Everything is labelled Montessori when it’s not

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why Is everything labelled as Mountessori
when it’s not. Eg house bed - mountessori

Montessori or Mountessori? And what is a mountessori house bed?

Montessori is just an approach/theory that encourages independence as much as possible in children. So a floor bed may described as a Montessori bed as a child is free to get up out of bed and back in bed themselves as opposed to a cot or where they would need an adult to do this for them. It’s not a brand so as long as the item follows the approach, it can be described this way.

It’s just keyword stuffing by dropshippers on Amazon, B&Q and other places that allow these ridiculous third party listings that have no safety checks. They will likely not even know what the word means.

I don’t know what a house bed is but a floor bed as opposed to a cot goes with the montessori ethos around independence. I don’t get why everything has to be wooden though. Montessori as a concept predates modern plastics so I don’t think its founder(s) were necessarily that against plastic so much as didn’t know it existed.

Maria Montessori died in 1952 - not 1852. I think she knew what plastic was!

She probably didn’t in the modern sense of plastic toys given that the Montessori method predates even the bakerlite telephone and modern plastics as we know them now didn’t appear until the post war period.

but we had toddler beds for ours before anyone invented the floor bed, neither of mine had a cot. I think people like to think that they invented these ideas

I work in education, and always see this word shoehorned into daycare names in order to sound impressive. I expect the number of facilities that actually employ this method of education is much smaller...

If it follows the montessori principle then sure great - but if not then i dont see any value in it. For example there are sites like montessoriclimber.com which sells a pikler triangle, montessoribed.com which sells a floor bed etc. If it follows the principle then OK but I agree if it does not have anything to do with the general principle of INDEPENDENCE then is it truely montessori?

Yes she actively wanted children to play with natural materials.

I agree OP. Montessori is such a pile of wank anyway, a thin, basic idea followed like some kind of religion. i guess that’s what happens when minor child education theories meet capitalism

it’s also pretty old hat, I would say it peaked in actual popularity 20 years ago

It’s just a word that appeals to middle class parents.

I’d say wannabe middle class parents 🤣 the kind of middle class who think you’re middle class if you have a degree and a mortgage

My eldest is 23, there were a couple of Montessori nurseries in the very posh town we lived in then.

”My Jacob is at the Montessori!”
”Have you looked at the Montessori?”
”we’ll be round at one o’clock, after I’ve picked him up from the Montessori”

Fuck me, I get flash backs at the word. It was like a personality trait.

Yeah, I guess. I just knew lots of very well off people when my eldest was a child would would buy anything if it has the word Montessori in front of it.

They would have probably bought their toddlers fags if the packet had Montessori written on it.

💯🤣 “we decided to give Jacob the choice whether or not to smoke. Benson and hedges are available at all times, but we trust him to do the right thing instinctively”

I swear to God, that’s what they would have said!

All those kids are 23 now and you’d be hard pushed to pick out the ones that fannied about with twigs and shit or the ones who hit each other with brightly coloured plastic toys in a church hall.

It’s all such a load of shit, really.

I trained as a Montessori teacher and think it is such a shame that is perceived as wanky middle class education. Maria Montessori was a doctor (very hard fought at that time) in Italy and she worked in an asylum in Rome for children with mental disorders. She experimented to see what helped young children develop and from that her methodology was born.

Many of her concepts are mainstream now. I can't imagine she would have much enthusiasm for the monetisation of her ideas by calling every wooden kids toy/bed/equipment "Montessori", but from everything I learnt about her indicated that she was a really practical, down to earth woman. I imagine she'd far rather kids had access to plastic learning materials, than none at all, even if her preference was for natural materials.