Montessori Schools

I did some reading on the Montessori method and I found it to be interesting. It’s an extremely different way to look at education. First the classrooms have students in a three-year age range, which encourages an interactive social and learning environment. This system allows flexibility in learning pace and allowing older children to become teachers by sharing what they have learned. In the elementary grades to develop observations skills Montessori schools use hands on activities designed for a level of learning or concept. A child does not engage in an activity until the teacher or another student has directly demonstrated its proper use, and then the child may use it as desired. At higher-grade levels, the teacher becomes more involved in creating materials since not only the students' capacities but also the potential subjects widen considerably.

These schools also don’t use a grading system or a testing to assess what the students have learned. This is fine also long as these students are in a school that uses the Montessori method, but what happens when that student is no longer in that environment? For example, if the student spends his or her academic career in a Montessori school and when it comes to go to a university or a college, how is that student going to adapt? I don’t doubt that this method is good for kids it sounds like can work from what I’ve read but that transition can’t be a smooth one. To transition from an environment where students help each other in class, they take no tests and get no grades, has to be difficult. It’s a hard enough transition for some high school students in a conventional school I cant imagine how a student that has never taken a test would do on a test.