Kinsella - Public Schools Teach Bullying and Obedience

13/12/21 16:11 Public Schools Teach Bullying and Obedience - LewRockwell LewRockwell.
com
LewRockwell.com
anti-state • anti-war • pro-market
Montessori, Peace, and Libertarianism

By Stephan Kinsella
April 28, 2011
Previously by Stephan Kinsella: What Libertarianism Is
Among libertarians and Austrians, there is intense interest in the topic of how to educate
children. Of course we are all averse to the idea of government schooling. This has led
many libertarians to abandon government schools in favor of private schools or home-
schooling, or even the seemingly odd approach of "unschooling."
One of the less conventional approaches to education is that spearheaded by Maria

Montessori (1870-1952), the so-called Montessori Method. Many libertarians may have
heard of this approach because Ayn Rand had positive things to say about it.
My son has been in The Post Oak School since he was 18 months old and is now in
second grade (Lower Elementary).
Given the uniqueness of Montessori, I'm often asked about it, by libertarians and others.
I can't claim to be an expert, but below I'll share some of my thoughts about Montessori
and related aspects of parenting.
Accreditation. There is apparently no Montessori trademark, meaning any school can

hold itself out as being "Montessori." Some are officially accredited by the original
Association Montessori Internationale. These are the so-called AMI schools; Posk Oak, for
example, is one of only three or so AMI schools in the greater Houston area. Some
Montessori schools in the US are also accredited by the American Montessori Society
(AMS).
The history of the split between AMI and AMS is a bit convoluted.
Apparently, after Montessori was established in Rome in 1907, by
1917 there was intense interest in this educational approach in
America. However, the publication of the 1914 booklet The
Montessori System Examined by democratic socialist and John
Dewey follower William Heard Kilpatrick helped dampen interest
in Montessori in America for decades. Many of his arguments
have since been debunked, but only decades after it served its
M t i i d l i th t f th
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2011/04/stephan-kinsella/public-schools-teach-bullying-and-obedience/ 1/12
13/12/21 16:11 Public Schools Teach Bullying and Obedience - LewRockwell LewRockwell.com
purpose. Montessori remained popular in other parts of the
world, but in America it went into decline, with little AMI
presence. In the meantime, American Nancy McCormick
Rambusch learned about the Montessori approach in Europe and
ended up founding the AMS. This led to AMS dominance in the
US, but there has also been an AMI resurgence in recent decades.
There are plenty of unaccredited Montessori schools out there. Any parent considering
Montessori should make sure the school is either AMI or AMS accredited.
I know many libertarians nowadays prefer homeschooling, but unlike certain left-
libertarian "localists" I do believe in the division and specialization of labor, so think that
an actual school can be superior to homeschooling. The failure of government schools
and even many (government-influenced) private schools today has made home-schooling
a better option for some, which is a sad commentary on the state of modern
conventional and government schooling. If untrained moms can do a better job than
most government and conventional schools — and it seems they can — then something
is wrong with mainstream education. In the current scheme of things, my view is that
the best solution is a good private AMI or AMS Montessori school; followed by private
and/or homeschooling (and for those who prefer homeschooling, the Montessori
approach can still be employed). They are all, generally speaking, superior to
government schools. There is another philosophy called "unschooling" but I find it to be
unsystematic and somewhat reactionary, but even this is probably superior in many
cases to government schooling.
Focus on the Child. Maria Montessori got her start working in the early 1900s with
children with intellectual disabilities. She found that she could "normalize" them by
providing them with the appropriate environment. ("Normalization" is another
idiosyncratic Montessori term referring to the idea that if given the right environment, it
is "normal" for all children to be able to shift from the "ordinary condition of disorder,
inattention, and attachment to fantasy to a state of perfect normal being, showing such
external behavior as spontaneous self-discipline, independence, love of order, and
complete harmony and peace with others in the social situation.") Imagine what could be
done with non-disabled kids, she thought! From extensive observation and thought she
developed theories about how children develop, and what kind of environment they need
to permit them to prosper and reach their full potential, at various stages of
development. As Montessori wrote,
The child cannot develop if he does not have objects around him permitting him to act.
Until the present, it was believed that the most effective learning took place when
knowledge was passed on directly to the child by his teachers. But it is really the
environment that is the best teacher. The child needs objects to act; they are like
nourishment for his spirit. [Education and Peace, 57]
Ultimately, this resulted in a wide array of carefully-crafted tactile material based on the
view that developing humans are heavily tactile based. This is one reason it's hard to
recreate this method in a homeschooling environment — most parents cannot afford to

provide at home the resources and environmental provided at a Montessori school (but,
as noted above, it can still be employed in homeschooling). This is the division of labor.
But this is not to say that the home environment is not important: from the beginning
the Montessori technique emphasizes the complementary role of both parents and school
in developing the child's full potential.
In addition, Montessori views kids as individuals with full human rights and status. Yes,
they are at a different developmental stage, but we treat them with dignity and respect.
Witness the sushi example above. And it is mirrored in the "positive discipline"
techniques Montessori schools promote. It is manifest in how even toddlers are treated:
they are given roles in the school, in the family — helping set the table, clear the table,
and so on within their capacities. I was raised to think of spanking as normal; if you
understand that children develop naturally then usually if they do something that "calls
for a spanking" this is a sign the parent has gone astray in the rearing or environment
prepared for the child, or inattention to his needs at this stage of his development (good
resources include Redirecting Children’s Behavior and Parenting With Love and Logic).
I will not say I agree with every particular part of the Montessori philosophy, as it is still
a young, developing science. But what I appreciate about it is its focus on the
perspective of the child — the developing human. The question teachers ask — and that
parents are encouraged to ask — is: what is appropriate for the child? So the schools use
child-size furniture for his environment. They provide implements he can grasp and
manipulate. The toilets are little kid sized. Book shelves are low to the ground so kids
can access material independently (and put it back). When parents come to the
classroom for a teacher meeting, they are all sitting on half-sized furniture, like giants.
Because the room is designed for kids.
Planes of Development. Montessori's empirical research led her to believe that humans
develop in four six-year "planes of development," each with its own particular learning
characteristics; the environment for each is designed accordingly. According to this view,
humans reach full maturity at around 24 years old. Each plane of development has its
own developmental stages, with the first three years of a stage (a sub-stage) primarily
geared to attainment of knowledge, and the second three-year sub-stage focused on
refinement of knowledge appropriate to that plane.
Source: Montessori 101 Presentation, Whitby School
Source: The Montessori Way, by Tim Seldin & Paul Epstein
Recent research has found some scientific support for this view of human development
and for the efficacy of the Montessori educational approach. As for anecdotal evidence,
as the WSJ blog reports, the Montessori approach produces many members of the
"creative elite," including "Google's founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Amazon's Jeff
Bezos, videogame pioneer Will Wright, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, not to
mention Julia Child and rapper Sean "P. Diddy" Combs. As noted on Post Oak's site, "A
disproportionately large number of these graduates are innovators, explorers,
iconoclasts. The list includes Nobel laureates, world leaders, successful entrepreneurs
and ordinary people — all living life with the gifts of self-awareness and intrinsic
motivation that are the legacy of every Montessori student." And don't forget this great
home-made video, I'm in Love with Friedrich Hayek, by Dorian Electra, a recent graduate
of School of the Woods, an AMS Montessori K-12 school here in Houston.
Teachers as Guides. Teaches are viewed as "guides," and children do "work" so that
they learn to love the learning process and to teach themselves. Because of this focus
they are not concerned, as conventional schools are, with the "student to teacher ratio."
After all, if a lower student to teacher ratio is better, then ideally it's one to one. This is
obviously unrealistic But in conventional schools you have one teacher pumping out
obviously unrealistic. But in conventional schools you have one teacher pumping out
knowledge to students sitting in desks arrayed in a grid. The students are passive and
move in lock step. In Montessori, there are no desks; students are free to roam about,
physically unrestricted, so that they can select the work they are interested in or need to
concentrate on. The teachers guide the students to work on their own. As explained on
the AMI site:
The Montessori teacher's role is quite different from the role played by teachers in many
schools. They are generally not the center of attention, and they spend little time giving
large group lessons. Their role centers around the preparation and organization of
appropriate learning materials to meet the needs and interests of each child in the class.
Montessori teachers will normally be found working with one or two children at a time,
advising, presenting a new lesson, or quietly observing the class at work. The focus is on
children learning, not teachers teaching. Children are considered as distinct individuals in
terms of their interests, progress and growth, and preferred learning style. The
Montessori teacher is a guide, mentor and friend.
Students will typically be found scattered around the classroom, working alone or with
one or two others. They tend to become so involved in their work that visitors tend to be
amazed at the peaceful atmosphere.
Because of the role of teachers as guides, there is not the same obsession with student-
to-teacher ratio as in conventional schools.
Three-year class groupings. Based in part on the idea of the 3-year sub-planes of the
6-year planes of development, in Primary (years 3-6), Lower Elementary (1st-3rd
grade), and Upper Elementary (4th-6th grade), kids are grouped into classes spanning
three years. For example, my son is now in second grade in Lower Elementary — grades
1 through 3 are all together. One reason for this is the idea that children in this age
grouping are all in the same sub-plane of development, so that they can share the same
environment and materials developed and appropriate for children in that sub-plane.
Another advantage of this approach is that the child has the same teacher for three
years. This allows the teacher (the "guide") to get to know the children extremely well.
Her reports to the parents about the child's progress are verbal and qualitative, as
opposed to quantitative. Unlike many government schools, Montessori schools do not
"teach to the test" except as necessary to comply with mainstream standards. They do
not even give letter grades so as to induce students to excel on their own instead of
competing with classmates and judging their success by how they compare to others. (In
this recognition of the difficulty of quantitatively describing human actors and their
character and capacities, I see a parallel to the Austrian notion of value as being
subjective, ordinal, and not interpersonally comparable.)
Another advantage of this 3-year grouping is that the kids return to 2/3 of the same
class body every year. This makes for more continuity.
This approach also gives the child a full spectrum of development over the three years in
that class: first, as a younger member of the class, they are cared for and mentored by
older children; as they mature, they become responsible for being role models for and
mentors to the younger children. This is itself a powerful teaching model and an incentive
for the child to mature. My son and three other boys, now in second grade, had for a
while been being a bit disruptive in class. The teacher explained to them that next year
they need to be role models for the younger kids; this prospect helped motivate them to
self-improve.
The Approach to "Part-time." The earliest stage of AMI Montessori is "infant

community" ("Casa Dei Bambini"). It starts as soon as the child is sufficiently potty
trained and ambulatory — 14 to 18 months, say, and goes to about 3 years old, until the
child is ready for "Primary" (ages 3-6). At our child's school, at this stage you can select
full-day or half-day infant community. Unlike other schools, where "part-time" may be 3
days a week, M-W-F, Montessori views part-time as half-day, morning to 11:30, all five
days; and full time extends to 3pm or so. The point is that the focus is on the child: half-
time is still five days a week, for consistency from the point of view of the child. Imagine
a child going to school M-W-F: they have one day one; one off; one on; one off; two off;
one on. It's discombobulating to the child. The idea of going every morning, M-F, is more
of an established routine for the child. My point is not that I agree with this particular
practice. It is that it is developed with careful attention to the needs of the child, based
on the child's perspective.
Fantasy and Realism. The use of fantasy is downplayed in the early ages. The idea is
that developing young minds have insufficient context to understand fantastical
concepts; instead, initially, root them in reality: real things, spoons, cups, objects. As
explained here:
In Montessori fantasy and imagination are very much a part of the creative process.
However, since the real world is seen as a wonderful creation as it is, children are
introduced to the real world in all its variations in the first six years, and then use these
experiences to create for the rest of their lives. The word "work" is used to describe the
child's activities instead of "play" because they as respected as adult activities.
Again: whether they are right or wrong on this particular issue is not my point (the
Waldorf method takes the opposite approach to fantasy); it is that it is developed with a
careful attention on the child's natural needs. I actually did introduce fantasy to my child
very early, but I was conscious of the notion that he might not yet have the context to
understand all of it, and made sure he had exposure to the "realistic" things too.
Reading and Writing. One of my favorite things about Montessori is its approach to
learning reading and writing. Following a blend of these ideas (see Montessori Read and
Write) and Glenn Doman's How To Teach Your Baby to Read, I taught my own child to
read at a very young age. There are several aspects to the Montessori approach:
Do not teach kids the names of letters. This is a key insight. Just teach them how
the letter sounds, and what it looks like. So if you point to the letters of the
alphabet, you would say, "aah, buh, little-kuh (to distinguish c, "little-kuh," from k,
"big-kuh"), duh, eh, eff, guh," and so on.
Writing is sometimes taught before reading. The idea is that "young children will
often be able to write (encoding language by spelling phonetic words out one
sound at a time) weeks or months before they will be able to read comfortably
(decoding printed words)." And if you manage write a word, then you can read it —
you know what you wrote. So strangely, by learning to write you can help teach
yourself to read.
Cursive is taught before printing. Cursive, as I understand it, is not even taught
anymore in some schools, which is a shame. In Montessori, it's taught first, since
children are able to make the flowing motions of cursive more easily then print
letters.
(Incidentally, the Suzuki method of learning music — typically violin or piano — is similar
in some ways to the Montessori approach to language — children learn to play by
learning what keys make what sounds, without at first bothering to learn the names of
notes. Unsurprisingly, Montessorians often recommend the Suzuki method.)
The Crib. I didn't start learning a lot about Montessori until my son was about 9 months
old. If I had learned earlier I would never have bothered to use a crib at all. As it was,
we took him out of the crib at 11 months and got rid of it — we put the crib mattress on
the floor in the corner, and he slept on that. Why lock a kid up in a crib, as if he's in jail?
Why restrict his freedom of movement, his ability to explore? (And cribs are dangerous,
too — many babies fall out or get caught in the slats.) As Maria Montessori wrote:
When the child is given freedom to move about in a world of objects, he is naturally
inclined to perform the task necessary for his development entirely on his own. Let us
say it straight out — the child wants to do everything all by himself. But the adult does
not understand this, and a blind struggle begins. The child likes neither to play idly, nor
to waste time doing useless things, nor to flit about aimlessly, as most people believe. He
seeks some very precise goal, and he seeks it with an instinctive directness of purpose.
This instinct that impels him to do things by himself makes it incumbent upon us to
prepare an environment that truly allows him to develop. When he has freed himself of
the oppressive adults who act for him, the child also achieves his second goal, working
positively toward his own independence. [Education and Peace, 55]
And if he rolls off the mattress in the middle of the night, he can crawl back on — giving
him self-responsibility, independence, and self-reliance.
As noted in the Michael Olaf The Joyful Child catalog:
Every child follows a unique timetable of learning to crawl to those things he has been
looking at, so that he may finally handle them. This visual, followed by tactile,
exploration is very important for many aspects of human development. If we provide a
floor bed or mattress on the floor in a completely safe room — rather than a crib or
playpen with bars — the child has a clear view of the surroundings and freedom to
explore
explore.
A bed should be one which the baby can get in and out of on his own as soon as he is
ready to crawl. The first choice is an adult twin bed mattress on the floor. Besides being
an aid to development, this arrangement does a lot to prevent the common problem of
crying because of boredom or exhaustion.
It helps to think of this as a whole-room playpen with a baby gate at the doorway and to
examine every nook and cranny for interest and safety. If the newborn is going to share
a room with parents or siblings we can still provide a large, safe, and interesting
environment.
Eventually he will explore the whole room with a gate at the door and then gradually
move out into the baby-proofed and baby-interesting remainder of the house.
See also Designing a Montessori Infant Environment at Home.
New parents: save your money. Don't buy a crib. All you need is a mattress, in a safe
room. For a newborn, I believe a bassinet is placed on the mattress, until the baby is
ready to be on the mattress itself.
Lunch and Homework. For a few miscellaneous observations — in conventional schools

I've heard of, the teacher might assign homework on Monday that is due Tuesday, and on
Tuesday, homework that is due the next day, and so on. In my kid's school, homework
for lower elementary students is assigned on Monday, and due Thursday. It's up to the
kid to decide how to manage his time during the week and get it done. This helps teach
responsibility and time management.
Also, although The Post Oak School is not inexpensive, there is no lunchroom and no
meals provided. The child is expected to prepare his own lunch (with parental supervision
or assistance) every morning. This teaches awareness of nutrition and self-reliance and
responsibility.
Peace. One of the most fascinating features of the Montessori philosophy, for
libertarians, was Maria Montessori's passionate devotion to peace. This can be seen in
the schools, where kids are taught that they are all members of the human family, that
we are children of the world, and that we should respect each others' individual rights.
They are taught cooperation and responsibility, and to respect others. Some Montessori
schools go out of their way to encourage mediation- or arbitration-like dispute resolution
(see my LRC post Out of the Mouths of Babes). See the video Education for Peace: The
Essence of Montessori (embedded below).
But the Montessori approach to peace is much more than this. The idea of peace is
deeply embedded into its entire educational approach. Maria Montessori believed there
were several reasons the human race had not yet achieved peace. One was a false idea
of peace as merely the cessation of war. She discusses this in detail in her amazing book
Education and Peace. As she notes there,
Human history teaches us that peace means the forcible submission of the conquered to
domination once the invader has consolidated his victory, the loss of everything the
vanquished hold dear, and the end of their enjoyment of the fruits of their labour and
their conquests. The vanquished are forced to make sacrifices, as if they are the only
ones who are guilty and merit punishment, simply because they have been defeated.
Meanwhile the victors flaunt the rights they feel they have won over the defeated
populace, who remain the victims of the disaster. Such conditions may mark the end of
actual combat, but they certainly cannot be called peace. [pp. 6-7]
This was presciently written in 1932, as the false "peace" of WWI was sowing the seeds
for WWII.
Montessori also lamented the lack of a science of peace: "it is quite strange, in fact, that
as yet there is no such thing as a science of peace, since the science of war appears to
be highly advanced, at least regarding such concrete armaments and strategy …." (p 5).
This is echoed in a moving and insightful 1985 article by John Bremer, who writes: "From
my little knowledge of eastern thought, it appears quite possible for a discipline of peace
to exist already, and I mean a discipline for a way of life and not an academic discipline."
("Education as Peace" N.A.M.T.A. Quarterly 11, no. 1 (Fall 1985), p. 26.)
If it is true that libertarians can profit from Montessori's educational insights, it is also
true that Montessorians searching for a science of peace can stop looking: this is what
libertarianism is. Libertarianism recognizes the world of scarcity that we inhabit gives rise
to conflict and war, and the solution is the adoption of civilized rules of cooperation and
allocation of property rights — a libertarian private law society. If Montessori had been
apprised of the insights of Austrian, free market economics and of anti-state, pro-peace
liberalism, who knows — maybe she would have become a key advocate of libertarian
views.
Skepticism of statism, individualism, and love of freedom permeates the Montessori

perspective. It is worth quoting at length from Bremer's piece:
Maria Montessori … knew that education, properly understood, is a disturbance of the

universe as it is conventionally conceived and experienced. It places the power
structure at risk since there is the strong possibility that it will be exposed for what it is
— an imposition upon the sacred order of things, a distortion of what is natural, for
the supposed benefit of those not willing or not able to learn. She also understood more
clearly than any of her contemporaries that if the perversion of the natural order of
things is to be maintained by the power establishment, then the soul must also be
perverted because it is the one power, the one course of energy in the universe that is
able to see and to show the corruption and perversion of the whole and to correct it. This
perversion of the soul arrogated to itself, for obvious rhetorical advantage, the name of
education. In reality, it is what was characterized earlier as a form of indoctrination, and
it rests upon an imbalance, an inequality of power.
The key to Montessori is contained in the two sayings which are more often repeated
y y g p
than argued about and understood — "Follow the child" and "Look to the child."
… The fundamental fallacy of conventional apologetics in education is [that] if the teacher

establishes control, the students can learn. … This fundamental educational fallacy has,
of course, its political counterpart. How could it be otherwise when in conventional
opinion "education" is a sub-branch of "politics"? The basic political fallacy is that if
people are controlled "by proper authority" then they will improve. I suppose they
might improve as sheep but scarcely as human beings, as citizens.
… [I]n our international relations we will have to learn whatever the counterpart is of
"Follow the Child" and of "Look to the Child." It is possible that we will come to see,
eventually, the nation state for what it is — an extensive defence mechanism
against learning, and we may find some new pattern of human organization which will
simultaneously offer security and the opportunity to learn. Just as Montessori diplomas
are different from ordinary credentials, I suspect that Montessori diplomacy may be of a
different order from that played by the brinksmanship of Kissinger and the like.
… I rest my confidence in the knowledge that if power corrupts and absolute power
corrupts absolutely, then learning liberates and universal learning liberates universally.
And universal learning is peace in action. [pp. 33-34]
Note the keen recognition of the state's lies and corruption and use of education for
propaganda. It is thus no surprise to learn that Maria Montessori, as the Inspector of
schools in Italy, refused to use the education system to produce soldiers for Mussolini. As
noted here: "In 1922 she was appointed Inspector of Schools in Italy. She lost that
position when she refused to have her young charges take the fascist oath as the dictator
Mussolini required." More detail is provided here:
in 1929 Montessori opened the Association Montessori International in the Netherlands,

with another center following in 1947 in London. The political world had its own affairs in
the works however, most notably the rise of fascism in Italy and the spread of Germany’s
Nazi regime. Montessori found herself under dire pressure to turn her schools into
training centers, to mass-produce soldiers for the war. Naturally she refused, and for a
brief time she and son Mario were interred. Freed and then exiled by Mussolini, they fled
from Italy, taking refuge initially in Spain and India, and finally the Netherlands.
Montessori believed the reason we have war, and not peace, is not only because of false
conceptions of peace, but because the nature of the child was neglected during
education, leading to moral paralysis and morally stunted individuals who have no
defenses to resist the state's propaganda and demands for war. And the reason for this
was a misconception regarding the nature of the child and his relation to the adult, and
about the proper method of education.
As she wrote:
The child and the adult are two distinct parts of humanity which must work together and
interpenetrate with reciprocal aid
interpenetrate with reciprocal aid.
Therefore it is not only the adult who must help the child, but also the child who must
help the adult. Nay more! In the critical moment of history through which we are passing
the assistance of the child has become a paramount necessity for all men. Hitherto the
evolution of human society has come about solely around the wish of the adult. Never
with the wish of the child. Thus the figure of the child has remained outside our mind as
we have built up the material form of society. And because of this the progress of
humanity may be compared to that of a man trying to advance on one leg instead of two.
[Quoted in E.M. Standing, Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work (1998 [1957]), p. 81.]
A key insight by Montessori here is the realization that children create the adult.
Each of us has not always been a grown-up person; it was the child who constructed our
personality. Before we became the important adult personage we are now, the respected
member of society, we were another personality — very different, very mysterious — but
not considered by the world, at all; not respected; of no importance whatever; with no
say in the running of things. Yet all that time we were really a personality capable of
doing something that we cannot do now. He who is the constructor of man can never be
a person of no importance. He is capable of doing something great, like a seed. It is only
when w realize the wonderful way in which the child creates the man that we realize, tat
the same time, that we hold in our hands a secret by which we can help in the
formulation of a better humanity. (Just the opposite of a secret weapon to destroy it."
(Quoted in Standing, Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work, pp. 157-58.)
In sum, Maria Montessori argues that the only way to reach world peace is to educate
the young according to their nature, to produce naturally peaceful "citizens of the world."
Her vision is grandiose and her language grandiloquent, metaphorical, and flowery. But
she is right. This is exactly is why I think economic education, in particular, is so
important. Maria Montessori's vision, I think, was of a Montessori-type educational
system sweeping the world and transforming the next generation, so that when they
matured, the world would reach a state of peace and cooperation (though I have not
found any formulation so explicit; she was probably too modest). A grand, ambitious
vision, to be sure, but one to be admired. In fact Maria Montessori was nominated three
times for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Whether her particular educational methods are "the way" to unlock the civilized
potential of budding humans, I do not know. But, as always, hope is with the young —
something recognized by Montessorians and libertarians alike. And on that note, I'll close
with the closing words of E.M. Standing's biography of Montessori:
It is along this path that the nations of the world will progress most surely towards that
harmony foretold by the prophet, when "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the
leopard lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together —
and a little child shall lead them." [p. 370]
Further Reading
g
Education and Peace, by Maria Montessori (hard to find for a good price on
Amazon; I found this and others by Montessori at Nienhuis).
The Montessori Way, by Tim Seldin & Paul Epstein.
Montessori: A Modern Approach and Montessori Today: A Comprehensive Approach
to Education from Birth to Adulthood, by Paula Polk Lillard.
Michael Olaf catalogs: The Joyful Child (birth to age 3) and Child of the World (3 to
12 years) (yes, catalogs; it has wonderful mini-articles sprinkled throughout).
Trevor Eissler, Montessori Madness: A Parent to Parent Argument for Montessori
Education.
Why Montessori?, information and links from The Post Oak School.
Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism: Educational Theory for a Free Market in
Education, by Jerry Kirkpatrick (I haven't read this one but the description looks
interesting: "Synthesizing ideas from such disparate thinkers as educator Maria
Montessori, philosophers John Dewey and Ayn Rand, and Austrian economist
Ludwig von Mises, Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism presents a philosophy of
education — the theory of concentrated attention and independent judgment —
that requires laissez-faire capitalism for its full realization.")
Rand and Montessori: Marsha Enright, "Foundations Study Guide: Montessori
Education" (the Atlas Society); Michael S. Berliner, "Ayn Rand and her thoughts on
Rational Education"; "Ayn Rand and Maria Montessori."
Positive discipline techniques: Redirecting Children's Behavior, by Kathryn J. Kvols;
Positive Discipline, by Jane Nelsen; and Parenting With Love And Logic, by Foster
Cline & Jim Fay (all of which I've read, tried to implement, and highly recommend).
April 28, 2011
The Best of Stephan Kinsella
Privacy Policy

Kinsella - Public Schools Teach Bullying and Obedience

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Kinsella - Public Schools Teach Bullying and Obedience

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

13/12/21 16:11 Public Schools Teach Bullying and Obedience - LewRockwell LewRockwell.

Montessori, Peace, and Libertarianism

Previously by Stephan Kinsella: What Libertarianism Is

One of the less conventional approaches to education is that spearheaded by Maria

Accreditation. There is apparently no Montessori trademark, meaning any school can

recreate this method in a homeschooling environment — most parents cannot afford to

Source: Montessori 101 Presentation, Whitby School

Source: The Montessori Way, by Tim Seldin & Paul Epstein

The Approach to "Part-time." The earliest stage of AMI Montessori is "infant

As noted in the Michael Olaf The Joyful Child catalog:

See also Designing a Montessori Infant Environment at Home.

Lunch and Homework. For a few miscellaneous observations — in conventional schools

Skepticism of statism, individualism, and love of freedom permeates the Montessori

Maria Montessori … knew that education, properly understood, is a disturbance of the

… The fundamental fallacy of conventional apologetics in education is [that] if the teacher

in 1929 Montessori opened the Association Montessori International in the Netherlands,

The Best of Stephan Kinsella

You might also like