Editor’s Note

The ‘Public’ in Decline, What Next for Public Montessori?

The name of this newspaper notwithstanding, we have devoted far more of our attention to things Montessori than things Public or Public School.

There is an easy explanation. We think of public education as a given in American life. Over the 20 years of this publication, Montessori programs in public schools have formed a small, evolving, promising sideshow.

While our focus surely will remain on Montessori programs in general and specifically on programs in public schools, it is time to recalibrate. The public part of our concern is undergoing a qualitative change that will affect all of us, as citizens and as persons who see value in Montessori education.

Plenty of commentators describe the devastation of the public sector—the privatization of military, prisons and politics. They can describe the triumph of market values and the consumer instinct over any vision of the common good.

Public schools will never be the same.

Even those Montessorians who have thrived in the private or private non-profit sector will see the cost of a diminished sense of shared fate that is embodied in public institutions.

We began this newspaper with an underlying question: Will public school systems support, frequently in the name of racial desegregation, these quirky schools and programs?

There has certainly never been a deep commitment within public sector leadership to the Montessori vision. At best there has been a commitment to providing a menu with real choices.

But the greater focus, rightly, was on getting life preservers to those young people whose parents were unable to seize the opportunities like those that Montessori programs could offer. For them, a standardized curriculum would be a hedge against the problems of mobility and parental distrust of child-centered education.

Public Montessori schools would certainly demand compromises, but their growth offered a fascinating window on the American pragmatic spirit. What would this new synthesis be?

That era seems long ago.

Now, as urban districts nearly everywhere struggle with charters, competition and No Child Left Behind, it is as if public Montessori programs have fallen through a trapdoor in Maslow’s hierarchy.

Where once I mostly heard dedicated teachers talking about how to make their programs “more Montessori,” to strive for those higher values, I now hear them talking about how to avoid sanctions, using materials as part of direct-instruction-oriented strategies to increase test scores by a given date.

Montessori principals, rarely well-grounded in or passionate about Montessori’s vision, are under pressure to do the work of a middle-manager: making sure policies honed elsewhere are put into practice efficiently. Any more generous vision disappears in the rear view mirror.

One telling quote, perhaps apocryphal, is of the principal saying, “You can do Montessori every other Tuesday afternoon. Now use the district math and language arts curriculum.”

But the standards/No Child Left Behind era has another legacy—bold, if empty, promises to empower parents of children in schools with bad test score numbers. They can transfer their children or obtain free tutoring.

It all dovetails nicely with this generation of parents. The privileged have long been empowered consumers. The less privileged now have at least the illusion of choice.

It seems clear that the old vision of public education embodying a common good is fading, replaced by consumer-driven options.

What that means is an odd, bittersweet opportunity for the Montessori community.

As too many public schools become little more than test-preparation academies, parents with real options—and a high degree of confidence that test scores set too low a standard for their children—will be looking for something that more fully embraces the potential of their children. My guess is they will be looking for schools that are passionately committed to a vision of that potential and have an intellectual structure detailing how to nurture it.

Will this be a further expression of inequality in America? Probably.

But that inequality is with us. It may also be an opportunity to model authentic Montessori, to truly show what Montessori education can provide to all.

It may mean that those public Montessori programs that have adapted most to the new American obsession with test scores may be at a disadvantage.

This new generation of parents is going to demand integrity.

When these parents sign up for a public Montessori school, they are going to expect that it holds true to basic ideals, not be a test academy infused with Montessori materials.

It will certainly be no easy road, but we may be on the verge of an era that will allow public schools to follow their Montessori vision without shame or compromise.

—Dennis Schapiro