Google founders talk Montessori

Wall Street Journal featured in April 2011, an article on how several computer and IT pioneers attributed their creativity to their Montessori preschooling. It was written by Peter Sims, author of “Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries.”

Among them were Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Interviewed in 2004 by Barbara Walters, she asked the inventors if having parents who were college professors was a major factor behind their success. Instead, they credited their Montessori education. Larry Page said that he and Sergey Brin went to Montessori schools and it was part of that training of “being self-motivated, questioning what’s going on in the world, doing things a little bit differently,” that was a major factor behind their success.

Will Wright, inventor of the best selling THE SIMS videogame series lauded the method, “Montessori taught me the joy of discovery. It’s all about learning on your terms, rather than a teacher explaining stuff to you. SimCity comes right out of Montessori…”

The Montessori Mafia

Mr. Sims wrote, “Our future might be much brighter with a little less conditioning to perform well on tests and more encouragement to discover as they teach in Montessori schools. Ironically, the Montessori approach might be the surest route to joining the creative elite, which are so overrepresented by the school’s alumni that one might suspect a Montessori Mafia: Google’s founder Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, videogame pioneer Will Wright and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, not to mention Julia Child and rapper Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs. Is there something going on here? Is there something about the Montessori approach… that we can all learn from?”

How the Montessori approach nurtures creativity and inventiveness

What do Larry Page and Sergey Brin mean by the Montessori training of “being self-motivated, questioning what’s going on in the world, doing things a little bit differently”?

While conventional preschooling focuses on play, the Montessori system offers the “prepared environment” to satisfy the true inclination of small children to work. Open shelves of Practical Life (child size furniture for Personal Care, do-it-yourself dressing frames, broom and dust pan, mop, etc.), Sensorial Arts (3 boxes of colors gradated in difficulties, Knobbed and Knobless Cylinders with different dimensions, Geometric Cabinet to trace shapes, Touch Boards, Thermic and Taste Bottles, etc.).

What about Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia (the online free encyclopedia)? “As a child, Wales was a keen reader with an acute intellectual curiosity, influenced by Montessori’s method philosophy of education.”

The Montessori system emphasizes a collaborative environment of multi-aged grouping of three- to six-year-old children using long blocks of work period. The child “grades himself” as he works on each material that has several exercises gradated in difficulties, as well as control of error. For instance, Language Arts make use of Sandpaper Letters, Moveable Alphabet Box for word composition, Classified Nomenclature Picture Cards for Botany and Zoology, Reading Primers, Math Arts use rods, spindles and counters for 1 to 10 numeration, Decimal Golden beads for the child to learn that units, tens, hundreds can add up to thousand, and several Geometry materials including the Binomial and Trinomial Cubes. In Cultural Arts, the child gets a sensation of Geography with puzzle maps of the world and his continent before working with the map of his country. Parents collaborate in drawing up the Time Line of the family history.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’ mother observes…

Mrs. Bezos noted that as a preschooler, Jeff displayed an unmatched single-mindedness and a discovery mentality created in a Montessori environment.

 “Young Jeff would be so engrossed in his activities as a Montessori preschooler that his teachers would literally have to pick him up out of his chair to go to the next task.” Mr. Bezos himself said, “I’ve always felt that there’s a certain kind of important pioneering that goes on from an inventor like Thomas Edison, and that discovery mentality is precisely the environment that Montessori seeks to create.”

The principle of “free choice” of materials strengthens the power of decision otherwise weakened with the traditional dictating teacher. The threes and fours usually choose Practical Living work, and the Sensorial Arts apparata. As they turn five, they reach for the Language, Math, and Science apparata. The mixed-age grouping is like the natural grouping of a family, where the older children tend to look after the young ones, who in turn are inspired by their advanced work.

Studies on how Montessori education developed business executives and public school children

Peter Sims wrote: “The Montessori Mafia showed up in an extensive, six-year study about the way creative business executives think. Professors Jeffery Dyer of Brigham Young University and Hal Gregersen of globe-spanning business school INSEAD surveyed over 3,000 executives and interviewed 500 people who had either started innovative companies or invented new products.”

Mr. Gregersen noted: “A number of the innovative entrepreneurs also went to Montessori schools, where they learned to follow their curiosity. “To paraphrase the famous Apple ad campaign, innovators not only learned early on to think different, they act different (and even talk different).”

Peter Sims also mentioned how Neuroscience author Johan Lehner cited “a 2006 study published in Science that compared the educational achievement performance of low-income Milwaukee children who attended Montessori schools versus children who attended a variety of other preschools, as determined by a lottery.”

According to this study, “By the end of kindergarten, among five-year-olds, Montessori students proved to be significantly better prepared for elementary schools in reading and math skills than the non-Montessori children.” The researchers likewise observed, “They also tested better on ‘executive function,’ the ability to adapt to changing and more complex problems, an indicator of future schools and life success.”

Peter Sims further wrote: “Of course, Montessori methods go against the grain of traditional educational methods. We are given very little opportunity, for instance, to perform our own, original experiments, and there is also little or no margin for failure or mistakes. We are judged primarily on getting answers right. There is much less emphasis on developing our creative thinking abilities, our abilities to let our minds run imaginatively and to discover things on our own.”

The ‘Montessori Mafia’ provides lessons that traditional education should be transformed

Mr. Sims’ Wall Street Journal article stated that “highly creative achievers don’t begin with brilliant ideas, they discover them. Google, for instance, didn’t begin as a brilliant vision, but as a project to improve library searches, followed by a series of small discoveries that unlocked a revolutionary business model. Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn’t begin with an ingenious idea. But they certainly discovered one.”

“Similarly, Amazon’s culture breathes experimentation and discovery. Mr. Bezos often compares Amazon’s strategy of developing ideas in new markets to ‘planting seeds’ or ‘going down blind alleys.’ Amazon’s executives learn and uncover opportunities as they go. Many efforts turn out to be dead ends. Mr. Bezos has said, But every once in a while, you go down an alley and it opens up into this huge, broad avenue.”

“Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that Montessori alumni lead two of the world’s most innovative companies. Or perhaps the Montessori Mafia of can provide lessons for us all even though it’s too late for most of us to attend Montessori.”