Montessori Education: Are Some Children "Too Imaginative" for the Montessori System?

Some parents who are considering or have their children in a Montessori educational program have sometimes been concerned from reading reports or studies that some very social children who have vivid or strong imaginations don't thrive in a Montessori school.

It is possible for one to find a lot of stories describing very stringent rules concerning the sharing of the materials or the rules on talking in a Montessori classroom. Perhaps, for instance, a more imaginative child might want to construct an elaborate science fiction creation from the Pink Tower which some Montessori educators would not find to be such a good or classroom-conducive idea.

This leads some to the conclusion that Montessori education just isn't for every child.

However, Montessori educators and parents with a lot of Montessori educational experience stress that these ideas are distortions, and sometimes even abuses, of the Montessori approach.

Montessori is, in fact, primarily a social environment wherein children help and learn from each other. Children would, thus, not be given "stringent rules" about either sharing or talking by any qualified Montessori educator, since the main purpose of the entire educational experience would be missed.

Likewise, imagination is a strong and important aspect of the Montessori classroom environment.

Montessori educators, however, are not there to permit or encourage children to go off into "fantasy worlds", which they view as being produced by the adult world being imposed on the children.

This discipline does extend somewhat to the Montessori materials, which have been conceived of and designed to be scientific apparatus with particular uses in mind.

In the Pink Tower for-instance mentioned above, this is not a piece of Montessori equipment that's appropriate for making elaborate science fiction or futuristic inventions.

However, the Pink Tower is indeed meant to be used the Pink Tower in an imaginative way that corresponds with its intended types of purposes. In addition, there are other Montessori materials that are more appropriate for exploring the aforementioned kinds of imaginative ideas, such as the building block materials.

Montessori leaders insist that most children can, indeed, thrive within the Montessori setting. They place the blame for seeming failures in the system either on schools that use the Montessori name without truly being qualified or trained in Montessori educational techniques, or on the unrealistic expectations of and subsequent interference by parents.

In Chapter 23 of her book The Secret of Childhood, the chapter titled "Deviations", Maria Montessori wrote, "Teachers discover that highly imaginative children are not the best in their studies as might be expected. Instead they achieve little or nothing at all. Despite this fact no one suspects that the minds of these children have been diverted. Rather, it is thought that great creative intellects cannot apply themselves to practical matters. And yet the fact that a diverted child cannot control his thoughts or develop his mental powers as he should is an obvious indication that such a child is less intelligent."

However, parents who have concerns will likely want to gather a number of opinions--and after that, place the most reliance on their own judgment of their children's intellectual and creative capacities--before deciding on whether or not Maria Montessori was right.