Montessori education has interested me ever since I visited several schools in India (all varying in education style) during my freshman year for a learning cluster. I have always been intrigued by how we can create more flexible types of education that encompass the innate independence of a child/student. While reading Montessori's method, I found that she had fundamental ideas that are central to getting children to become observant and interested in their own learning, such as "bringing about the spontaneous progress of the child" by allowing them to take what they have been taught and using it to further reinforce those concepts, as Montessori allows the children to do when they touch her clothing saying, "It is smooth," and "This is rough" (228). I also thought that some of her methods, while strange, seemed effective such as refusing to teach children how to write so that they became defiant and demanded that she teach them (267). Her inclusion in the learning process, however, is an elemental difference that I saw between the Montessori method and the role of the teacher shown in the documentary, “Free to Learn.” Yet, her statement regarding “the spontaneous drawings of ‘normal’ children” put me on edge. I’m curious as to what normal implies in this sentence and how she defines it. Truly, we can’t differentiate between what is normal and abnormal, as all children are individuals and learn differently, hence the basis of her method for education.
As a side note, I found an interesting video related to education in the state-run classroom and how technology (specifically Twitter) is revolutionizing how students learn and respond to the material.
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