I was very interested to see this discussion because we are also involved in the not so positive experience of Montessori. My DS5 has been in his current Montessori Preschool for over 3 years and is supposed to be staying for their K program next year (he will be the only K student in the room). He has sensory disorder and change is very difficult for him..he feels comfortable in his room and knows his teacher but we are pretty convinced that they are "playing at" Montessori and are no where even remotely a true Montessori. The sad part is that his school is one of the better options that we have to choose from and we are NOT happy with it. I love the whole idea of a TRUE Montessori and if we were able to find this, I believe it would fit my son to a T. I think that is why so many people are having mixed reviews with Montessori. A true Montessori that goes along with exactly what Maria Montessori had intended, I think is an amazing setting for any child....but a school that is just "playing at" being a Montessori school misses the mark time and time again and children are unhappy or are not allowed to move ahead when they are ready. From the research I have read, a true Montessori trained teacher who believes in the approach is supposed to know her children and when she sees one ready to go on, she is supposed to allow them to just keep moving at their pace.
My son's teacher has the messed up belief that she does not allow any of her students to use certain parts/activities of the classroom until they turn 5 - doesn't matter about their ability level or even if they have shown her they are ready to do a new activity - she does not allow them until they turn 5 - RIDICULOUS - so totally against the Montessori approach...and the sad thing is that many of these items/activities were specifically geared by Maria Montessori to be used by 4 year olds at the optimum time to introduce them to that item...so here is my son who is 5 and still has yet to have 4 year old activities given to him. We have been fighting nonstop all year and have even shared the psychologist's report with her. My son is bored to tears to the point that he has sat with me at home online and picked out Montessori lessons for me to buy online so that we have been doing them at home. He is in love with the Bead Cabinet and begged to get lessons on it since he was 4 years old....he finally turned 5 in Jan and we begged her almost daily for 2 months before she finally gave him his first lesson on it....and then she told me with a shocked look on her face just how amazed she was at how she didn't even have to give him a lesson, that he already knew exactly what to do. The thing that really makes me mad is that with his bead cabinet lessons - he is working on the bead squared lessons - knowing that 7 7's is 49. But she makes them take a roll of adding paper (like you find in an adding machine) and after the kids have done the activity and laid out their bead chains on the rug and labeled them with the number labels, she makes them take the colored pencils that matches the bead color and the child has to hand draw every single bead on the paper...so that means drawing 47 small colored in circles on the paper and then labeling all the numbers 7, 14, 21...with my son's sensory disorder he has trouble with fine motor skills and handwriting...he is getting pretty intense OT and PT for this but he gets frustrated with lots and lots of drawing/writing....so here is a child who was SO excited about finally getting to do the bead chain lessons and he can tell you word for word every number, where it goes and can recreate the lesson 10x's over and completely understands the whole concept...but he is being made to write out a million teeny, tiny colored dots...so he did the 10's, 9's, 8's, 7's and got fed up and frustrated and has stopped doing any bead chain lessons and you can tell he is SO disappointed. There are a ton of different ways around checking if a child understands the concept other than making him hand write out a zillion colored dots.
