Are alternative schooling options an example of stage green in excess

[exhale]

As young parents, we are often thinking about the future education options for our children.  

There are many types of alternate school options to the classic, bureaucratic, factory-style schools (unschooling, democratic schooling, green schooling, Montessori, etc.), and I recognized that it is absolutely unfair to generalize.  Nevertheless, we have been considering an alternative-style of education in the spirit of fostering passion in learning, group and leadership work, sustainability awareness, etc.  Although we see many pro's, we are concerned with the possible consequences of this type of learning, in that it may have negative consequences.  Particularly, how it may impact their ability to cross-over into a traditional school in junior/high school, or college/university.  It may be very difficult for a child to make a large jump from self-directed learning into a traditional lecture-based education system at that time, and may limit their career opportunities.  

While listening to Leo's podcast about stage green, I found myself wondering if this alternative-style schooling is an example of "excess of green", a.k.a. an over correction.  

Though, I think that it is possible to have a hybrid system that both fosters self-directed learning and didactic lectures that could encourage personal growth, but also provide the child with the skills/experience to work within the system that is; I just don't know if that exists.  

Thanks, 

Love to hear any opinions/insight.  
 

 

[Leo Gura]

If I recall correctly the Google cofounders went to a Montessori school.

Montessori schools are great if you can afford them.

[Revolutionary Think]

Jeff Bezos went to a Montessori school too. So it's a mix of stage orange and green, sometimes even blue. I think it has more to do with the democratic style than it has to do with stages but, that's just me. 

[Dovahkiin]

@exhale I went to a Montessori school kindergarten through 4th grade. Transitioning wasn’t too bad, and depending on your area Montessori could be better than the alternatives.

 

That said, it has some serious downsides to consider. It encourages lopsided development of skills. For instance, being very quantitative, I put loads more self-directed time into math, at the expense of things like reading, and ended up lagging significantly in reading.

 

The self-directed learning thing, at least in my classes, also didn’t work in practice like it was supposed to in theory. Kids gravitated toward whatever was easiest (for example, the most sought-after part of the classroom was the fish tank, because we could allocate time in our learning to simply observing the fish tank), and often exploited lack of oversight to do what was emotionally easy, aka not learn.

 

I’m just one kid from one Montessori school and you should get more data, but these are things to consider. I’m sure many public schools do a lot worse. 

[Rebec]

I am a Montessori teacher in Europe. I have worked in the public schoolsystem and then I tranfered to a public Montessori school. Althought I really think it's a better way of scholing kids, I also see the downsides. 

A school is a school. And it needs to compete with others schools in the region and comply to government rules and regulations. This causes some conflict with the Montessori way of teaching, like mandantory (pre)schooltests and the rules that we need to fill up the classes till 34 kids (this is a lot!). So I have limited time to invest into the individual kids. I regonize what @Dovahkiin said about self directed learning. Our school has rules that kids needs to participate in mandantory skills and need to change subjects frequently (although I think this varies from school to school).

Transsition is not to hard. We have also Montessori highschools. Most kids adapt pretty easy because they have learned to take responsibility for their own learning process and will continue to do this when they transitioning.

I am aware that there is a differents between the public school system (we don't have private schools in my country) in Europe and private and public schools in the USA. So please do your research when applying for a school.