Samantha Joy
@_samantha_joy
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Former public school teacher turned Montessori education advocate. 🎯 | Writer @guidepostschool 🪶 | Idealistic step-mom to 11yo & 9yo 🏔
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Joined May 2022
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Everyone thinks they know what kids are like.
Rowdy and messy. Flitting from one activity to the next. Lost in a world of pretend.
But time and again, Maria Montessori found evidence of the exact opposite.
In the end, she concluded adults *don't know kids* at all:
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@realgirl_fieri
My family did something like this when I was growing up. Though it was more "wake up at 1 a.m. and start driving" so we practically slept-walked to the car and were knocked out immediately.
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@RRR0BYN
It's totally reasonable to want your kids to share your values.
But it's sick to have kids for the explicit purpose of them serving as ideological weapons.
I want kids so I can love them as individuals and help them build a life they love, not to own the libs or anyone else.
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The only thing that could motivate me to enjoy cooking is if I had an Italian toddler tell me how great it is with this much sincerity.
Also notice how childhood language acquisition is so much more than verbal vocabulary, but hand gestures and facial expressions too.
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Public schools are a failed experiment.
How can I tell?
Because, after over 50 years of compliance by >90% of the public, and a higher per-pupil spending rate than most of the world,
our results are tragic and indefensible on every possible dimension:
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How insane would it be for me to start homeschooling 10yo and 8yo while still working?
Maybe:
a work schedule of ~5 - 9
homeschool from ~9-12
and then work again from ~1-5
I'm been thinking about it, half determined as all hell, half scared out of my wits.
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8yo was so excited to share what he learned in math class but once he explained, I was *livid*
Conventional schools don't care about real learning.
They only care about "hacks" that make it easier to fill in multiple choice bubbles on a test:
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@GreatValueArhat
Love this!
We had a pest control guy come to the house yesterday and he listened to the kids' explanations with just as much respect as he listened to us. It was so nice to see.
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Montessori programs for children ages 0-6 are radical:
> Babies sleep in floor beds, not cribs
> Toddlers use knives and prepare meals
> Preschoolers predominantly work alone
Why? It has everything to do with the child's nature & needs in the 'First Plane of Development':
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Here's a common critique of Montessori:
>Montessori rushes child development.
>Why do toddlers need to sweep the floor or wash windows? Why should 3-year-olds learn to read? Just let kids be kids!
There is something right and something *deeply wrong* with this critique:
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Why do I want to homeschool 8yo and 10yo next year?
Counterintuitively, my top reason has little to do with providing better academics.
It's this: homeschooling can provide *far superior* socialization.
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Montessori believed there's a tempting, but mistaken, way to understand child development.
Without correcting this error, our approach to parenting & education does more than hold children back, it can warp them.
A kind of foot-binding for the soul.
The mistake goes like this:
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Most children are taught to read starting with the alphabet.
But this is incredibly abstract, and one major reason why learning to read is traditionally so miserable.
Montessori discovered a better way to build literacy, and it starts with *toddlers*:
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Good parenting is marketing and sales, not military drills and obedience.
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@emilynussbaum
Tribute by Tenacious D would be the ultimate song for this playlist, I think,
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@naomicfisher
It's so refreshing to hear someone thinking about this issue in the full context, positives and negatives, and not just a reactionary focus on the negatives.
Modern tech has great risks *and* incredible possibilities, we're doing children a disservice if we don't see both.
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In conventional schools, kids often wait until 3rd grade or later to learn to multiply and divide large numbers
Think operations like: 5432 x 23 or 785 / 14
But in Montessori schools, kids learn this at ~5yo or even earlier. How is this possible?
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The error is also more insidious than it might seem.
It reveals that math is being taught as if it's no different than a game of pretend.
It doesn't relate to reality at all, it's just symbols on a page, a region of abstractions in the mind alone.
This. is. *wrong*
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School has given 8yo a completely wrong way to *conceptualize* negative numbers.
And because of his intelligence, he *can't* just plug in the correct facts and be on his way.
His whole framework is rotten and needs to be tore down first.
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@8chabard
Some of my friends were complaining that Spanish had the subjunctive mood, so I excitedly explained that English had it too, e.g. when you say "If only I *were*..." and they flat out denied that formulation was a thing.
Subjunctive brings out hostility, man.
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We spend 18 years making kids be side characters in their own life.
> acted upon, not acting
> obedient, not thoughtful
> dependent, not capable
and then we wonder why they're apathetic, anxious, and unprepared when it's time to be on their own.
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How do you help a toddler think logically? Have self-control? Build self-esteem?
Let her juice an orange.
No, seriously, here's how it works:
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This error is harder to correct than it seems.
Just telling him that no, in reality, -4/2 is -2 and -4 x 2 is -8 doesn't work.
It *didn't* work.
Indeed, 8yo became very upset when we told him this, and refused to believe it, "because it broke the law of math"
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Take multiplication and division.
He now thinks that -4/2 is -8, and that -4 x 2 is -2.
Because *obviously* there's a whole other dimension of math—negative land—where everything is opposite.
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@rigginsslim
Had our puppy for just 1 month. His name: Churchill
But also:
Church
Prime Minister
Monster
Monkey
Mr. Man
Lil Yoda
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And the most heartbreaking feature is this:
It means the very best aspects of my 8yo, all of his virtues—his rationality, his intelligence, his independence—don't actually help him learn.
They're twisted and weaponized against him, designed to confuse him and make him fail.
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Ingraining the idea that you have to grit your teeth and *endure* working, learning, and living your own life
rather than getting to seize, enjoy, and profit from them.
What’s the biggest way the school system is failing our kids?
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How do you teach a 3-year-old to think?
By recognizing, like Montessori did, that thinking starts by looking outward—carefully observing details, noticing connections & similarities, distinguishing differences.
Photo from one of our campuses, located in Aldie, VA:
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Slapping and spanking kids are signs of failure. They mean you failed:
> to be the adult in the room
> at thinking creatively
> to model healthy communication or conflict resolution skills
> to have self-control
… all things you presumably want to teach your kid, but instead:
Slapping kids is fine, and people should do it more. People horrified by this are liberals with genes that are high on conformity and don’t understand that some people’s children need this.
Much respect to the Collinses for doing it in front of a journalist.
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Positive and negative numbers are *relational*
They tell you, not a quantity, but a specific relationship to a chosen starting point.
They *are* opposites, but not because they live in another dimension—they are opposite values with relation to a set standard.
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> Videogames are a scourge and an addiction; spare your children at all costs!
8yo, showing me a game: Look at this animation, it's so beautiful. Someone must have worked *so hard* and took *so long* to make it.
And the music! I love it! *closes eyes and does a happy dance*
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Punishment is the laziest and least effective way to "teach" a child to behave.
It takes zero thought or understanding to yell, shame, take things away, or otherwise impose suffering.
It achieves short-term compliance, while sacrificing long-term self-discipline:
I hate hate hate this formulation.
Punishment is a formative, pedagogical tool. Consequences instruct.
Part of "teaching" children to behave involves punishment when they do something wrong.
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Dating someone with kids and slowly taking on a step-parenting role has been *way easier* than I would've thought possible, but still incredibly emotionally challenging.
Here's what I mean:
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While there's no such thing as a negative quantity—
you can't have negative apples or negative days in a month—
negative numbers *do* signify real facts in reality.
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Your response to regulators and their agents should carry the same level of visceral disgust and hatred that you typically reserve for cannibals or sexual criminals.
No good person could stomach the job for very long.
Anyone who can is morally corrupt or blatantly evil.
People who don't know how regulatory bodies work talking about regulations
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Everyone else: Let kids be kids!
Montessori: in a child's life play is perhaps something inferior, to which he has recourse for want of something better, but there are loftier things which, in the child’s mind, seem to take precedence over useless amusements.
...
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In this case, 8yo learned that negative numbers work "the opposite" of positive numbers.
When you subtract, you get a "bigger" number, and when you add, you get a "smaller" number. -4 - 3 is -7 and -4 + 3 is -1 for example.
Seem innocent? It's not.
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@kittypurrzog
Knowles calling it more "natural" for women to be nurses is hilarious.
For the longest time women were *barred* from nursing because men thought the work was too difficult for them. Apparently, what's "natural" for women only goes back a hundred or so years.
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While it might help him complete a worksheet successfully or even do well on the state test, it is disastrous for his learning.
Case in point:
because 8yo is bright and eager, he started applying this "knowledge" to other math operations.
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Me at 19: majoring in Biblical Studies, planning on joining the Peace Corps, donating my kidney to a stranger. Erasing myself as an individual, miserable.
Me 10+ yrs later: atheist, writing as my passion, pursuing the best in all things. Fully an individual, happier than ever.
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> We need public schools for healthy socialization
Over 20% of students report being bullied at school.
Over 60% report feeling negative most of the time while at school.
Suicide rates among children and teens correspond dramatically to weekdays and the schoolyear.
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Researching private schools and the "choices" are all just different flavors of indoctrination, whether to be:
a) obedient and love America
b) a faithful religious servant
c) a gender-affirming sjw
d) an environmental activist
so freaking cursed.
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So imagine, instead, if they had shown my 8yo a number line.
Even better if that number line wasn't just printed on a page, but a material he could manipulate.
0 is at the center; + just means moving to the right and - means moving to the left.
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@naomicfisher
Well said.
It reminds me of a Montessori quote: "The heaviest chain, which may bind us in a humiliating form of slavery, is an incapacity to make our own decisions, and the consequent need to refer to others;
the fear of making "a mistake," the sense of groping in the dark,
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On a temperature scale, for example, we have a center point denoted as 0°.
Positive and negative temperatures tell you the linear distance from that center point.
-15° is the exact same distance from 0° as +15°
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But all the incentives in traditional ed push toward these kind of hacks.
a) a kid can "get" them really quickly
b) thus they can, in the short term, accurately answer questions on a test
c) kid gets A's so everyone's happy, no one complains
But it's all fake!
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What Montessori found was a new type of child, one who:
>prefers work to play
>finds joy in silence and tidiness
>voluntarily concentrates for long periods
She called this new child "normalized"—a normal as in *healthy*, but not yet normal as in common, child.
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Still can’t get over my middle and high school math teachers angrily saying I “just wasn’t trying”
Then 10 yrs later getting an engineering degree and my math prof’s telling me to get a math minor because they “need more math students like me”
I wasn’t the problem.
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But more than this, they are:
>polite and happy
>tidy and responsible
>self-disciplined and focused
All of it achieved without drills or rote learning, rewards and punishments, or being told what to do and when—all made possible by a radical, but true understanding of children
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But far more revolutionary, it's wrong because children are not dumb adults.
A child's ability at various ages does not look anything like a gradual increase of power across one clean trajectory.
A child's power is impressive *from birth* and completely distinct at each stage.
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Another example can be found in physics.
Given a set starting point taken to be location 0, other values are recorded as positive or negative to signify their *relationship* to that starting point.
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Why does “letting kids be kids” always mean:
- Secluding them from real life
- Distracting them with entertainment
- Imposing an adult's idea of “magic” and fun
Why can’t it mean inviting them to fully participate in and enjoy their own growth and development?
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A baby effortlessly absorbs a language,
an 8yo memorizes large swaths of knowledge with ease and joy,
a teen romanticizes their life, idealistically projecting a future and acting to achieve it.
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In a well-run Montessori environment, advanced learning & skills are not just for the brightest or most advantaged children.
They're *common*
Montessori's 1st students were some of the poorest and least advantaged children, and yet she saw these achievements time and again.
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And because, with a number line, this would all be explained in relation to reality and not with short-term "hacks", 8yo can actually *use* his intelligence.
He can actually integrate what he's learned with multiplication, division, or any other math facts.
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The learning isn't real. *at best* it's just a waste of time.
But at worst, it's like this—an actively destructive way to understand a concept.
A way that makes it *harder* to integrate knowledge, and *harder* to be independent and active-minded.
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For millennia, people have been observing children learn to walk, talk, and build an independent life for themselves.
Adults have always assumed that it was *their* work, *their* efforts, and *their* control that produced these changes in the child.
Not Maria Montessori.
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Then, number values are only opposites in relation to the center, but all the operations function intuitively and as expected.
e.g. the farther you get from the 0 at the center, the bigger your number becomes.
There is no opposite land, it's simply a reflection like a mirror.
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Most obviously, it's wrong because development is clearly not linear.
There are periods of dramatic change, plateau, and tranquil, steady growth.
A baby grows and gains skills rapidly, almost daily; an 8yo grows more calmly and gradually; a young teen grows rapidly yet again.
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8yo casually (and correctly) uses words like "emitting" "evading" and "malleable"
We read to him, his parents are well-read and our home is filled with books, but tbh I think the biggest contributor is videogames. They require a *ton* of reading to really engage and succeed.
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Unfortunately, we've decided not to homeschool.
feeling pretty devastated... finding it difficult to think straight or to do much of anything at all today:
How insane would it be for me to start homeschooling 10yo and 8yo while still working?
Maybe:
a work schedule of ~5 - 9
homeschool from ~9-12
and then work again from ~1-5
I'm been thinking about it, half determined as all hell, half scared out of my wits.
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There is nothing that a *healthy* child finds more motivating than to stretch his abilities to their limits.
To repeat new skills again and again until they're second nature.
To feel himself to be "master of his fate and captain of his soul"
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My most delulu not-a-parent-of-small-children-yet parenting take is I think I can set up our lives to completely avoid annoying children's music. No baby shark in this house.
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Parents of babies/toddlers: do you eventually learn how to function well and be emotionally stable with suboptimal sleep all the time?
I've had a puppy for a month and the disruption has been *very minor* compared to a baby, but I'm still really struggling. Kinda terrified now.
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This is how it can feel to learn anything btw.
After studying engineering, the most simple manufactured goods charm and delight me.
And with an added dose of reverence for all the work and thought that made it possible.
The more plants you can recognize, the more every hill, valley, and forest seems full of familiar little friends.
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200 years ago there may have been reasonable-sounding arguments to support a public system of education.
But we've implemented it. We have decades of evidence.
It's time to lift our heads out of the sand, move on and innovate something entirely new.
Our kids deserve it.
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But as logical as this may seem on the surface—after all, children do know less about the world than adults, and must earn all their knowledge from the ground up—
Montessori's observations of children led her to conclude it was wrong.
Not just a little bit, but WRONG wrong.
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> We need public schools so children understand our history and government.
For 30 years, >80% of children have lacked proficiency in U.S. History
Less than 50% of adults know we're a republic
Over 50% of adults confuse Karl Marx for George Washington, Thomas Paine, or Obama
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Over the course of this week, I'll look at each stage separately. We'll explore:
> the unique abilities and interests of each
> the kind of independence sought and what it means
> what this implies for the support to provide as parents and teachers
Follow to follow along
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> Public schools are run by the government, so *of course* they're a disaster.
True, a system of compelled collective control is immoral and correspondingly destructive.
But most alternatives suck too.
Freedom & school choice *will not save us*—not without better ideas.
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These feats are inaccessible to younger or older children—and to adults too.
An adult cannot just absorb a language like a baby or toddler.
And though it's possible for an adult to memorize facts like an 8yo, it's nowhere near as naturally easy or pervasively captivating.
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And most surprising of all: it was real work that attracted young children the most. Things like:
>cooking
>washing dishes
>cleaning up spills
>polishing silverware
The children only chose to play with toys when there was nothing better to do.
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I don't even necessarily blame the teacher.
Her education likely gave her no deeper an understanding.
I certainly wouldn't have recognized issues with any of this prior to getting an engineering degree.
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A teen has tremendous power, one that is inaccessible to much older adults:
to vividly see their life as it *could* be and *ought* to be,
and to instill in themselves the habitual courage—or succumb to hopelessness—to seek to achieve it.
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- Infants feed themselves
- Toddlers dress themselves and clean up spills independently
- 4yos read; 5yos do "3rd grade" math
- Elementary children do months-long projects independently, even planning their own field trips
- MS & HS students write books and start businesses
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Montessori defined 4 different planes of development, spanning birth through young adulthood.
In each, there is a particular focus—a kind of independence that the person is striving for,
marked by unique abilities, interests, and even a separate mental functioning.
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How can geography be accessible and fascinating for a 3yo? Make it:
a) sensory-rich — to feel various formations
b) cognitively rewarding — where finding exciting logical connections is a payoff for their focus
e.g. an isthmus and a strait simply have land & water inverted!
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ok, amending the goal to say we *can* have children's versions of amazing music in this house tho.
My most delulu not-a-parent-of-small-children-yet parenting take is I think I can set up our lives to completely avoid annoying children's music. No baby shark in this house.
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Montessori discovered that when children are given:
a) an intentionally designed environment and b) thoughtful guidance alongside significant freedom,
they would be naturally drawn toward perfecting all their abilities.
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1. Do Montessori children grow faster than those with typical supports?
The answer to this is an unequivocal YES.
Montessori children often make stunning achievements that are years ahead of their peers who have more conventional environments and support.
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What does it mean for a 3yo to know various shapes?
He's not ready for geometric proofs or lengthy definitions.
But, in Montessori, he's able to build a physical intuition for what makes each shape unique and then learn a name to match.
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Ok, I will never ever get enough of this German toddler saying “oh mein Gott!” 😍
Also notice the universal toddler obsession with order—with things working the way just how he expects. Red means stop, dad! Green means go!
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@MyBrainDrip
Disconnecting math from reality is not just a difference in explanation it's way worse than not omitting a visualization.
It's just plain wrong. And it's the reason why kids everywhere hate math and think it's utterly irrelevant to learn.
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But this ignores several crucial facts:
1. socialization at school is severely limited and regularly *punished*
2. the quality is bleak or actively harmful
3. children ages 6+ have far more sophisticated social needs than what conventional schools support
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> We need public schools to ensure a literate society
*Without* public schooling, colonial America had substantially higher literacy rates than we have today.
Today, ~70% of children are below proficiency in reading.
Today, 54% of adults can't read beyond a 6th grade level.
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@hollowearthterf
It also treats all infant/toddler care as equal which they so clearly aren’t.
It’s very common in the Montessori schools I work for that children don’t want to leave when parents come to pick up because they love it, and rush into their teacher’s arms each morning.
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Sometimes I feel so bad for my parents. In the past ten years, I've gone from:
- a radical Christian; donating my kidney bc God told me to
- to a stoic prepper libertarian; living on 20 acres in the wilderness
- to a pro-selfishness objectivist; working at my dream startup
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A toddler finds learning how to fold laundry captivating and enriching.
It's something that elevates his experience of life and redounds on his self-confidence.
An older child or teenager finds learning it mundane and unrewarding—even degrading.
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Your kid's education is not "just fine" because your education was "just fine"
Scores have been essentially stagnant since testing began in the late 60's.
There is no past golden age of education to retvrn to because our system has never been good.
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Think of yourself as a teen and young adult.
There is no other time in life where your sense of self, of your life and its meaning, and your power and *responsibility* are felt so keenly and so poignantly.
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Logistically, I don't think it's a nightmare.
You only really need a few intensive homeschooling hours a day, and we could do it 7 days a week if we wanted.
My most creative work time is 5-9 anyway, and breaking my day up into chunks is actually really helpful for my focus.
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Montessori doesn't rush development.
-It removes the barriers that typically hamper it
-It provides the developmental equivalent of a bullet train—a feat of engineering allowing children to learn more and go farther than they could using a more primitive technology.
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10yo gets homework from school. A bunch of pointless busywork.And she's really stressed about it.
She spends *all day* as an automaton, being told what to do and for how long.
She wants to come home and have space to do her own thing. Can you really blame her?
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Montessori concluded that all the "normal" traits of childhood were actually aberrations and coping mechanisms.
Whether the child was defiant, overly submissive, or apathetic and lethargic—their traits were the result of an inadequate environment and misunderstandings of adults.
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And what is true for learning to fold laundry is true for all knowledge.
There is a window in development—the best time—to learn.
A 3yo learns the alphabet and is enraptured.
A 6yo learns it while often needing rote drills and the threat of punishment to keep him on track.
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Traditional education forces older kids & teens to work alone; it forces younger kids to work in groups.
But this is *the exact opposite* of what kids need developmentally.
You need look at the world with your own eyes before you can share your vision with others.
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The foundation of reading is sounding out words.
This requires *more* than just memorizing the shape of letters on the page and connecting them to matching sounds.
It means recognizing that words are made up of sounds in the first place.
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