Montessori school

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.

Bintaro Independent Personal School, on the other hand, while
employing Montessori methods in most of its vertically integrated
classes, attempts to achieve similar objectives in its
kindergarten and elementary school to PSKD, but the relative
modesty of what are, nevertheless, fairly well-appointed premises
is reflected in our tuition fees. Furthermore, true to the spirit
of Maria Montessori we are, by gradual progression, attempting to
make her excellent methods available to the not so well-heeled
through, for instance, full and partial scholarships. In
addition, while many of our teachers are professional expatriates
and our average class size is just twelve, we are able to make
substantial savings by making, or having made locally, the simple
but ingenious Montessori materials that would otherwise need to
be imported at great expense.

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