George Morrison

Montessori Now—And for the Next 100 Years

I am sure that somewhere along the road of life you have heard the saying, “What have you done for me lately?” I was reminded of this saying several weeks ago as I was preparing my annual faculty report which is always due at the end of January. My annual report, like those of all my University colleagues covers only a 3-year period. In this case, 2004-2006. Regardless of all my past accomplishments, and regardless of how meritorious they are, everything from 2003 and back is, as they say, history.

Many Montessorians think of Montessori in 100 year blocks—the past 100 years and the next 100. I must admit my undergraduate degree in history trained me to look at events over the long term, not just the fleeting present. However, today’s early childhood environment demands that we help all the kids who need help now. Think of all the four and five-year-olds who are not ready for school and all the recent immigrant children to this land of opportunity.

What if Montessorians had to give an annual report, in three-year chunks, of their accomplishments about how they used Montessori’s ideas to help immigrant children learn?

I think it might encourage them to focus more on how can they can transform Montessori to the present rather than how they can preserve Montessori based on the past.

Jacqueline Cossentino, in her recent Education Week article (“Evaluating Montessori: Why the Results Matter More Than You Think,” Vol. 26, Issue 21, Pages 31-32) says:

Montessori leaders must have both the knowledge and the will to do what it takes to ensure a full implementation of the approach. In theory, that means ensuring high-quality teacher preparation and properly prepared classroom environments. In practice—and in an age of high-stakes accountability—it means much more than that.

Ensuring full implementation means protecting the Montessori program from outside intrusion. It means establishing appropriate expectations among key constituents (parents, public officials, and teachers). It means trusting the approach for what it is, as opposed to what it might be turned into. It means, perhaps most importantly, taking care not to view Montessori as a quick fix to the outcomes problem, the achievement gap, or any number of educational problems in need of solutions.

In many ways, this call to save Montessori from “outside intrusion” is an effort to keep it forever unchanging. It portrays Montessori as a self-centered system for anointed insiders. Rather than serving to make Montessori more accessible to all, it cripples efforts to take Montessori mainstream.

But taking Montessori mainstream is not what Montessorians seem to want.

In another article (“Is There a Role for Montessori in the Mainstream?” Public School Montessorian, spring 2005), Cossentino writes “Good fences, in other words, have made good neighbors.”

Good fences and the buffering of Montessori “from outside intrusion” have made Montessorians good neighbors only among themselves. It has not taken Montessori mainstream, nor made it a factor in the lives of millions of children who could possibly benefit from it.

In this centennial year, Montessorians are quick to point to their modest accomplishments. For example they site the existence of 250 Montessori public schools as evidence of growth and prosperity. However, there are 95,000 public schools in the U.S. (Center for Education Statistics, 2005) and the number is growing. In my school district, administrators bring four new schools on line each year and that is still not enough.

So, with .026 percent of the nation’s public schools implementing a Montessori approach, Montessorians need to play extreme catch-up or the ratio of public Montessori schools to non-Montessorian will become even more miniscule. Now would be a good time for Montessori national organizations to roll out a comprehensive plan for taking Montessori to more public schools.

In order for Montessorians to take Montessori more public, they must address and solve issues of teacher certification in ways appropriate to their convictions and in ways that will satisfy the voracious need for new teachers. The patchwork system for teacher certification that Montessorians now have in place has not, and will not, do the job. What is needed is a credible approach, acceptable to state boards of teacher certification and professors of education, that can be integrated with current college and university teacher certification programs.

However, even in this Centennial year, Montessorians are still prone to look for excuses for why they can’t achieve what Maria envisioned. An example of this “blame others approach for our lack of progress,” is the “Can Montessori Integrity Survive NCLB” article by Dennis Schapiro, editor of the Public School Montessorian. It is a classic case of political and educational “us” against “them” ranting and whining.

NCLB is a comprehensive education reform that most educators love to hate, mainly for all the wrong reasons. Many make a profession of NCLB bashing. Like Dennis, critics blame NCLB for everything from single district curricula (isn’t Montessori a single curriculum approach?) to direct instruction (don’t Montessorians do a lot of direct instruction?) to the flight of “discriminating” parents from urban school districts (don’t parents flock to districts that have high quality education programs?).

NCLB is not at the root of Montessori’s failure to thrive in the new Millennium. Rather, it is the “same-old, same-old we will only do it our way” attitudes that serve as barriers for popularization where popularization could really help.

Perhaps it is unrealistic to think that Montessori can ever be a major player in the reform of early childhood education as other programs have—think Head Start and High/Scope. Perhaps it would be more realistic for Montessorians to drop all masks of pretense and admit they are most comfortable with providing high-end educations for the children of high-end parents who are willing to pay high-end dollars for their services.

I believe any program should be organic and change with the cultural, social, educational and political contexts of which it is a part. If a program does not change, then of what value is it to contemporary society? What good is it to the children of the new Millennium, who are vastly different from the children of the old Millennium? In our case, if Montessori does not change how will it be a New Jerusalem and a “new light of education” for the children of the world?

George S. Morrison is Professor, of Early Childhood Education and the University of North Texas, an a contributing editor of Public School Montessorian.