Sturrock Montessori Academy

Traditional

"Our current [education] system is still geared toward supplying the workforce of the Industrial Revolution.  Its intent is...masses who are trained to serve them by following orders.  Their function is to perform rote, mechanical and uncreative tasks." Resa Steindel Brown, (The Call to Brilliance, 12)

"Mass education taught a basic curriculum of reading, writing, arithmetic and a few other subjects.  It was not interested in cultivating souls, but in providing just enough basic literacy skills to enable people to read instructions...But, to the industrialists funding and running public education, there was an even more important curriculum.  It was covert.  It taught punctuality, obedience and rote, repetitive work.  It taught what was needed to place an obedient workforce into their factories.  And today's curriculum has not changed." Resa Steindel Brown, (The Call to Brilliance, 21)

"Factory labor demanded workers who showed up on time...It demanded workers who would take orders from a management hierarchy without questioning.  And it demanded men and women prepared to slave away at machines or in offices, performing brutally repitious operations...Thus from the mid-nineteenth century on...schools machined generation after generation of young people into a pliable, regimented work force..." Alvin Toffler, (The Third Wave, 45-46)

"As a result, our children are not really educated.  To educate means to 'educe' or draw out what is already within.  This system is not interested in helping our children find out who they are or what they like to do.  This system is interested in controlling them while they are young, so they will grow into adults who can be controlled." Resa Steindel Brown, (The Call to Brilliance, 21)

Montessori  

"We are human beings and we need to function as whole, intact human beings creating and recreating our full potential." Resa Steindel Brown, (The Call to Brilliance, 12)

"[E]ducation is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being.  It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on his environment.  The teacher's task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child." Maria Montessori, (The Absorbent Mind, 8)

"We need a system that fits the needs of today, the Information Age, an age that requires creative and innovative thinkers." Resa Steindel Brown, (The Call to Brilliance, 12)

"What we want to achieve is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child." George Bernard Shaw

"[E]ducation is the art of enticing the soul to emerge from its cocoon, from its coil of potentiality and its cave of hiding.  education is not the piling on of learning, information, data, facts, skills, or abilities-that's training or instructing-but it is rather a making visible what is hidden as a seed." Thomas Moore, (Education of the Heart, 1)

"When education speaks to the soul, issues of focus disappear.  When the heart directs education, passion steps forward to foster growth, productivity and fill our being with inner peace." Resa Steindel Brown, (The Call to Brilliance, 38)

"Inner development is the education of soul qualities, spiritual qualities, ego strength, differentiation, will, thinking, feeling, and breathing.  The body itself opens from the inside." Rudolph Steiner 

"Children are searching for the real meaning of life.  We believe in their possibilities to grow.  That is why we do not hurry to give them answers; instead we invite them to think about where the answers might lie.  The challenge is to listen." Louise Cadwell

Please visit the American Montessori Society and the Montessori Foundation for more information on the Montessori Method .

Courtesy of The American Montessori Society

Montessori                                     Traditional

1. Emphasis on cognitive structures and              1.  Emphasis on rote knowledge and social development                                                     social development
2. Teacher's role is unobtrusive; child                    2.  Teacher's role is dominant, active; actively participates in learning                                 child is a passive participant
3. Environment and method encourage                3.   Teacher is primary enforcer of internal self-discipline                                                 external discipline
4. Individual and group instruction adapts            4.  Individual and group instruction       to each student's learning style                                conforms to the adult's teaching                                                                                          style
5. Mixed age grouping                                               5.  Same age grouping
6. Children encouraged to teach,                            6.  Most teaching done by teacher collaborate, and help each other                              and collaboration is discouraged
7. Child chooses own work from                             7.  Curriculum structured with little interests and abilities                                                 regard for child's interests
8. Child formulates concepts from                          8.  Child is guided to concepts by      self-teaching materials                                              teacher
9. Child works as long as s/he wants                    9.  Child usually given specific time   on chosen project                                                       for work
10. Child sets own learning pace to                       10.  Instruction pace set by group internalize information                                                norm or teacher
11. Child spots errors thru feedback                      11.  Errors corrected by teacher          from material
12. Learning is reinforced internally                       12.  Learning is reinforced externally thru child's own repetition of                                     by rewards, discouragements activity, internal feelings of success                                                                                        repetition 
13. Multi-sensory materials for physical                13.  Few materials for sensory, exploration development                                           concrete manipulation
14. Organized program for learning care              14.  Little emphasis on instruction        of self and self-care environment                            or classroom maintenance
15. Child can work where s/he is                           15.  Child assigned seat; encouraged comfortable, moves and talks at will                       to sit still and listen during group (yet does not disturb others); group                        sessions                                            work is voluntary and negotiable
16. Organized program for parents to                   16.  Voluntary parent involvement, often understand the Montessori philosophy                 only as fundraisers, not                     and participate in the learning process                 participants in  understanding                                                                                         the learning process