By Trevor Eissler and Mary Ellen Maunz Copyright © 2012 ...ageofmontessori.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Montessori-What-I… · I’ve been in Montessori since 1971 and I rarely

MONTESSORI. WHAT IT IS …

AND WHY IT MATTERS TO YOU!

By Trevor Eissler and Mary Ellen Maunz

Copyright © 2012 Age of Montessori

All rights reserved

www.ageofmontessori.com

www.montessorimadness.com

Introduction

Welcome! In early 2010, I saw something online about a

new book on Montessori’s work by Trevor Eissler. Maria

Montessori (1870-1952) was the first woman physician in

Italy, founder of the world renowned Montessori Method

and a prolific author. She was also an internationally

acclaimed speaker and was nominated three times for the

Nobel Peace Prize because of her profound understanding of

how education can promote peace.

In 2011, major news outlets like the Wall Street Journal

focused on the interesting fact that some of the most

innovative new companies in the world, including Google,

Amazon and Wikipedia, were founded by former

Montessori children who demonstrated high levels of

Montessori! What it is…and Why it Should Matter to You!

3

creativity, entrepreneurism and success. They credited the

opening of their minds to their Montessori education.

I’ve been in Montessori since 1971 and I rarely let

anything new about Maria Montessori go by that I do not

read. When I saw Trevor Eissler’s book, I thought it had an

odd title, Montessori Madness, but I decided to give it a try

and ordered it online. When I read the book I was deeply

impressed and immediately enthusiastic. I understood why

the author chose the title—that it is utter madness that

Montessori is not available to every child!

I emailed Trevor Eissler that same night and told him I

would like to use his book in my Montessori teacher

education course. He was very gracious and we chatted back

and forth online. I soon discovered he is a warrior on behalf

of Montessori’s message and works with a small group of

dads, the Montessori Mad Men, who are actively promoting

Montessori in every way they can.


4

As I organized the content of the philosophy portion of

my course that is online, I indeed did make his book

assigned reading and the students loved it. We read it four

chapters at a time and the students posted their responses in

the discussion forum. It has been a rich experience for all of

us.

I appreciated Trevor’s perceptions as a father and an

observer in Montessori schools. He is as passionate about

his support for Montessori as I am. I invited him to join me

in a live webinar broadcast and he was happy to participate.

It was a dynamic conversation, which we decided was

worthy of sharing with a broader audience.

We hope you enjoy it!

Mary Ellen Maunz

Founder and Director, Age of Montessori

www.ageofmontessori.org


5

Author Biographies

Mary Ellen Maunz and Trevor Eissler in San Francisco

March 2012

For twenty-two years Mary Ellen Maunz worked with

Dr. Elisabeth Caspari, a foremost student and personal

friend of Maria Montessori. Mary Ellen spent many years

teaching in early childhood and elementary classrooms, and

ran a large private Montessori school. She has trained

hundreds of Montessori teachers around the world since

1979. An acclaimed speaker, presenter and internationally

recognized authority on Montessori principles, Mary Ellen

has lectured and taught on four continents. She is the author

of numerous articles and publications on authentic

Montessori methods. She also served on the Montessori

Accreditation Council for Teacher Education (MACTE)

Commission and Board of Directors for eight years.

Today, as Founder and Program Director of Age of

Montessori, Mary Ellen continues to teach and spread the

authentic original method and message of Maria

Montessori.


6

Trevor Eissler is the author of Montessori Madness! A

Parent to Parent Argument for Montessori Education. His

entertaining and insightful YouTube video by the same

name has been viewed by more than 185,000 people around

the globe. He has also written and published books

entitled 4,962,571 and The 17th

Hat, the first two in a series

of Montessori-inspired children's books. He is a business jet

pilot and lives in Texas with his wife and three children,

who attend Montessori school.

Montessori. What it is … and Why it Should Matter to You!

7

Mary Ellen Maunz: Trevor, I’m so happy to welcome you

to our webinar tonight and to have this opportunity to

discuss with you what is near and dear to both of us, getting

Montessori’s message out to parents everywhere.

I’ve been a Montessorian for forty years, and when I see

a new Montessori title I always go and buy it. When I

bought your book, Montessori Madness, I read it in one

night. And as you may remember, I emailed you

immediately afterwards and said, “I love your book. I want

to use it with the students in my teacher training course.”

As far as I am concerned, this is the best book about the

work of Maria Montessori since E. M. Standing published

her biography way back in 1957.

Trevor Eissler: Thank you very much for saying that. I’ve

read Standing’s book and many of the other Montessori

books and love many of them. But as I was first learning

about Montessori and reading through the books, I realized

that there was a gaping hole in the literature.

All of these books are from an expert’s perspective.

Either Maria Montessori herself or some of these other

wonderful scientists and researchers and educators that have

come along are telling readers, “This is what Montessori is;

let me tell you everything about it.” And I realized there was

a perspective that was missing.

I was a newcomer just coming into it kind of wide-eyed

as if I was with a couple of my buddies, looking around and

pointing and saying, “Oh cool! Look at that over there. Let’s

go examine that and see what that’s all about. Let’s go look

at this.” So I was hoping when I wrote the book that it

would be the kind of book that a dad could pick up.


8

Montessori is filled with so many moms, and I was

hoping it could be something that a dad could pick up and

talk about during football in the backyard or cooking a

barbecue; something that would be relevant to someone like

me, a person with a career. I’m a pilot. I still have a full time

job as a pilot and I was hoping that the book would appeal

to dads like me who didn’t think they would be interested in

children’s education.

Before my children were born, children’s education was

the last thing in the world I thought I would be interested in.

So I was hoping that the book would appeal to those kinds

of dads. They’re out there. They’re architects or engineers

or they’re truck drivers, and “How is my child’s

kindergarten class?” is not something they’d usually talk

about.

Mary Ellen Maunz: I think there is a crying need in our

culture for moms and dads to understand more about child

development so they can support their children, whether

they’re in Montessori school or wherever they are. And

Montessori goes a long way toward helping people

understand what these stages of a child’s development are,

what these “sensitive periods” are. So I’m sure that your

book has gone far beyond the dads that you wrote it for.

Trevor Eissler: I hope so. And just making some of those

scary terms more accessible—“absorbent mind” and

“prepared environment” and “normalization” and all those

things—and putting them in terms that a parent in today in

the 2010s can understand. So much of Maria Montessori’s

language is beautiful and flowery, but it’s the language of

the 1920s and 1930s when she was writing. So I was


9

hoping to bring it more into today, make it accessible, make

it easy and simple to read.

A sudden utter conversion

Mary Ellen Maunz: You have obviously been utterly

converted by what you saw in the Montessori classroom,

and the question I have been wanting to ask you since I read

the book is this: How you have managed to gain such deep

insight into Montessori? You obviously read some of her

books, but beyond that, was it mostly from your

observations? Did you have a tutor at your children’s

school?

Trevor Eissler: I feel like I already knew it—and what I

mean by that is I recognized it as soon as I saw it.

There are so many principles in Montessori that people

just know to be true: children progress at their own pace;

you choose what interests you and follow through on that as

far as that thread leads; working with people of different

ages and different abilities; teaching others, being taught by

others, by your peers. We know that’s the way we should be

taught in classrooms and how children learn most

effectively. It’s just a matter of recognizing it, bringing it to

the fore, and then putting it together into a system.

All of these principles—these dozens and dozens of

Montessori principles that are out there—Maria Montessori

didn’t invent them. This stuff has been around for thousands

of years. What she did, in my opinion, was to bring it all

together and put it into a system that can be applied in a

classroom.


10

I felt like I already knew all these things I was learning

about through reading the books and through observing the

classrooms and talking with teachers. But it wasn’t until I

studied Montessori that I realized that all these things that I

knew deep down in my heart could be put into place in a

classroom—of all places.

In the classrooms that I was in when I grew up, most of

the stuff wasn’t there and it’s still not there. We sit at desks

in rows and we do exactly what the teacher says: “Turn to

page 17” and everybody turns to page 17. You know the

drill; you were there, too.

Mary Ellen Maunz: Yes, you jump when the teacher says

“jump” and you jump how high she says to jump. And if she

says jump twice you don’t jump three times.

There is a commercial on television from a large internet

provider that shows a group of bright, shiny children all

sitting at attention in rows. They are all trying to focus on

the teacher, each child on the exact same lesson no matter

what their individual abilities or interests. The commercial

touts this model as what education should always be. They

have no idea what it truly can be.

Montessori connects to our adult lives

Trevor Eissler: Another thing that was crucial to me getting

insight into Montessori was making connections between

the ideas that I was reading about and seeing in my

children’s classrooms, and how those ideas and principles

applied in my adult life.

I’m a flight instructor; I fly airplanes. How do these

principles apply to the things that were happening in my


11

world, the hobbies, and interrelations with other adults,

growing older, and seeing different things and traveling?

And it was really an “aha!” moment to realize that this was

not just important for my children; this was important for

me, and this enabled me to really get down deep into how

these Montessori principles are important out in the real

world, not just in the classroom.

Mary Ellen Maunz: This is so important for people to

understand the broad principles that Montessori identified. I

love the fact that you saw how they applied to your own

life!

I think you’ve touched upon such a key point in your

comments. Maria Montessori said that the proper

preparation for education is the study of oneself, and it’s a

spiritual preparation. You look deeply inside yourself.

Your book has resonated with many of the students in

my training course. All the Montessori resources resonate

with them, but your book in particular. Our students read a

couple of chapters of the book and they write a response

about what your words made them feel and recall. It’s not a

book report, but a heartfelt response to the book; and then

the students talk to each other about their responses.

For many of them, as they read your stories of some of

the painful things that happened to you when you were in

school, this brought up their own painful records of their

times in school. And the process of remembering something

and processing it, and putting it in a perspective of how

education could be is actually healing for them. Is this

something you hear from other readers?


12

Trevor Eissler: That’s interesting. I have heard a few folks

say this. In the book I relate an embarrassing story of

something that happened to me in school, and apparently

things like this happen to lots of folks. I remember one dad

came up to me and said, “That was me in fourth grade.”

But it’s not just about bad experiences or embarrassing

things or situations like that. I think that it’s important for

parents to see the good things, too—what a difference the

Montessori approach to education can make. I think it’s

important, when we talk about educating parents on what

Montessori is, to sell a parent twice on Montessori.

The first time is convincing them to enroll their children

in a Montessori school, and the way we do that is by

enticing parents into the school to observe the classroom.

When they see it with their own eyes, they are blown away.

“Wow! Yes! I want to enroll my children here.”

But that same parent who enrolls the child that day, in

two or three years sometimes takes the child back and puts

them in the public system. When first grade or second grade

rolls around, there is no conflict in their mind there. They

thought, “Oh, Montessori is a really good preschool, but

eventually we’ll go to a real school.” That parent was not

sold the second time.

The second sale is not about observation; it is not about

the child. The second sale is about that adult and connecting

that adult with the wonderful things that are happening in

the classroom. It is through getting that adult’s hands on the

material in the classroom.

In the few times that I was able to sit in the classroom

and touch the brown stair or the pink tower or the binomial

cubes, to touch these things and start to work with them, I


13

started to realize, “Wow! This is what my child must feel

like when he’s in this class. I can take this material and I can

do it myself. I don’t need anybody else to grade me.” Not

everybody is on the same page at the same time. It’s

kinesthetic and intuitive and it makes sense and it’s

interesting.

By connecting that parent with the materials in the

Montessori classroom and connecting that parent with how

this applies in their adult lives, I think we can make that

second sale. Then parents like me will say, “Okay, my child

is going to be in this class for as many grades as are in this

school.”

Mary Ellen Maunz: And then the school starts saying, “Oh,

we’d better get an upper elementary, we’d better get a

middle school.”

Trevor Eissler: That’s right, yes.

Common sense is the most uncommon sense

Mary Ellen Maunz: Well, as you are talking about this

connection and how it all made sense to you as soon as you

read it, many of the principles of Montessori are really just

common sense. And I remember something Elisabeth

Caspari used to say, “Common sense is the most uncommon

sense on the planet.”

This brings me back to your book. In the first chapters

of your book, you point out some of the things that are

pretty wrong in many applications of traditional education,

and then in the second half of the book you speak eloquently

about how Montessori solved these problems of education.

And Montessori absolutely believed that the way we


14

educate our children is going to affect society as a whole.

Can you give us a sense of the key problems in

education that Montessori can help solve?

The big picture

Trevor Eissler: There are so many—where do I start? Let

me start with a big one, and that is the big picture.

One thing that’s lacking in traditional schools is the

understanding of the big picture. I remember this from my

years at school and I hear it in talking with many people.

When you walk into school that morning and you go to

math class and you are learning about scientific notation, for

example, there is so little attempt for the teacher to have the

student understand why they’re learning this. How does it fit

in with what they learned last week and last year? How does

it fit in with what they are going to learn next week and next

year?


15

One of the ways that Montessori overcomes this

problem is by having a mixed-age classroom with children

of three different grades all together. If you are a child in

that class, you may be sitting next to someone who is

working on something that you finished last week. Across

the room you can see someone who is working on

something that you did last year, and next to you on the

other side you see something that somebody’s working on

that you haven’t gotten to yet. You get a big-picture

awareness of how what you are learning fits in. “That’s how

what I learned before fits in to what I’m doing now, and

what I’m doing now fits into what’s going to happen in the

future.” It’s a wonderful, big-picture awareness.

When Montessori designed the lessons that the teachers

give, they always work from the big picture down to the

details. You start with the big picture on a subject. What’s

going on in the universe? What’s going on throughout the

course of human history? And then you work your way

down into the details. This gives a wonderful awareness of

what’s going on in the big picture, and how does it fit in,

and why am I learning this? That is missing in traditional

education.

Mary Ellen Maunz: I think we can all think back to our own

schooling. The first thing then we learned about was our

town and then we learned about our state. Montessori is just

the opposite. We start with a picture of the whole universe

and the world and the planet we live on and the continents.

Children in Montessori learn the continents before their

friends in regular schools even know that there are

continents. By giving the whole picture first, there is a

superstructure upon which all the details can hang, and then


16

they’re related to each other. They are not just separate facts

or ideas.

Joyful learning

Trevor Eissler: Another that is missing in traditional

education is the sense of joy and that learning is joyful.

When I first started learning about Montessori, I had just

recently learned to play the piano. I still don’t play very

well, but it was something I picked up on my own in my late

twenties. One day I decided, “Hey, I want to learn how to

play the piano.” I just used some of my wife’s old six-,

seven- and eight-year-old study books and worked my way

through them.

It was so pleasant that, on any day of the week, I could

sit down. I could play for five minutes, I could play for an

hour, I could play whichever song I wanted to, I could play

one song ten times if I wanted to. It was such a pleasurable


17

way to learn. When I came across Montessori, I realized that

that same joyful learning is what these children get to do in

their classroom. They are choosing their work. They are

choosing how much time do I want to devote to this and

how much time do I want to devote to that? When you own

your learning, this makes it pleasurable and joyful. That is

completely missing in the traditional system.

Mary Ellen Maunz: When parents go and observe in a

Montessori classroom, I think for many people, that’s the

first thing they see. Wow—these kids are having a good

time, they are happy in here, they want to go to school, they

cry when they have to go home instead of the other way

around.

Trevor Eissler: That’s such a nice feeling as a parent to

have a child smiling like that.

Another thing that struck me is how limiting traditional

education can be. A student gets to the end of a problem and

then the teacher says, “Good job. Here’s an A+,” or “Here’s

a 92 for your grade.” Then the teacher has decided that is

the end. You have done either well or poorly; now it’s time

to move on to something else. When they have the

opportunity, children will often set much more challenging

goals for themselves out of the pure enjoyment of it. In a

traditional class, we often set the bar way too low for the

students. I talk about this in my recent children’s book,

4,962,571.


18

Mary Ellen Maunz: Trevor, I’d like to read a couple of

paragraphs from this book, from the introduction for

parents:

4,962,571 highlights some of the fascinating

educational principles found in Montessori schools.

One of the core principles is a respect and reverence

for each child’s natural love of learning. Children

love to explore and to thrust themselves into

difficult, challenging, intrinsically rewarding work.

Young children are naturally and insatiably curious,

climbing up on counters, touching objects, learning

language, putting things in their mouths. They want

to know what the world feels like, sounds like,

smells like and looks like. They want to taste the

world. Montessori schools nurture this intrinsic love

of learning by allowing significant time for self-


19

directed exploration.

The young swashbuckling adventurer in

4,962,571 was suddenly seized with the inspiration

to attempt a particularly difficult task. He was not

told when to count, or what number he must count

to, or how to go about reaching his goal. He was not

told, even implicitly by praise or reward, when his

task was complete. Upon reaching his goal, to the

surprise of his parents, he just wanted to keep

counting. Repeated opportunities for such self-

directed challenges and open-ended tasks lead to

leaps of insight, improved self-discipline, extended

concentration and an ongoing love of learning.

Limitations of traditional education

I was teaching in an upper elementary class until a

couple of years ago, and I’d like to tell you a story of one of

the students. Her parents decided that the child should go to

a traditional middle school, and the child was so far

advanced in math, the middle school said it was going to be

three years before they got to the level that she was already

at!

She had never stopped and our teachers never stopped

her, and that’s the joy of Montessori. If the kids are faster or

slower, they can go at their own pace. We understand also

that children have an individual profile of learning. They are

not all equally adept in every type of learning, and it’s truly

an individualized program for each child.

Trevor Eissler: Yes, and how wonderful is that! It’s not

standardized; it’s differentiated. We want humans to expand


20

their abilities; we want to span the broad range of human

possibility. Why would we want standardized humans? We

want artists and bankers and military generals and

politicians and truck drivers—we want all these people.

Mary Ellen Maunz: Absolutely. It’s interesting that, as a

society, as the establisher of educational standards, we have

somehow missed this, and Montessori writes a lot about

what she calls the OMBIUS. It’s an acrostic in Italian, and it

refers to the fact that we have largely unconscious and

therefore unchallenged concepts about children; that they

are blank and they need us to pour our knowledge into them,

that they are learning because we’re teaching. But in actual

fact, if we can prepare the environment and get out of the

way, that is how children are really going to learn. The

children will go in the direction where their own inner

teacher takes them rather than what the curriculum says they

have to do.

They all learn to read and write and they all learn to do it

well, but they follow their own interests, they follow their

heart in amazing ways. And unless people really see a

Montessori school, read these books and understand it, they

just don’t even dream that education could really be like

that.

Trevor Eissler: It’s really tough as a parent to let go of

those old concepts of how most of us experienced

education. It’s almost ingrained in many others that, if I

don’t teach my child how to do this, they are not going to

learn it.

I remember sensing that fear in a traditional school.

There is this overwhelming sense in the classroom: “If I


21

don’t teach you, you’re not going to learn it. If I don’t teach

you how to add now, you are never going to learn how to

add.” It’s eye-opening when you have your own children

and you come across situations where they actually learned

better when you weren’t there.

Mary Ellen Maunz: There is amazing brain research

coming out now about infants. They have a number sense in

the first months of life; they can add and subtract. It’s just

mind boggling if you look on the Internet under infant

learning. We have a long way to go in examining what’s

going on in our schools and working to change it to match

what children can actually do.

Let’s consider reading, for example. I know from my

own direct experience that many three- and four-year-olds

are very attracted to learning how to read. They learn easily

when the desire and the readiness are there. Yet, there are

some who declare that it is not appropriate for children at

that young age to read.


22

In Montessori, we follow the child and allow him to

demonstrate what he is ready to do rather than making

blanket statements of what he can or cannot do. I recently

did a blog on our Age of Montessori website on this topic.

We were talking before we started this session tonight

about one of the things that I saw on your website about the

vision for the future of education.

Education of the future

Trevor Eissler: I’m sorry to say that I don’t know who said

this, but I came across this quote: “One day we won’t call it

Montessori school anymore. We’ll just call it school.” There

is no reason that these wonderful Montessori schools should

forever be separate institutions from normal schools. The

education is right on, the results are there, the children enjoy

it, the parents love it, it’s not any more expensive than the

traditional way of educating children, and there is no reason

why we shouldn’t have free public Montessori schools

everywhere.

Mary Ellen Maunz: It’s a great vision, but we’ve got a long

way to go. I think that Montessori needs to be a far larger

part of the national discussion on educational reform. What

do you think is that percentage of children that are in

Montessori schools now? I’ve heard it’s between three and

five percent. Do you think it’s really that low?

Trevor Eissler: I think it is probably lower than that. It is

hard to tell. I’ve heard anything from one-and-a-half percent

all the way up to five percent. The latest number I heard was

four thousand Montessori schools in the U.S.


23

Mary Ellen Maunz: From my experience, I think it’s

probably between six and eight thousand schools. Not every

school is registered with the big organizations, A.M.I

(American Montessori Internationale) and A.M.S,

(American Montessori Society), and I think many of the

smaller schools are probably uncounted in those numbers.

Trevor Eissler: And whether it’s four thousand or whether

it’s eight thousand, either one of those is a ridiculously

small number. Whatever we have been doing in the last

hundred years to market Montessori has been an absolute

failure.

It’s amazing to me that companies like Coca Cola and

Frito-Lay and Gatorade can be making millions and billions

of dollars by selling sugar water that causes diabetes and

selling these awful products, when at the same time we have

this incredible product in Montessori schools and we’re

talking about whether it’s two percent or five percent.

Mary Ellen Maunz: Trevor, you are so right! It is

ridiculous.

Trevor Eissler: It is absolutely ridiculous. And I know you

and I and hundreds of us out there have decided to do

whatever we can to turn that around. There’s a very bright

future ahead of us. We have a great product. People love it;

people are spending tens of thousands of dollars extra for

their child to attend these schools. So there are a lot of

people that love it and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be

available free in public schools everywhere.


24

Benefits of Montessori

Mary Ellen Maunz: It is so exciting to think that we could

be at the cusp of turning this around. I train Montessori

teachers in Russia every summer. I know Montessori is just

going wild in China. It’s really the time for this to happen.

Let’s get specific about some of the key pieces that

Montessori offers to our children. We’ve talked about

respect for individual development. That is a topic that is a

totally key idea.

In these pictures, you see children in a Montessori

classroom. These were taken in the school that I worked at

and directed for many years. Every single picture is of a

child who was just spontaneously doing a lesson because he

wanted to.

Doing what Montessori calls Practical Life lessons.

They encourage the sense of order, concentration,

coordination of movement and independence.

The buckle frame


25

Using a dropper bottle to transfer water

from one container to the other.

Children doing Montessori Sensorial lessons.

Building a precisely graded pink tower and arranging

color tablets from dark to light.


26

The teacher presents to the child how to do the lesson,

and then the child is completely free to follow his own inner

timeline of when to do the lesson.

Look at the control of movement of this little fellow

who is polishing the leaves on this plant. There are twenty-

five other children in the room and he’s not even aware that

they’re there. He has chosen a lesson; he is doing it. He is

exemplifying not only concentration, but also care for life.

He is being so gentle and so careful, one leaf after another.


27

Trevor Eissler: The quote from Maria Montessori that I

often refer to is that a child’s work is to create the man he

will become. These boys and girls are creating the men and

women that they will become. It’s their work. To think of it

in that way—to respect what they are doing in that way—is

really a paradigm shift for many of us who came up through

a traditional system where it was the teacher’s responsibility

to teach us.

Mary Ellen Maunz: When you go into Montessori’s

writing, she says that the choices that a child makes are

indicative of who that child is and the character of that

child. I have seen many children come through my school

and I have followed many of these children for twenty or

thirty years, and the things that they loved to do in preschool

were very frequently an indication of the careers that they

have chosen.

One child will pick the art activities, one child will pick

the music activities, and one child will pick the geography.

Obviously they do lots of things during the course of a

three-year time span, but they particularly love to do certain

activities. We learn about our children by the choices that

they make, and what a difference it makes when we respect

those choices rather than just put them under the thumb of a

curriculum that says: “No, don’t do that; do this. Because

you’re four years old now, you’re supposed to do this.” It

just makes no sense.

Trevor Eissler: And to be able to choose an art activity or a

mathematics activity and to stick with it for several hours

because that’s what you are called to do, that’s what your

brain is crying out for you to do. You want to learn how to


28

add those numbers, you want to draw that picture and not be

interrupted every forty-five minutes because the teacher

decides that you’ve got your forty-five minutes of art in

today so you can’t do any more.

Mary Ellen Maunz: Yes, and we know that the child’s

choices in the classroom are often guided by the “sensitive

periods” in the child’s development. Their brain requires

certain input at very specified times. If they don’t get it at

that time, development moves on, but there may be

something missing that could have been there of a

refinement of that development.

It’s awesome to see the choices that the children make.

And, so often, part of that unconscious idea that we have

about children is that it’s hard for them to work; they don’t

want to work, they don’t want to learn. But learning is as

natural to the brain as breathing is to the lungs, and you see

that in the Montessori school when you leave them free to

make their choices.

The child and movement

Trevor Eissler: One of the unpleasant things about the

traditional classroom for a child is, “Sit still in your chair

and keep your hands to yourself; keep your eyes on your

own paper,” at the very time when young children need to

move around. That’s one of the things that I loved when I

was learning about some of the techniques that Montessori

teachers use in the classroom.

I absolutely loved the lessons that call for the child to

walk back and forth across the classroom to get something

such as the bank game, where part of the task is to stop what


29

you’re doing, put something down and carry something all

the way across the room and exchange a ten or a hundred,

and walk all the way back across the room.

Part of the lesson is to move back and forth across the

classroom, and while you’re walking across the room, you

have to walk around other people and their projects. You

learn how to respect other people’s personal space. And

while you are doing this, you have to remember the number

that you had in your mind as you started. You’re

incorporating movement and all these wonderful things into

mathematics. You do the same with writing.

This is so different from the traditional system where we

do our mathematics and writing in the classroom, and then

when the bell rings we do our moving around outside at

recess.

Mary Ellen Maunz: In my training course, we call it

travelling. So if you’re going to do the decimal system or

you’re going to do the pink tower, we show the child that

you don’t put the material on the floor right next to the

shelf. You put it across the room. Then the child gets all that

energy expended carrying the material to where he will

work on it, and then the child is ready to sit down and do the

work.

That use of movement also extends to outside activities.

We had a lot of fun one year when, during summer school,

we did a study of camping. We learned how to do a bed roll,

we learned how to build a fire, we learned how to gather

water from the dew, we learned trail signs and everything

we could manage about camping. We started taking kids on

long walks. We had a very large campus, and they took their


30

bed roll on the walk right on our campus, and they got used

to taking their naps out of doors.

I almost didn’t believe that we could actually do it, but

we took our three-, four- and five-year-olds on an overnight

camping trip up in the mountains behind Santa Barbara. It

was quite an exciting event. The two little girls in the

picture know how to pitch a tent and they’re doing it

themselves. Each group of two children pitched their own

tent. It was a lot of fun. This was all part of their lessons and

their work, but there was no division for them.


31

Trevor Eissler: Yes, and one of the ways I know as a parent

that my children are getting plenty of movement at their

school is what they want to do when they come home.

Sometimes when they were five, six or seven, just learning

how to write and work with numbers, as soon as they

arrived home they would sit at the table and pull out a piece

of paper and a pencil and start writing numbers or letters. It

was such a shock to me to see this.

When I used to get home from school, I would go

outside. The last thing I would do want to do would be

something that I considered to be school work. But for these

children there is really no division between math and

writing, and bike riding and swimming. It’s all just learning.

There’s no concept that these are school subjects and you

will only do them when the class bell rings and then, when

you leave school, you want to do everything you can to

avoid doing school subjects. That division between those

two is missing in Montessori, which is so nice.

Mary Ellen Maunz: Yes, when you see these things you

realize that, not only are their needs for movement being

met, but the stimulation of their minds as well. I heard some

very interesting research in a Montessori conference a

couple of years ago. It was done I believe at a university in

North Carolina. They interviewed and assessed children in a

public Montessori school and in a traditional school. One of

the most remarkable things was that when the children in

Montessori school were asked what they liked best, they

said, “Oh, I like language and math; I love science.” And

the kids in traditional school more frequently said, “I like

recess.” The difference was that their activities were being

integrated and they were doing things that they loved.


32

Children by nature love learning and that is what

Montessori nurtures in children. These days we hear all

about how we need to establish lifelong learning. Well,

you’re not going to establish lifelong learning if kids don’t

like to learn or if they think they don’t like to learn. And

that’s where the wonderful process of Montessori comes in.

Trevor Eissler: In traditional education, we are set up that

math and English, science and history are the subjects that

we are forced to learn. And we’re teaching children that

from the very first day in a traditional schoolroom when the

teacher says, “You will do these ten math problems, and if

you don’t you’ll get punished, either with a bad grade or a

note home to your parents.” What a child learns from that is,

“Oh, okay, this is something that’s not enjoyable, and in

order to do it I need to be rewarded or fear punishment if I

don’t do it.”

Mary Ellen Maunz: I’d like to show now a very impactful

video that you made about Montessori. I first saw it last

spring, and then during the summer I was teaching in

Russia. One day the director of the school ran in and said,

“There is something you have to see, you have to show your

students.” And I said, “Okay.” And she got on the Internet

and showed this video in Russian. I said, “Oh, I know that

video, I know that guy.”


33

Montessori Madness: A Parent to Parent Argument

for Montessori Education

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcgN0lEh5IA

Text of YouTube video

My three children attend a Montessori school. And

recently a fellow parent told me of her own bright,

inquisitive son who had attended Montessori for a few years

until a job loss in the family forced her to enroll him in a

nearby free conventional public school. As she picked him

up from his new bus stop day after day, she began to notice

something. She said, “I saw the light in his eyes dimming.

His flame was extinguishing.”

She didn’t talk about her son’s grades at the new school

nor about the teacher qualifications, class size or

extracurricular activities. She didn’t talk about how he

would compete with China or increase our GDP, she talked

about the flame inside him dimming, extinguishing. To me,

the fanning of this inner flame, the inner drive to learn and

to develop is the core contrast between Montessori schools

and conventional schools.

Conventional schools assume children need incentives

for learning; gold stars, honor roll ribbons, popcorn parties.

If they don’t respond they must be dealt with punishments:

bad grades, trips to the principal’s office, et cetera.

Montessori schools assume the opposite—children do not

need to be forced to learn, in fact, children are naturally

interested in learning.

Take a long look at any child prior to kindergarten. They

touch everything, pick it up, turn it over, and taste it. Prior

to setting foot in that first classroom, they’ve learned how to


34

stand, walk, swim, sing, count, ride a bike, and tell stories

and jokes and lies. Some can even read. And then these

energetic, engaged, accomplished six-year-olds turn into

twelve-years-olds who ask, “Are we getting graded on

this?” or “Is this going to be on the test?”

That flame they had at age six didn’t burn out on its

own. We smothered it. In contrast, Montessori schools stoke

that flame by promoting hands-on, self-paced, collaborative,

challenging and joyful learning. They encourage divergent

thinking instead of convergent thinking, innovation instead

of standardization. Montessori does all this with no grades,

no tests, and no homework. How? Well out of many reasons

here are two.

Mixed-age classrooms. Montessori classrooms have

three-year age ranges: three- to six-year-olds in one class,

six- to nine-year-olds in another, and so on. The age mix

allows older students to be leaders, mentors and to help

teach lessons while younger students have the experience of

working with older classmates.

The teacher does not stand at the front delivering the

same information to thirty children while trying to keep all

of them on the same page. Instead the teacher moves around

the room working with students, one on one or in small

groups. The age mix allows a child working on, for

example, addition, to sit near another student working on

multiplication. Each can see not only what they’ll be doing

in the near future and where they have been in the past but

why they’re learning what they’re learning and how it fits

into the big picture.

Seeing the big picture allows students to take ownership

of their learning—a critical element in fostering each child’s


35

natural learning desire. Which leads to point two: grabbing

that student’s interest while it’s hot.

A Montessori teacher told me about an eight-year-old in

her class interested in long division. After demonstrating

some examples the teacher watched the girl create her own

simple division problem. But after finding the quotient, the

girl added another digit to the dividend and another and

continued the calculation into the hundreds, thousands, then

ten thousands, hundred thousands, then millions, billions,

trillions.

As the calculations began to near the bottom of the page,

the teacher, thinking quickly, brought over more paper and

some tape. Hours later, when the girl decided she was done,

there was so many sheets of paper taped to each other that

when the teacher taped the first one to the ceiling the last

one hung all the way to the floor.

Children in Montessori follow their interest, wherever

that passion leads, however quickly it leads them, regardless

of what other students in the class are working on. Can you

imagine this little girl having any problem whatsoever with

calculus in high school when she already does ceiling to

floor long division problems at age eight? Can you imagine

the look in her eyes when her mom picks her up from

school?

Montessori is the best method of schooling I have found

for children to joyfully and effectively learn independence,

responsibility, self-discipline, leadership, initiative, strong

academics and a lifetime love of learning.

I urge you to visit a Montessori classroom to see for

yourself. Sit in the class for thirty minutes. See the light in

the children’s eyes.


36

Trevor Eissler: It’s been such fun to see the spread of that

video. It’s translated into five languages now. Folks just

email me and they say, “Hey, can I translate it into French

or Italian?” and I say, “Sure, here is the video. Go for it.”

They just translate it and they do all the work and they put it

up on YouTube. So, if any of your listeners tonight are

interested in translated it into Swahili and Chinese and

whatever, go for it. Be my guest.

Mary Ellen Maunz: That is great. It’s wonderful! Some of

our listeners have questions for you or for me, so at this

point we are going to start taking those questions.

Question: How is Montessori impacting current traditional

education and what impact, in your opinion, can we expect

to see in the future?

Trevor Eissler: How is it impacting current traditional

education now? I don’t think it is. I don’t see traditional

education trending toward Montessori. I know there is some

lip service paid to individualized instruction and things like

that, but with the emphasis on standardized testing that’s

been ratcheting up in recent years, I don’t see it moving that

way.

For the future, I think it’s going to take Montessorians

getting louder and Montessorians bringing hard data out into

the media showing results that traditional educational folks

can see and can recognize; it’s in their language and they

can understand it.

I think Montessori children can do just fine on any of the

traditional measures. So I hope there is more testing and

results that can be compared between the two methods and


37

we can convince folks that, “Hey, this is really a good way

to go.”

We need to make our voice heard and we need to do that

in unusual ways. Whatever ways we’ve been doing it so far

have not been working. That’s why I’m working on the

books that I am doing. A year ago, there was even the idea

of a wacky Montessori Super bowl ad.

We were talking about getting schools to collaborate

with radio ads or newspaper ads. Getting Montessori

schools to collaborate is a little bit harder than I thought it

would be. So that can be something we can do to convince

traditional educators that, “Hey, this is something that

works, meets all the goals that you’re trying to meet, and it

doesn’t cost any more. The kids even like it.”

Mary Ellen Maunz: I think the research is going to be vital

in making a really big transition. I am also seeing some

things that make me feel like a wave is starting to crest to

get more people aware that Montessori is out there—the

media in the last year talking about the founders of Google

and their crediting Montessori for their success, and the

Wall Street Journal talking about the executive functioning

of the brain being enhanced by Montessori. There is starting

to be some coverage in the media that it’s a valuable

alternative and it brings huge benefits, but it hasn’t begun to

penetrate to the level that we know it needs to.

Trevor Eissler: One problem is that if traditional schools

like some of the techniques that are used in Montessori

schools and incorporate some of them, it doesn’t quite work.

You can’t use some Montessori techniques but, at the same

time have everybody in the same classroom be the same


38

age. If you just pick and choose a couple of techniques, it

completely undercuts the method. It’s a whole system and

you have to take it as a whole system. It doesn’t work to

pick and choose and slowly work it into the traditional

system.

Mary Ellen Maunz: I’m so glad you mentioned this

important point. There is an internal integrity in Montessori

that is one of the keys to its success. One thing that gives me

hope is an article I saw about a Montessori school in India

that has 23,000 children! It goes from infant or toddler all

the way up through high school. It may be a variation on the

theme of Montessori to some degree, but the fact that there

could be a Montessori school with that many children is just

mind-boggling. We have to find out more how they did it.

Question: In the last chapters of Montessori Madness you

talk about making Montessori education available in every

neighborhood on a small scale. Are you involved in any

type of organization that is starting to promote this or are

you involved in any organization that collects funds to make

this available to lower income families?

Trevor Eissler: No, I’m not, and that’s a great point. This is

fun for me. I’m a pilot and this is what I do in my spare

time. I love doing this and the piece of the puzzle that I like

is writing books, talking about it, talking at schools, talking

with other parents. That’s the piece of this that I like.

As soon as you say five-year strategic plan or board of

directors or accounting systems, as soon as you mention any

of those words, my brain fogs up. Running a school or

raising money for a school or hiring teachers or any of that

is not me. Hopefully it’s you; hopefully there are others that


39

enjoy that piece of the puzzle who can take that on. We can

function as a team that way.

Mary Ellen Maunz: Isn’t this a classic example of how each

one of us has developed our own set of skills, and we can’t

operate unless we all bring our individual talents together.

Question: How about Montessori high schools? Can you

see more of those appearing in the near future?

Trevor Eissler: I would love to see more of those. There are

only a handful now, but if you get the chance please go see

one. I had a chance to visit the one in Cleveland, Ohio, and

it is just awesome. It reminds me of a graduate program in

college where the students come in and there’s a round

table, and everybody sits around in a circle and you just

discuss things—discuss algebra or calculus or discuss

history. Then the most magical thing happens. Everybody

leaves. The students not only leave class, they leave the

school. These kids go out into the community. They are

interning, they are working at the natural history museum,

and they are assistants in the local bakery. They are doing

various projects and various things out in the community

during the school day.

So you go out and you do things, and then you come

back and discuss, and you get into more detail on this or

that, and then you go out and do this. So you’re constantly

working in and out of the school and in and amongst the

community instead of being sequestered away from 7:15 in

the morning until 2:15 in the afternoon until the bell rings,

and then you leave. It’s a very organic in and out “I’m part

of the community” type feeling—wonderful.


40

Mary Ellen Maunz: There is another Montessori middle

school and high school that’s really worth visiting in

Houston, Texas, The School of the Woods. Dr. Elizabeth

Coe developed the program there and they do the same

thing. It’s a very impressive program, and she has collected

some research on the ability of these kids to go in with

scholarships to wonderful colleges all over America.

I think it’s also interesting that last year, the president of

the United States assembled information through the

Department of Education on the most successful high

schools in America. Of the top three, the second one was a

Montessori high school.

I think I was in a Montessori conference recently, and

they were talking about the usual traditional ideas, thinking

well, it’s kind of like a pyramid. You have to have all these

pre-schools and then elementary school and then middle

schools and then high schools, but this person was

proposing that it could be more of a cube, you know. As we

build more preschools, we build more elementary schools,

we bring children in; get them accustomed to making

choices, which is really hard for children who come in after

a certain age. They don’t know what that means and they

have to really learn how to function in the classroom. But

then you go on into the high school, the middle schools and

the high schools. It could change the face of this country.

Trevor Eissler: Yeah, yeah.

Mary Ellen Maunz: It absolutely can. I think we’re going to

take time for one more question. We’re running a little over,

but this is so fascinating.


41

Question: What, in your opinion, is the major barrier to

establishing Montessori as the most effective education

method?

Trevor Eissler: There are a couple of barriers, one of which

is teachers. Speaking with Montessori teachers and other

people, I have frequently heard that traditional teachers are

the roadblock. It’s not that they are bad people; they’re very

good people, wonderful people. But it’s such a

revolutionary change to go from being the center of learning

in the classroom to the child being the center.

In the traditional classroom, the teacher is the center.

“I am the center of learning. I tell you when to do

homework. I tell you which day to take the quiz, which day

we are going to do a test. I tell you whether your answers

are right or wrong; I tell you what to do.”

Maria Montessori said many years ago that the goal of a

Montessori teacher is to prepare your students in such a way

that they are working as if you did not exist. What that

means is that you’re setting up the classroom with mixed

ages and with the children choosing their work and with all

these wonderful principles in such a way so that children

eventually take ownership of their education.

I’m not a teacher, so I can’t imagine how difficult that

transition must be from going from, “I am the person that

teaches my students” to “I am the person that tries to

remove myself from the learning process so that my

students can learn.”

Mary Ellen Maunz: You become more of a facilitator. It’s

truly a paradigm shift.

Trevor Eissler: Yes.


42

Mary Ellen Maunz: Trevor, I want to thank you so much

for being with us this evening. This has been a real

inspiration to all of us and I hope we can do it again.

Trevor Eissler: Oh, thank you very much for the invitation,

Mary Ellen. And thank you for everyone who has tuned in

tonight.

Mary Ellen Maunz: Yes, we thank you all. There’s so much

to be talked about. There’s so much, and it’s so important to

all of us and almost at this sort of level, we know that our

children absolutely deserve the best.

I think it’s so important to affirm, as you said, that the

teachers out in this country are fine people. We have so

much admiration for them. But I know in my original

Montessori training, they said something that kind of struck

me, that when you are making the transition from being a

traditional teacher to a Montessori teacher, you have much

to unlearn. It is almost easier for someone who is fresh to

teaching to learn Montessori. And so in either case, you

have to really let yourself be open to making that leap.

Anybody can make that leap, but it will take some

attention to detail, and things that you took for granted, you

have to examine. And then, sometimes we do video tapes of

the students so they can look at themselves. “Well, I didn’t

realize I was doing that.” So, for all of you that want to take

training and make that leap, we welcome you! And there’s

plenty of room in the world of Montessori for new teachers,

because new schools are developing all the time, both in the

private and the public sector here in the United States and

many parts of the world.

For more information on how you can become a


43

certified Montessori teacher or learn more about

Montessori to apply in your own parenting, visit

www.ageofmontessori.org.

http://www.ageofmontessori.org/

Documents

By Trevor Eissler and Mary Ellen Maunz Copyright © 2012 ...ageofmontessori.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Montessori-What-I… · I’ve been in Montessori since 1971 and I rarely