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Montessori Schools

In the current educational era, with the advent of the No Child Left Behind act and its emphasis on educational standards, funding for gifted children often runs dry. It may therefore be important for parents to examine alternative educational options for their gifted children, who tend to be independent learners, who often struggle in classrooms where repetition and conformity are stressed and individual expression is shunned. Montessori schools were founded on the basis that children have the innate capacity to teach themselves, and that schools should allow students to direct their own learning. For this reason, Montessori schools may be an excellent alternative for gifted students.

Montessori Education

Montessori schools were founded and developed by the Italian educator Maria Montessori in the early 20th century and are based on the philosophy that children have an innate tendency and ability to learn culturally appropriate tasks. In her book The Absorbent Mind, Montessori describes with fascination the incredible cognitive development in the first 3 years of a child's life: “The child grows up speaking his parents' tongue yet to grown-ups the learning of a language is a very great intellectual achievement. No one teaches the child, yet he comes to use nouns, verbs and adjectives to perfection” (p. 6).

One of Montessori's core beliefs was that all children have a natural desire and ability to learn, and therefore that the basic task of teachers should not be to impart knowledge but rather to provide students with stimulating environments in which to explore and learn. The onus of learning is thus put on the child, and instead of directly instructing, the teacher's primary job is to expose the child to a wide array of subjects that are chosen to be optimally challenging to each student. Unlike traditional public schools where schedules are rigid, students in Montessori schools can choose to work on an activity for as long as they like.

Montessori schools also foster a democratic system for creating order in the classroom; students have direct input into creating and enforcing school rules, and teachers try to encourage students to resolve conflicts on their own, and intervene only when necessary.

Gifted Students and the Montessori Method

Gifted students have a number of characteristics that make Montessori schools particularly amenable to their needs. First, they tend to enjoy independent work, which is the essence of the Montessori method. In order to supplement their students' independent work, Montessori teachers work to match the challenge of a given activity to each individual student's skill level. This allows gifted students, who are often bored by the slow pace in a traditional public school setting, not only to progress at their own pace, but also to work on material that is both stimulating and challenging.

Gifted students also tend to become intensely immersed in activities that they find interesting, challenging, and rewarding. Montessori schools, unlike traditional schools, which often employ rigid scheduling, encourage students to engage in activities for as long as they like, and therefore allow them to maximize learning during these highly creative interludes. Montessori felt that children were, in fact, the best judges of their own educational needs, and that just as an infant attends to the stimuli needed to learn language, older children too have an innate capacity to choose exactly what they need in order to learn.

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