Montessori school

Linawati Sidarto's article Montessori students break away from rote learning (Nov. 26, 1997) provides some insights into the Montessori way of educating children. The article also highlights a school that is not only backed by business people from the upper echelons of society but, by dint of its tuition fees, caters for children from the same stratum.

Dr. Maria Montessori advocated an approach that confers the responsibility to choose on the child and a teaching technique that, through being tailored to the needs of each child and an emphasis on a prepared environment, facilitates learning through discovery. It is our conviction that Montessori methods (which in our case we combine with cooperative learning techniques) should be widely practiced, as they helped to enable children to grow into creative, innovative, independent thinking, self-motivated, socially adept and emotionally balanced adults.

If Indonesia is to survive in a word of fickle capital inflow and outflows, then it is essential that more is done with the children of this country than to merely pump them full of, what are presented as, incontestable facts. If the new cheap-labor markets of China and Vietnam and the growing economies of Latin America are not to attract most of the world's new speculative capital, then Indonesians must increase their productivity through a more enlightened approach to education. When the Russians first beat the Americans into space the latter (partly out of paranoia of course) turned to adopting Montessori methods in their schools. Now that Indonesia is in the grip of an economic crisis, perhaps it is time for the country to wake up to an education method that has quietly had a very beneficial influence on the education systems of a great many developed countries.

I should perhaps add a word of caution: Indonesia must not be deterred by a tendency of Montessori purists to orthodoxy of method. Such a tendency can create misunderstandings and an unnecessary mystique and become a barrier to the wider dissemination of, what is undoubtedly, an excellent education technique. As long ago as 1913 Edmund Holmes wrote, "to regard as final the system which Dr. Montessori has elaborated could indeed argue a radical misunderstanding of her and of it."

FRANK RICHARDSON

Principal

Bintaro Independent Personal School

Jakarta