| MONTESSORI |
TRADITIONAL |
| 1. Emphasis on cognitive development (thinking skills) within the context of social, emotional and physical growth. |
1. Emphasis on traditionally defined academic subjects and memorized information. |
| 2. Teacher-pupil ratio about 1 to 12 within a workshop-style classroom filled with hands-on project materials. |
2. Teacher-pupil ratio about 1 to 25 within a classroom designed to accommodate teacher lectures. |
| 3. Teacher has an unobtrusive role in the classroom, acting as “facilitator” and “counselor” for learner-initiated projects. |
3. Teacher is the center of attention in the classroom, acting as “controller,” dispensing information, assigning work. |
| 4. Mainly individualized instruction aimed at helping children understand how to manage hands-on projects |
4. Mainly group instruction aimed at conveying information through lecture rather than through direct experience. |
| 5. Mixed-age grouping based on developmental levels (‘planes’ is the Montessori term) of about three years within which children share interests and naturally apprentice to one another. Curriculum subjects well-related to each other and from year to year. |
5. Same-age grouping based on arbitrary dates of birth; no allowance for cross-age modeling, cross-age tutoring, etc. No coherent developmental cycle; very little relation of curriculum year to year. |
| 6. Mixed-age grouping in the workshop environment encourages children to teach and help each other. |
6. Lecture, teacher control and teacher judgment encourage children to become adult dependent, competitive and disaffected from each other. |
| 7. With introductions by the teacher, each child develops a repertoire of projects. Each child chooses work freely within his repertoire, and then expands into new areas with counseling from the teacher. |
7. The teacher follows a textbook and assigns the same work to all of the children as a group. Children with special needs or behavior problems receive individual counseling from someone other than the teacher. |
| 8. Children discover concepts by reflecting on their work with self-teaching materials. There are one-child, two-child and three-child projects. Children work on material until they master the concepts and ‘test out’ of materials individually through demonstrations of their understanding. |
8. The teacher tells the children about the concepts, briefly drills and then tests. |
| 9. Most of the time, the teacher addresses children individually or in small groups, acting as a facilitator for learner chosen work. |
9. Most of the time, the teacher addresses the children as a large group. |
| 10. Children enjoy working as long as they wish on freely chosen projects. Rather than working individually only at home, each child has free access to teachers during long workshop periods throughout the school day. |
10. Children are allotted specific time for tasks assigned by group, depending on teachers’ and administrators’ schedules. Individual work is relegated to ‘homework’ when children have no access to teachers. |
| 11. The children’s project materials are self-correcting, providing feedback directly to the child so that the child can adjust his own learning strategies without embarrassment. |
11. The teacher judges and grades children, often in front of the whole class. Many children develop anxieties about speaking up; some develop behavior problems as a result of repeated humiliations. |
| 12. Each child sets his own pace in learning, in cooperation with the teacher who presents each child with multiple options as he/she covers the core curriculum. |
12. The teacher sets the pace of instruction on the basis of group norms and test score averages. Individual counseling and individualized programming are rare. |
| 13. The child reinforces his own learning through freely chosen repetition of work and through the internal pleasure of genuine success. Scheduling accommodates each child’s needs for time in achieving true mastery in each subject. |
13. Learning is reinforced externally through teacher-assigned repetition, and through rewards and punishments granted by the teacher on the basis of competition. Most children do not gain genuine mastery by the time the group topic changes |
| 14. The classroom is filled with over two hundred multi-sensory materials for physical exploration which satisfy a broad range of learning styles. Children learn subject matter directly through hands-on project materials |
14. Few materials for grounding of learning in sensory-perceptual experience. Occasionally, a small number of ‘activity centers’ are available for children to learn, but are poorly integrated into the subject matter. Emphasis instead on abstract, teacher-led drills. |
| 15. The Montessori curriculum includes ‘practical life’ – an organized program for learning care of self, the environment and appropriate behavior towards others in various circumstances. |
15. No organized program for care of self or environment, or towards others. This area left for parents to cope with. No emphasis on independence. No emphasis on the responsibilities of stewardship for the environment. |
| 16. In the studio/workshop environment, the child can work where he chooses, move around and talk at will (yet not disturb the work of others). Group work is voluntary. Social and physical development are integrated directly into the learning environment. |
16. Each child is assigned his own chair, is required to participate, and is expected to sit still and listen during group lessons. Social life and physical activity are exiled to the playground, where there is no direct connection with what the child is expected to learn. Many children feel physically restrained, socially frustrated and bored. |
| 17. Children learn to move and speak with purpose, logic and direction. They grow both in skill and in confidence, both academically and socially. They become convinced that they have a contribution to make, and are much more likely to become committed and effected. |
17. Successful children develop strengths in passive/receptive skills, but not in productive or creative skills (the provinces of the teacher). Success in academics often comes at the price of social and other life skills: to be ‘smart’ is to be regarded as a nerd, a ‘winner’ who has won by making others lose. The majority of children lose their interest in academics. |