Policy: Dear President

March 6th, 2013

President Barack Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama:

I’m writing today in response to your State of the Union Address, specifically the part on early childhood education and the pledge to make high-quality preschool options available to every American child.   As you know, the early childhood years from birth to age six are the most active and critical years for human growth and development.   Studies show that children cultivate 85 percent of their intellect, personality, and skills by age five. Unfortunately, only 3 in 10 American preschoolers are enrolled in a high quality preschool program.  This means that we are squandering the opportunity of these pivotal developmental years, and that the majority of educational investments reach children when they are developmentally less capable of learning. 

Montessori Philosophy

In response to the pledge for universal access to quality preschool, I would like to advocate on behalf of the Montessori philosophy as the means for seizing the potential of these early childhood years.  The Montessori philosophy is a comprehensive, research-supported, and time-tested method of education from birth to age 18.  It bases itself on the premise that children have sensitive periods when they are predisposed to learn and absorb specific skills.  Each sensitive period represents a certain amount of potential which can only be realized during this time.  By providing materials that isolate the skills of the sensitive periods and a teacher to connect the child to these materials, the child will acquire the skills through internal motivation, self-induced repetition, and an independent process of discovery. 

The preschool years are generally recognized as the years from ages three to six, which is also the age range in a primary Montessori classroom.  The child’s work in the Montessori classroom lays a clear and concrete foundation in areas of practical life, refining the senses, language, mathematics, and science.  Children in the three to six-year-old Montessori classroom learn to appropriately use everything from knives and cheese graters to silver, brass, and shoe polish.  They learn to sew buttons and embroider fabric, and to distinguish between subtle differences in dimension, texture, smell, taste, shade, weight and temperature with materials designed to hone those senses.  Children learn to write and read using sandpaper letters and a movable alphabet.  They add, subtract, multiply, and divide using concrete materials that represent the abstract concepts.  They work with fractions and complex geometric shapes; and construct a binomial cube, a trinomial cube, and a decanomial square.  They identify the shapes and names of leaves and draw the continents and countries of the world. 

Unlike traditional preschools where children are shepherded through daily activities organized in short time increments to hold attention, children in a Montessori classroom are free to move about the classroom and choose materials they have been shown.  As children grow and receive more lessons, more materials are available to them.  The day is organized around one or two three-hour work periods, since this allows the children adequate time to enter deep concentration with their work.  A six-year-old child, Katia, from my school recently had a play-date with a friend in a public kindergarten.  The friend showed Katia her homework, which was to color-in a picture.  Katia went home confused and said, “Mom, we get to do adult work at my school.”

Studies show that schools which strictly adhere to the Montessori philosophy produce child outcomes superior to those of traditional environments and other alternative methods.  In a study comparing outcomes for low-income youth in Milwaukee Montessori and traditional schools from ages 3-6 and 6-12, the results were staggering.  Montessori students in both age groups showed significant advantages in cognitive, academic, social and behavioral skills over students in traditional schools. 

Barriers to Universal Access to Montessori Preschool

You may be wondering, if the Montessori philosophy is so revolutionary, why haven’t more people heard of it and why aren’t more children enrolled?  Dr. Angeline Lillard addresses these questions at the end of her book Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius: explaining how William Kilpatrick, professor of education at Columbia Teacher’s College, published The Montessori System Examined (1914), which dismissed many of the premises of Montessori education and delayed its spread in the United States until the 1960s.  Kilpatrick’s book would later be regarded as both a shallow interpretation of the Montessori philosophy and an outdated understanding of human development. Another reason for limited public discourse is that Dr. Maria Montessori was first and foremost a practitioner, who wanted to help children.  Her experiments were not recorded like Piaget’s, her theories were not detailed as Vygotsky’s, and also she was a woman at a time when only the work of those related to famous men withstood the test of time in the social sciences (Anna Freud, Margaret Mead).  Thus, until Lillard set out to research which areas of the Montessori philosophy are and are not supported by modern research and found that virtually (if not all) aspects of the philosophy are corroborated by modern findings, few connections had been made between Montessori’s work and the academic world. 

Secondly, Lillard states that increasing access to Montessori education is a slow process.  AMI-trained Montessori teachers are in short supply.  Primary Montessori training is offered at AMI training centers worldwide, only 14 of which are located in the United States.  Training is provided by teacher trainers who have committed over ten years in preparation for their roles: one year of their own teacher training, several years as a teacher, and then several years as an apprentice to a teacher trainer.   More teacher trainers are needed to grow the supply of teachers.  Currently, full-time training is offered on-site in a nine-month program or part-time over three summers.  The cost is approximately $10,000, with limited options for financial aid.  As of now, only two U.S. universities offer joint degree programs with Montessori Training Centers: Loyola University Maryland and the University of San Diego. 

Another barrier is money.  Montessori schools are expensive to start and maintain due to the cost of the high-quality materials sold by three recognized companies internationally.  Thus, most children who attend a Montessori school pay significant yearly tuition, which bars entry to the majority of Americans.  Though many Head Start programs, serving lower-income families, use the Montessori name, none are recognized by the Association Montessori International (AMI) for sufficient adherence to the method.   Lastly, Lillard states that bringing Montessori to more children would require a “national commitment to begin education at age 3, rather than 5 or 6:” a commitment which requires a cultural shift and long-term vision, a shift you have called upon us to make.

Recommendations

In an effort to fulfill the goals and commitments made in the 2013 State of the Union Address, I recommend opening AMI-certified Montessori preschools in every elementary school across the country.  A Montessori preschool would combine preschool and the kindergarten year.  The program could be modeled after existing ones in Denver, Milwaukee, or DC Public Schools, to name a few.  New programs could be piloted in Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, through KIPP Public Charter schools, or where the movement is already beginning to take off in Washington, DC.

The following are some of the action steps you could follow:

• Select a person for your administration to coordinate these efforts: build partnerships and understanding with representatives in school districts where Montessori programs already operate, serve as a liaison to the Department of Education, develop a strategic plan for growth, oversee development of a regulatory committee
• Approve a strategic plan for growth, such as universal public preschool by 2016 and 30% of these preschools are Montessori by 2032
• Create a regulatory committee partnered with and with the same requirements as the Association Montessori International to certify schools
• Allocate money for government grants to encourage more Montessori teachers to become teacher trainers and more professionals to get Montessori training
• Allocate money to government grants to encourage universities to establish joint degree programs with Montessori training institutes (i.e. University of Minnesota – Twin Cities and the Montessori Training Center of Minnesota in St. Paul)
• Establish a partnership with Teach For America so it sends early childhood teachers to Montessori Institutes for their training   
• Establish a partnership with the Founders of Google who credit their success to their Montessori education

There’s no doubt this would be a massive undertaking, but so was creating universal public schools and universal public kindergartens.  Going back to the creation of our country, the founding fathers knew that education was the basis for a strong democracy.  We have learned that creating this foundation begins earlier than originally thought.  

The undertaking I recommend is not one that can be implemented in the next four years.  It’s one that will take dedicated people many years to put in place.  But, as I see it, there is no nobler honor than speaking for those who have no voice, for uncovering potential which has barely been realized, for being a national and world leader on universal early childhood Montessori education. 

Sincerely yours,

A Montessorian