Ask HN: Anyone go through Montessori education until age 12 (end of grade 6)?
I went to a Montessori School from k-8 then switched into a fairly fast paced public school district for high school. I absolutely loved Montessori, and feel very lucky that I had the opportunity to attend. I felt a lot of ownership&#x2F;independence about my learning from a young age, and it really supported my curiosity about the world. Interactions with teachers felt like collaboration, not being told what to do, so I felt trusted and it felt very safe to make mistakes and learn. There was no homework, which meant the school day had lots of time built in to work on assignments and move around, which I didn’t realize how much I appreciated until I got to high school and was sitting at a desk all day with hours of homework every night. There were lots of opportunities to learn from people who were really excited to teach what they were teaching. We got to do lots of weird science experiments, big class projects, woodworking, learning about ancient history, several different languages, lots of different instruments... the list goes on.<p>There were two notable challenges for me, though not everyone in my class experienced these. Some of it will also be limited if you only have them there through 6th grade.<p>The first was figuring out how to socially transition from a small private school that effectively functioned like a big family, to a large public school. I didn’t really learn how to meet people being at the same small school for so long, and the culture shock of leaving of leaving Montessori was pretty bad. (Both with the way people my age approached learning and the way the public school system operated, i.e. everything is for a grade nothing else matters).<p>The second is because of some combination of the curiosity driven learning and the particular sequence of teachers I had, I managed to avoid getting a good foundation in algebra because I didn’t really feel like it. This turned out to be a big problem for me for many years, partially because no one realized so I kept being put in higher math classes, doing well through brute force, and being very frustrated and confused about all of it. I’m now getting an advanced degree in math, so everything worked itself out, but I do think math specifically wants a little more structure at those early steps than what I got.<p>Overall it was still absolutely worth it for me. Sometimes I wonder who I would be now if my curiosity hadn’t been so strongly reinforced when I was young. Happy to answer any specific questions! Hope this helps.