Value of Montessori education

Today, I received a letter from an American colleague, who referred to a statement made by President Ranil Wickremesinghe, published in The Island newspaper of 24 Dec., 2023. This colleague was until recently, the Executive Director of the American Montessori Society, the major Montessori organization in the US and he currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the Public School Montessori Consortium. After a quick perusal, I can only say that we both consider President Wickremesinghe’s statement to indicate that Montessori education is inferior and childish. Here is what the president said, “Some parties question the purpose of a government to govern the country if it has to be subjected to the conditions of the IMF. They claim that they will impose conditions on the IMF once they come to power. These are just childish stories. Only the people who have ‘Montessori-level knowledge’ about the economy can tell such stories”, he added.

I would like to respectfully correct the President Wickremesinghe’s quote by saying Montessori education is not childish. It does start with three-year-old children but continues through high school to college level. There is no other educational method that teaches such algebraic formulae like the Cube of the Binomial and Trinomial to nine-and-ten-year olds. Nor are children of other educational disciplines instructed in the Theorem of Pythagoras in their primary school years. The same goes for instruction and research in anthropology, astronomy, or archaeology to primary school age children.

If you don’t believe me, you can ask, among others, the co-founders of Google: Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They were both Montessori students until they were teenagers. Perhaps, the president needs to promote advanced Montessori education in Sri Lanka and familiarize himself with the scope and sequence of its curriculum from age 3 to 18 years.

Chandra Fernando
Educational Consultant
US