Montessori education is designed to be an aid to life.
Our goal is to support the positive human development of each student in our care, and to ensure that their fundamental needs are met.
Traditional education is designed to imprint upon students certain ideas; to pour them into the “empty” brains of students and test them on their ability to remember said ideas.
There is no consideration for the holistic health, wellbeing, and development of the individual in the system of traditional education.
It’s why we have an adolescent mental health crisis.
This is not to say that teachers in traditional systems don’t care about their students. Quite the opposite is true, in my experience.
Yet, these individuals are caught in a system that incentivizes dehumanizing pedagogy and discipline. Their care for students alone is not enough to counter the systemic affects of traditional education.
That’s why Dr. Ayize Sabater, education guru and host of the #U Must Learn radio show, calls Montessori education “common sense education!”
I was honored to be a guest on his radio broadcast last week, alongside my colleague and friend Joana Ferreira, who is the Founder and Head of School of Casulo Montessori Bilingue School in Fortaleza, Brazil.
Dr. Ayize was generous enough to let me repost his show in full here. We are guests in the second hour of the show, and we even had live callers from Baltimore and Germany join the conversation!
The first half of the show is an interview with Stephanie Kane of the SAB (Senegalese American Bilingual) school and Jason Harris of Baltimore's BlkRobot Project. It is an interview not to miss!
#U Must Learn airs every Thursday night at 6:00pm EST, and you can listen anywhere in the world at the WPFW website!
Breaking the Paradigm is a division of Developing Education, which is on a mission to transform education globally to foster human development and flourishing for all people. Check out our other offerings here!
First Intention: Curriculum and pedagogy support for Montessori adolescent practitioners, specifically with math and language across the prepared environment.
www.FirstIntention.org
The Enlightened Educator Project: Supporting educators with mindfulness and resiliency through professional development and downloadable resources.
www.EnlightenedEducatorProject.org
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