What is Montessori?

Montessori addresses a range of learning and experience that is far broader than any state-prescribed curriculum. It focuses on the importance of process, as opposed to active instruction and control from adults. There is a great level of trust placed in a child’s own inner abilities and Montessori schools are thus learner-centred rather than teacher-centred.

Adults often impose unrealistic schedules, expectations and ambitions, with the best of intentions, on children and the result is disharmony, dissatisfaction, irritability and poor behaviour, both in the classroom and at home. Montessori methodology gives children the freedom to make choices and to pursue them without interruption. Children learn from one another; younger children learn by watching and listening to older children, and older children learn through guiding and teaching the little ones. The Montessori approach encourages children of all ages to work together as a social group. This encourages them to respect the choices of those around them, and to take pleasure in their own accomplishments.

The learning materials provided by Montessori schools are all carefully designed to help children understand where they may have gone wrong and to work out ways of correcting themselves without being ‘told’ how to do so. Free from tests, benchmarks and competitive pressures children tend to excel, driven by their own thirst for knowledge.

The Montessori learning approach is learning for life: Montessori provides the building blocks for future learning by hardwiring a child’s capacity to engage with new material and information, and providing the tools with which to manipulate it.