the floor and could have helped out, but I wanted to see how they handled this situation, so I offered no adult intervention. In fact, their teacher sent me over to observe them because I told her I was looking for students confronting a difficult passage in their work. These girls had already been given a lesson on the checkerboard, but were not yet independent using it.

As she walked by, one of their classmates said, “Do you need help?” She spent the next fifteen minutes re-teaching them how to use the checkerboard. At one point she offered to simplify the problem, shortening the mulitiplier from two digits (X 72) to one digit (X 2). They declined her offer. “We want to do this problem.”

Three years ago Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck wrote Mindset: the new psychology of success. If you have ever said to your child, “You’re so smart,” read on. If you tend to correct them whenever you think they’ve made an error, read on.

As a young researcher, Dweck encountered children very much like the ones I saw in our classrooms today. She observed, “Confronted with the hard puzzles, one ten-year-old boy pulled up his chair, rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips, and cried out, ‘I love a challenge.’”

Confounded by this unexpected behavior from children, Dweck asked rhetorically, “What’s wrong with them? I always thought you coped with failure or you didn’t cope with failure. I never thought anyone loved failure. Were these alien children or were they on to something?”

“Everyone has a role model, someone who pointed the way at a critical moment in their lives. These children were my role models. They obviously knew something I didn’t and I was determined to figure it out—to understand the kind of mindset that could turn a failure into a gift.”

“What did they know? They knew that human qualities, such as intellectual skills, could be cultivated through effort. And that’s what they were doing—getting smarter. Not only weren’t they discouraged by failure, they didn’t even think they were failing. They thought they were learning.”

At the heart of Dweck’s discoveries, after twenty years of work, are two opposing mindsets. Some of us see ourselves (and others) as smart or not smart. And we see smartness as a fixed characteristic, something we ourselves cannot change or influence. In fact, we might even believe that smart people don’t need to work hard to learn something. And that if you do need to work hard, this proves that you’re not smart. As parents, when our child learns something new we say, “You’re so smart.” This helps us pass on to the next generation that mindset.

Other people see themselves (and others) as learners. With this mindset, we understand that errors are a natural part of learning. We also see that learning builds intelligence. We expect that we need to work hard to learn new things, and that through our hard work we make ourselves smarter. As parents, when our child learns something new, we say, “You worked really hard at that, didn’t you?” This helps us pass on to the next generation that mindset.

Montessori
Dr. Montessori said that we must help children develop “a friendly relationship with error.” This gets communicated in little ways and big ways and over a long period of time, helps develop a learner’s mindset.

When a child is running indoors, do you say, “Don’t run!” or do you say, “Walk”? Saying “walk” is not only more effective (children often hear only the last thing we say, so a child hearing “don’t run” hears only “run”!), it also entails no correction, no error. Hearing about the error is often the worst part. The control is external. You are being controlled and feel like you are being controlled.

This is a reason that many Montessori classroom materials have a built-in control of error: the child can check herself and does not need the teacher to tell her if she is right or wrong. If she is wrong, she simply re-does it. Errors are a normal part of learning.

If a child drops a plate and it breaks, he gets the broom to sweep it up. He does not need to be told, “You broke a plate,” (A comment that is often embellished with some additional insult about the child’s carelessness.). We are aiming to develop a friendly relationship with error. We are aiming to develop the mindset of a learner, someone who understands that errors are a normal part of learning. We are aiming to avoid a fear of mistakes, a fear of failure, which can paralyze a learner. If you are afraid to make mistakes, you’ll be reluctant to try something new and hard.

We aim to develop a curiosity about errors. A child mixing colors wants orange. She combines red and blue and gets purple. “Oh, that’s interesting. You’ve made purple. How did you do that? What colors did you mix?” Compare this to an error-oriented approach: “No, that’s definitely not orange!” An adult taking this approach might then tell the child what to do: “Mix red and yellow to get orange,” or even say, “Let me do that for you.” Either way, the message to the child is this: you’re wrong and you’re incompetent. Reminds me of Thomas Edison’s 10,000 attempts to develop the filament for the incandescent light bulb. Or Spencer Silver’s development of a glue that didn’t work very well (think Post-It Notes). Some people deny their errors. Or cover them up. Or get discouraged. Or throw the whole mess away. Or leave the workbench and go watch TV. Others maintain an air of curiosity.

What’s the difference? Mindset. How do we develop the mindset of a learner? It begins with our attitude toward error, toward effort and toward intelligence.

Race to Nowhere

2010-11-12T15:56:00.004-06:00

We're showing The Race To Nowhere tonight at The Post Oak School. It is a film that documents the results of an educational system dominated by test scores as its ultimate result. High test scores = Achievement. Unfortunately, the drive to garner high test scores, good grades, and admission to highly selective colleges has
D E R A I L E D education.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
-- Gilbert K. Chesterton

Are we losing our soul?

changing education paradigms

2010-10-20T16:29:00.004-05:00

Click here to watch Sir Ken Robinson ("if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original")in an RSA animate production.

toddlers' favorite toy: i-phone

2010-10-20T16:25:00.002-05:00

Here it is without comment.

self-respect

2010-10-06T14:35:00.002-05:00

"Folks today have ... got this idea that self-respect means 'I am a terrific person. I am wonderful. Me, me, me.'

That's not self-respect; that's vanity."

--Bessie Delany, American dentist and civil rights pioneer

Comic-book making instead of calculus?

2010-10-06T12:39:00.006-05:00

Students direct their education at Manhattan Free School

That is what people FEAR Montessori education to be: comic-book making instead of calculus.

It is not.

E.M. Standing collaborated with Dr. Montessori on the book Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work. The chapter about elementary education includes this section:

Freedom of Choice Must Still Be Based on Knowledge…Some of the new educationists—says Montessori-- in a reaction against the old system of forcing children to learn by rote a tangled skein of uninteresting facts, go to the opposite extreme, and advocate giving the child “freedom to learn what he likes but without any previous preparation of interest….This is a plan for building without a basis, akin to the political methods that today offer freedom of speech and a vote, without education—granting the right to express thought where there are no thoughts to express, and no power of thinking! What is required for the child, as for society, is help towards the building up of mental faculties, interest being of necessity the first to be enlisted, so that there may be natural growth in freedom.”

Here, as always, the child’s liberty consists in being free to choose from a basis of real knowledge, and not out of mere curiosity. He is free to take up which of the “radial lines of research” appeals to him, but not to choose “anything he likes” in vacuo. It must be based on a real center of interest, and therefore motivated by what Montessori calls “intellectual love.”

Montessori was a revolutionary thinker. And she pointed to the middle path: FREEDOM...within limits.

what you do

2010-10-01T13:32:00.004-05:00

"It is not what you do for your children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings."

--From the "Ask Ann Landers" American advice column

punish the curious

2010-09-17T16:42:00.002-05:00

"It's easy to underestimate how difficult it is for someone to become curious. For 7, 10, or even 15 years of school, you are required to not be curious. Over and over and over again, the curious are punished."

That's from Seth Godin in his book Tribes.

Yesterday I dropped by two classrooms. In the middle school math class, students were divided into groups of 4. Each group was engrossed in conversation -- and experimentation -- trying to change the orientation of a parabola.

Then I visited a lower elementary classroom (1-2-3 graders, age 6-9 years old). The teacher struck a little chime to get children's attention and announced, "It's time to put away your work and to line up for recess." Three pairs of children said at the same time, "WAIT! Can we finish what we're working on first?"

Or as one of our parents asked after the first day of school, "What do you put in the water? I've never seen children so eager to get back to school!"

"Old School, meet New School"

2010-09-06T15:35:00.006-05:00

Here is an e-mail conversation I had with two members of our school's technology committee, Rakesh Agrawal and Leland Fondren:

Rakesh:
Some interesting education apps for the iPad:
"Old School, meet New School"

Leland:
Ok cool. And right off the bat my reaction is Hold On There! Montessori early childhood education is about concrete learning with actual objects. A cube is literally a cube. There are no abstract constructs until elementary. The traceable alphabet includes sandpaper leters. You can actually feel the shape of the letters. You can’t get much more concrete than that. Putting that into the iPad abstracts the whole process. The traceable alphabet will feel like glass, with no tactile feedback. Abstractions come later.

Second reaction is to their upcoming product for the Moveable Alphabet. The animals are cartoon caricatures. If you are going to build this, use real photos. Once you have abstracted to that level, you might as well go full on with it. Use real photos, link to full stories and video. Start wiring those young brains for the rich layers of distractions that await them when they go online (facetious).

I firmly believe in the hard materials and concrete grounded teaching that happens in the Primary. It allows their young minds to build strong pathways as they learn the material without wiring into them the crazy linked in world that is the internet. I see no indications that students that learn the internet at the Upper El and Middle School levels are any less capable than those the get wired earlier. And quite the opposite for the kids that are getting connected early, who seem to have difficulty with managing their time in college. (those are my anecdotal observations based on my children’s experiences with their non-Montessori friends.)

I’m willing to discuss technology for the upper school/high school and admin. I still believe the lower school needs to remain tech free.

John:
Leland,You are right on target.

The irony is that the developers of Montessorium and these I-pad applications head an AMI Montessori school in Sioux Falls, South Dakota…and if you dig deep enough into the digital stream, you find their acknowledgement of exactly what you are saying.

Their rationale for creating these flawed learning materials is that it will bring Montessori to a whole new audience.

Ironically, this morning, as I was helping with arrivals in the primary area, there was a 4-year old boy playing with an electronic game when I opened the car door. His mother asked him to give up the game in order to go to school and he went into a full melt down. Looked like EWS (electronic withdrawal syndrome) (a condition I just named). But then, this is actually a different issue than the ones you identified.

PS
Montessorium does claim that there is a way to program tactile feeling on the i-pad so that you will actually be able to feel the “sandpaper letters”. That would be good. However, cubes are still cubes: 3-d and with real weight. Don’t think you can do that on an i-pad.

Leland:
Glass is glass. That is all they will feel. They can program the iPad to vibrate or make sound if they are on the letter and not if they are not, but, it is not a one-to-one relationship. The children will be mapping alternate pathways to deal with the extra layer. Feeling the sand under your finger is a direct connection. You feel what you see and are touching what you feel. No matter what you program on an iPad you will always feel glass and a slab of aluminum (that sometimes vibrates and beeps).

I am fully onboard with traditional materials.

Proving vs. Improving

2010-08-18T18:19:00.005-05:00

"Students learn and behave differently if they—and their teachers—focus on improving their knowledge and competence rather than proving it."

Students who focus too heavily on performance ironically perform less well academically, think less critically, and have a harder time overcoming failure.

Read it here.

Motivation (revisited)

2010-08-06T15:34:00.002-05:00

We all know what motivates people, right?

Pay them more and they'll work harder, faster and better.

Give them grades in school.

And if grades aren't enough motivation for some students, pay them.

Problem is, it doesn't work that way.

I've written about Dan Pink's book Drive before, but what he says contradicts what all of us KNOW...so I need to say it again. And again.

Here's an animated version of Drive.

color blind parenting

2010-08-05T11:36:00.005-05:00

David Wolf, a NASA astronaut remembers this day from his childhood. (Thanks David for permission to print your story. Thanks Bubba Levy for forwarding to me.)

The silent cool morning quiet was shattered by the tremendous roar from our icon of raw power and technology. Just coming into view from around the bend, Mr. Peacock’s unfailing garbage truck was performing it’s unimaginable hydraulic feats, under the capable control of Mr. Peacock himself. A few perfect inputs to the control levers and the machine's authority was final. Faultlessly directed force, easily crushed the bails from Mr. Klein’s recently mowed lawn. Last week we witnessed a complete refrigerator reduced to a flat carcass and swept from our world. This Saturday morning, washed in the aroma of fresh grassy fermentation the oily machine and gasoline, I would command the truck's grinding roar and demonstrate that I remembered all that the great black man had taught me. Today was my opportunity to show him how well I could execute every detail as we collected the garbage of Oakwood Drive together. And the younger kids envied as their older buddy, Dave, every bit 6 years old, was entrusted to operate such magnificence. They followed me into the heat of the afternoon wanting to know what it was like and how we knew which lever to pull.

Later, in Dougie Rose's garage, we put the final touches on our most recent spacecraft design assembled from wood scavenged from the new house going up down the street. Doug and I carefully explained the function of each critical control to our young colleagues. It had been a good day.

At dinner, after clarifying to my parents the silliness of switching hands to eat with a fork, I had to proudly announce my aspiration. “I am going to be a garbage man, just like Mr. Peacock.”

The northern summer, with it’s endless glowing twilight, coaxes so much life. Later that evening, still light at nine o’clock, my dad requested my help in identifying the arteries from the veins in his medical school book. You see, he has color blindness, and it was causing him confusion in studying for his upcoming exam at medical school. My dad loves music. No stereo was good enough so he said he had to build his own. The color codes on the resistors were similar trouble for him to identify and I knew that there was no room for even the slightest error. So, if he would let me solder them in, I would help him choose the proper values from the bins of components. After months of assembly and wiring I found that first powered test of these instruments thrilling.

On this evening, just after identifying the femoral artery in anatomic human figure on the glossy page , dad told me he had thought over my aspiration to follow in the footsteps of Mr. Peacock, and that he liked the idea of me becoming a garbage man. In fact he liked it so much that he, right then and there, promised to buy me my first garbage truck. He told me there would be just one requirement from my side of the deal; to become “the best” garbage man in the world. We shook on it.

That night, lying in bed, it had all finally come together. Like every night, I drifted off to sleep to the sounds of a distant symphony playing in the living room. Forty eight years later dad loaded his favorite version of Rhapsody in Blue into his new CD player. As we listened together, Gershwin’s symphony drew forward all of the inspiration from a six year old’s long past summer day. After a brief debate as to the virtue of tube versus solid state power amplifiers we decided to just enjoy the performance.

I kidded dad that I was sure happy I didn’t get his color blindness as it would have surely made my decades as a NASA Astronaut not possible. “How did you manage to take such good care of those thousands of patients over your long medical career?” Dad just smiled and shook his head. The next evening dad called me back in Houston to ask how the emergency repairs outside the Space Station were going. We had lost a critical avionics cooling system that evening and as the senior Astronaut in charge of Spacewalks, our team had it’s work cut out for it. I said, dad, “I’m having trouble letting go. It’s not easy to step back, be a coach, and let the younger Astronauts do it their way!!!” Dad said, “You might try telling them you are color blind.”

David Wolf,
NASA Astronaut

I must comment.

I love the encouragement Dave's father gave his 6yr. old son upon hearing his "dream job." He didn't put him down, didn't say, "You should be a doctor, or an astronaut."

He understood that a big truck is a big deal to a 6-year old boy. Instead of trying to shape his son's future career choice, he used this as an opportunity to talk about a life principle: aiming to do your personal best.

And he made a powerful statement by NOT suggesting that there is better work than collecting garbage. He avoided demeaning the garbage man’s work and therefore, the garbage man himself. As Montessori said, “All work is noble. Each person’s work contributes to the whole. It is only ignoble NOT to work.”

And then under the guise of his own handicap, his color blindness, he taught his son by asking for help. Dave felt noble helping his dad. He couldn't say, "I can't do that; it's your work. I don't know that; you do."

What a great model of thoughtful parenting, color-blind parenting.

The R-word

2010-07-23T14:17:00.009-05:00

Daniel Willingham observes that college students are expected to be responsible for their own learning. He asks, "What happens during K-12 education to prepare students for this responsibility?"

Look at Willingham's example.

Is he really talking about responsibility for learning? Or is he talking about a more fundamental life skill, a kind of responsible self-management?

This isn't learned through lecture. It isn't learned from a book. It is learned from guided practice...Day after day, year after year children must being given countless opportunities to be responsible for their own learning and for their own behavior.

If students are too tightly managed, if they are always told what to do, they don't get that experience.

Dr. Montessori emphasized the important balance of freedom and responsibility.

Ask Montessori kids about the 3-R's and what do you hear?

Respect

Responsibility

Resourcefulness.

The Creativity Crisis

2010-07-22T16:53:00.002-05:00

American creativity is declining. What went wrong and how can we fix it. Read on.

Blog of the Day #2

2010-07-19T16:25:00.002-05:00

I'm just back from 3 weeks in the mountains of Colorado and catching up on mail, e-mail, the work that has been going on here at school in my absence, and reading the blogs I follow. Here's one from Gretchen Rubin.

Laughing at Us: Blog of the Day

2010-07-19T14:56:00.001-05:00

Dan Pink says we are racing headlong toward the old-style Chinese form of education.

Alone Together

2010-06-15T09:35:00.002-05:00

Don't read this if your children are there in the room with you.

Movie of the Day

2010-05-19T11:08:00.002-05:00

A review of the movie Babies: with a shout-out to Dr. Montessori.

50 Must-Read Montessori blogs

2010-05-13T11:30:00.003-05:00

Here's the list .from OnLine Degree Programs

"Is there any research about Montessori?"

2010-05-13T11:25:00.000-05:00

"Traditional education works very well...for about 1/3 of children."

2010-05-13T11:22:00.001-05:00

"Montessori kids are good at doing things"

2010-05-13T10:44:00.003-05:00

video

2010-05-05T15:07:00.006-05:00

Here's a preview of a 30 minute video profile of Montessori education, the Post Oak School and to make it all personal, me. The program is airing tomorrow evening at 10:30 pm locally on the Houston PBS channel.

It's an out of body experience watching myself on tape.

And I'm fascinated because I've been reading for the past 10 years about how to communicate clearly about our work. To avoid being pedantic. Academic.

Will an interested parent read about education beyond the 3-second mark? Beyond the 30-second mark? Beyond the 3-minute mark?

That's why I've read Made to Stick, and Don't Be Such a Scientist, and Seth Godin's blog, and Selling the Invisible, and Blink, and Visual Explanations...

Blog of the Day

2010-04-21T10:32:00.001-05:00

A grandfather's observations of a Montessori classroom.

You can't do that on an ipad

2010-04-14T17:11:00.010-05:00

Virginia:

You asked me what Dr. Montessori would say about the ipad.

Look at the pictures of POS middle school students IN ACTION. You can’t do that on an I-pad.

How about a 2 ½ yr old? Have you seen this video? It is quite amazing to see a toddler navigate this sophisticated electronic tool so easily.

And yet…

It is two dimensional rather than three dimensional, virtual rather than actual, visual rather than tactile – it is experience once removed, a representation of reality rather than reality itself.

That said, e-readers such as Kindle and now I-pad (which is a cross between a kindle and an iphone), challenge the supremacy of the printed book. In fact, I believe they will finally put the printed book on the shelf (This is a photograph of “The World Book Encyclopedia” – one of my creations: remember "books on tape"? This is “tape on books”).

We are moving the Post Oak School library into the atrium of the school (the room where we held the AMI open board meeting several years ago) because we need space for a new upper elementary classroom and it is going where the library is currently located. My question now is whether we will ever again need a large, wonderful room to house books. How soon will we convert to a nice room with comfortable chairs and tables and a kindle for every kinder? Cushing Academy in Boston has already done that.

The ipad extends the medium into photos and videos and links…and also has the capacity for notation, highlighting, and generally making the book your own. You’ll be able to carry around a full library in your hand. No more spinal injuries from text-book-laden back packs.

There is a place for the ipad in the Montessori world unless we want to crawl into a cave.

But we must also crawl into caves…exploring the real world, counting bats, harvesting guano, searching for Cro Magnon paintings of bison and mastodons, confronting our demons, adventuring…whatever real people do in real caves…even though we’ll be able to read about it on the ipad and link to the video and even play the video game “Spelunker!” – all on our ipad.

John

How NOT to talk to your kids

2010-03-11T15:20:00.004-06:00

"You're so smart!"

vs.

"You worked really hard on that!"

Check it out.

to help students succeed?

2010-03-05T16:04:00.006-06:00

Teachers show a lighter side to help students succeed on state tests:

Indiana educators are holding pep rallies, rolling out the red carpet, performing dance routines and rewriting popular-song lyrics to help students relax and encourage them to do well on standardized tests being given this week. "You show us every single day what a great job you do and how smart you are, but we only get one chance to show the state of Indiana how smart you are," one teacher told her students at a pep rally. The Indianapolis Star (3/4)

What's wrong with this picture?

Actually, what's right with this picture?

Here's the only thing I can think of that is right: the teachers truly desire to help their students succeed.

Dressing up in funny clothes, singing and dancing for their students? In order to relax them so that they will perform well on a high-stakes standardized test?

What am I missing here?

Telling them they are smart?
"You show us every single day what a great job you do and how smart you are, but we only get one chance to show the state of Indiana how smart you are," Goss said.

Let's see, the purpose of education is to show the state of Indiana how smart we are.

And I guess they don't know the work of Carol Dweck.
Praising a child for being smart
actually inhibits performance...

Acknowledging hard work
encourages the mindset that leads to success.

They call this hula dancing and testing for smartness
education reform.

(Tune in for a report on Diane Ravitch repudiating her support of this flavor of education reform.)

Snack time, again?

2010-03-03T11:01:00.002-06:00

Children's eating habits are changing. Check out this story on National Public Radio.

The Real World

2010-02-26T16:37:00.006-06:00

"But, Maura, how does Montessori get them ready for the REAL world?"

Well, let's define the REAL world...

At your job, is everyone the same exact age? Is everyone sitting at
their desks, doing the same thing at the same time? Are they doing
tasks that require them to access knowledge, off the top of their
heads, in a timed setting?

Or...
Do you have different people with different levels of experience
working in your office? Do you collaborate with your colleagues on projects? Do you need to choose the right tools for the right jobs? Do you need to be able to set up work, concentrate on it, keep it organized, put it away? Do you have to be able to work independently, and work in a group? Do you need to try things and discover that they work or don't work, that is, learn from your mistakes? Do you need to be able to problem solve? Communicate effectively?

Montessori IS the REAL world.

[Thanks to Maura Joyce, Head of School, Montessori in the Redlands (CA)]

Wimpy or hefty?

2010-02-19T13:55:00.007-06:00

“Montessori comes across as wimpy.” That grabbed me. Made me mad. I leaned forward in my chair to hear more. Sitting in a room with more than 100 Montessori school leaders, I was listening to Trevor Eisler, a pilot of business jets, a flight instructor, triathlete, husband, and father of three Montessori children. He is also the author of Montessori Madness! A Parent to Parent Argument for Montessori Education.

“Montessori is not wimpy. Far from it. We need to counter this impression.” He went on to recount examples he has observed in his children’s school: of a young child struggling mightily, willingly and willfully to carry an object nearly as large as himself; and of an older child tackling a project much larger than any teacher would dare to assign. These typical examples of Montessori children made him recall John Kennedy’s speech about the Apollo moon project, “We do these things because they are hard, not because they are easy.”

“Think about how hard kids work,” Eisler said, “—what difficult tasks they take on. Montessori is about challenging work, tough things, and about perseverance. That’s not wimpy; it’s hefty. We need to get that message across.”

Ever watch primary children counting out the number chains? Each classroom has chains for both the squares and cubes of the numbers from 1 to 10. The longest square chain goes up to 100 (that’s 10-squared) and the longest cube chain goes up to 1000 (or 10-cubed). Every child’s goal is to complete the 1000 chain—because it is the longest one.

At the elementary level, we encourage students to write their own math problems. This morning I spoke to two third grade boys whose division problem was too large to fit on a sheet of paper. In fact, it required 16 sheets of paper taped together. No teacher would ever assign a problem that size, but students willingly assign it to themselves because they want to do work that is challenging.

First graders begin doing research projects. They also love animals. Since November a group of first grade boys has been researching every kind of dinosaur. Almost every day they work on their project. They have a deep and growing pile of paper documenting their work: reports and charts and drawings. At the same time, a group of first grade girls is similarly passionate about dogs. In the weeks before an outing to visit a veterinarian, these girls learned about 45 different kinds of dog.

When I spoke with upper elementary students they told me about a variety of projects they are working on: presidential biographies, reports about the countries of Africa, and science experiments. The latter is a good example of how students look to do more. In discussing the write-ups of their experiments, students suggested publishing a journal of their work. Look for it soon. Two girls spoke of a long story they have been working on since August, one writing and the other illustrating. Would you believe sixty pages?

And no conversation of hefty efforts can leave off the Post Oak Peddlars: thirteen middle school students (plus alumni riders and parents) are now training to ride the MS150 bike ride from Houston to Austin. Those of you who have done this ride know what is involved; those of you who haven’t can only imagine. Wimpy? No, heroic. But done in a Post Oak way. Rather than aiming to beat one another to the finish, they are supportive and encouraging, applauding one another’s efforts and, like the marines, ensuring that they leave no one behind. Montessori kids learn the meaning of hard work, and to stretch their personal limits. That’s hefty.

Is calling someone perfectionistic a diss or a kiss?

2010-02-19T11:16:00.003-06:00

Dan Pink asks that question in his current blog.

Turns out it depends if you are perfectionistic
from the inside out
or the outside in.

Get your attention? Read on.

“I’m Bored”

2010-02-09T10:44:00.002-06:00

“Chapter 14: Encourage Boredom in Your Child.” That got my attention. So I read the little book for the two minutes I stood in the bookstore checkout line. “Children who have too many opportunities, choices, scheduled activities, and things to do are often the most susceptible to boredom. The reason is these children are used to being entertained and stimulated virtually every moment of every day.”

I put the book down and resisted the impulse purchase. Over the next several days the idea of encouraging boredom in our children kept coming back to me. We are not responsible to provide constant entertainment for our children. In fact, if we were to accept the premise that a child needs constant entertainment, what message are we sending about life?

By Wednesday I could no longer resist. I drove to the bookstore on the way home and bought Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff with Your Family by Richard Carlson. It was no longer an impulse purchase, so I felt OK. And I had been thinking a lot about the place of entertainment in children’s lives. Perhaps TV Turn-Off Week got me started.

What is the author’s response to the (usually desperate) statement, “I’m bored!”?

“It’s good for you to be bored once in a while.”

Carlson’s not suggesting that we not take an active, loving interest in our children’s activities. “What I’m referring to here is a response to overstimulation—when you know in your heart that your kids have plenty of things to do and that their boredom is coming from them, not from a lack of possibilities.”

This response encourages creativity in kids because it expects them to find something to do on their own. It also sends the message that it’s OK not to have something to do every minute of every day. Perhaps this will help our children slow down the pace of their lives just a little. That would be a gift.

the big difference

2010-01-26T16:43:00.003-06:00

A high school senior, one of our alumna, made the following statement. When you read it, think Drive; think Dan Pink.

“I think that most of the people I met in high school have been just as motivated as I have been. But if you look at the deeper reasons they want to do well, it’s completely different. When I went to high school, I didn’t know what a GPA was; I didn’t know about ‘the top ten percent.’ A lot of people I met came to high school with everything planned out: “You’ve got to play the game.” They were getting good grades to get into a good college, and I was getting good grades because I wanted to know the material and learn more about it. I guess it might seem like it’s not important why you’re motivated, as long as you do well. In college, it’s going to be a bit different, you’re going to see more of a divergence. I think the fact that we want to learn because we love to learn, not because our parents are making us—that’s the big difference I’ve seen.”

100 word challenge

2010-01-25T08:49:00.008-06:00

Jim Fitzpatrick, head of Santa Barbara Montessori School sent out this message:

Dr. Steven Hughes in Atlanta 23 months ago challenged us to create an 'elevator speech.'
Now, here in SB, a local newspaper, print and digital version, has a space listing for each school if you advertise--you know the drill-- advertise and you get "100 Words" to describe your program.

Here's SBMS's most recent "100 Words;" they result from two parents collaborating last night after a conversation before a fundraising meeting. Here's what they came up with:

Do you want your child to be an independent thinker, able to solve new challenges, with a life-long passion for learning? At SBMS, we foster children’s natural curiosity of the world around them. Through practical hands-on activities children gain a deep, comprehensive understanding of language, math, history, geography, all sciences, the arts, and more. Our children’s learning experience allows them to excel in their further academic careers and become the creative, entrepreneurial leaders of tomorrow.

Now I say:
Take the challenge. Send me your 100 word description. Describe what? Look at it from a parent's perspective: what does your child get out of the experience?

miracle on 34th street

2009-12-24T18:20:00.011-06:00

I watched the 1947 version of "Miracle on 34th Street" last night. Hadn't seen it since the year our boys had their moment of doubt about Santa. After watching the film that Christmas, Santa had a one year reprieve in the Long house.

But I guess I was so focused on my sons' existential moment that I failed to notice something else. Who are the bad guys in the movie? They are legion and led by the forces of creeping consumerism as portrayed by the Macy's toy department manager. Then there are the agents of cynical, populist politics represented by the judge in the Trial of Santa Claus. I was most sensitive to two other villains that grabbed my attention: the psychologist and the "progressive school" the little girl, Susan, attends.

The psychologist is a wreck, a wretched little man who, because his own life is a wreck, crusades against the Macy's Santa, our hero, who is either (a)The Real Deal or (b)a harmless delusional saint.

In one scene, The Psychologist lectures the children and parents of Susan's school about the myth of Santa and why it is bad to fool children. This echoes Susan's mother who takes great pains to demystify life for her so that she will not be disappointed when she learns that myths are untrue. The heart of the movie is Susan's conversion from Santa Skeptic to True Believer. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

The Psychologist and the Progressive School (read non-traditional) are demonized. They are the unknown; the different; the new and strange and disruptive.

Beginning in the 18th Century, "progressive education" presented an alternative to the rigid, one-size-fits-all, abstract, two-dimensional, teacher-driven, factory-model schooling that we now call "traditional".

Back in 1947 and still today the Fear Mongers enlist Santa Claus to battle the forces of change, to protect anything and everything dubbed "tradtional", and to protest any idea labeled "progressive". We've always done it that way.

On this topic we could go as deep as the salt mines under Cleveland (did you know that Cleveland used to be the sea bottom?), or as far afield as the once open grasslands of the American plains (..."where the buffalo roam and the skies are not cloudy all day."). Instead let me say this:

I like Santa Claus. I loved my sons' love of Santa and their faith in the essential goodness of the universe that he embodies.

Look at the history of Santa Claus and the history of Christmas itself to understand how thin a veneer "tradition" represents. The history is much richer, more nuanced and controversial than most of us understand.

My cat is afraid of change. You should have seen her the day the Christmas tree went up: sniffing the tree, sniffing the light cord, her tail straight up in the air, twitching.

People are afraid of change, too. But without change we'd still be living in caves. Beware the fear mongers. They want to keep you in your cave.

Yes, there are other approaches to education. If you were happy with your own education and think that approach was good enough for your children and will prepare them for life in 2025, fine. Enroll them in a school just like you went to. An old fashioned school.

If not, if you think there must be a better approach, look for an alternative. Just don't get Santa involved. He's got no dog in this hunt.

As peaceful as it looks

2009-12-18T10:37:00.004-06:00

Here's an e-mail exchange I had this morning with Post Oak School parent Stephan Kinsella:

Stephan,
I love hearing about the conversations you have with Ethan. I also continue to be amazed by the depth of thinking children display. Most adults don’t give them enough credit. That’s why Montessori said that children are our only hope for peace.
John

John, I thought you might like this one! Stephan

The earth is not as peaceful as it looks
via StephanKinsella.com by Stephan Kinsella on 12/18/09

I was driving my 6 year old to school this morning. We somehow got into a conversation about how laws were made. I started explaining to him the distinction between law formed by courts, and law artificially made by legislation. This led into a brief explanation of the British system, the role of the king or queen and parliament, how parliament is bicameral, and Britain’s “unwritten” constitution, and to a contrast with our own system with a President instead of king, a bicameral congress, and a written constitution. And so on.

During this Ethan blurts out, “I wish they would make a law against war.” So, this led to a discussion of the United Nations and treaties, and the attempt to limit warmaking in the UN charter. He asked me if it worked. I told him it hasn’t worked very well. He says, why? I say, well, if you are a powerful nation then you are sometimes tempted to use that power to get your way, and so on. So we still have wars.

Ethan is silent for a minute, and then mutters, “The earth is not as peaceful as it looks.” It kind of creeped me out.

Imagine

2009-12-18T10:15:00.003-06:00

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet has free access to the sum of all human knowledge."— Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia

An appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

Mark Berger, friend and colleague, Head of School at Corvallis Montessori School, passed this along. I'll paraphrase what he said: Jimmy Wales is a Montessori grad. We brag about his work and the impact Wikipedia has had on the culture. He is an exemplar of the inventive, iconoclastic, entrepeneurial spirit engendered by Montessori education. Here's our chance to support a Montessori endeavor.

General Douglas MacArthur's Mom, Pinky, moved with him to West Point and took an apartment near campus so she could watch him with a telescope...

2009-12-01T11:13:00.007-06:00

In "The Backlash Against Over-Parenting"
Time magazine takes on

helicopter parents,

hyper-parenting,

perfectionism,

and fear of failure.

Mistakes are good...
so is boredom...
and so are fewer toys.

(Thanks, Stephan, for sending me this article!)