I feel as though this could be the definitive text for those new to Montessori and want to learn more about it. I worked in a Montessori (Nido-Elementary) school for seven years, and I learned tons from this in addition to all the amazing things I observed in the classrooms. It’s easy to digest as well as accessible and has great examples along with backing studies for basis; I think it’s a great resource. ( )

This book has fascinating insights into child development and teaching styles. The author really seems to give a thorough review of the methods of teaching used in Dr. Montessori’s curriculum and then adds a friendly critique, including the ideas behind the instructional process. This edition contains 50 pages of end matter that includes a comprehensive bibliography, a name index, and a subject index.

I would recommend this book, because it gives the motivations behind the methods (or seems to, for the little I currently know about Montessori schooling). The author’s conversational but orderly style and heavy (but not distracting) end notes make this a pleasant read for someone new to the method. As mentioned above, the book has great resources, including links current at the time of this reading (2020) to primary and related websites.

The Montessori method of teaching, what can I say about it? Well, as it turns out, not that much before reading this book. I had heard of Montessori and her method, but for some reason, I likened it to hucksterism and balderdash. Looking through this book though, I can agree with the more salient points made by Dr. Maria Montessori.

This book argues that schools of the modern era have two fatal errors woven into the very fabric of their foundations. The first error is the concept of school as an efficient factory with administrators as managers and children as raw materials. The second major error is the idea of the child as a Blank Slate, a mold, so to speak, that one pours knowledge into. Now I don’t know if Dr. Montessori expressed these ideas in a concrete form such as writing or if it was implied by her methods. The book mentions them nonetheless. The first error is understandable since modern schooling started at around the turn of the 20th century with the rise of the factory. You wanted to create workers for factories in a factory setting. With Behaviorism in vogue at the time, the idea was that all you had to do was utilize a carrot and stick method and children could learn anything at all. Just give them praise at the correct answers and derision and mockery at incorrect answers. Perhaps you could prompt them to learn their multiplication tables by threatening to hold them back. I dunno. Recently, our school systems have been churning out factory workers but modern economics has been closing the factories down. The system is outdated. As for the Blank Slate idea, modern psychology has made that theory obsolete as well.

I can agree with a great deal of what is said in this book. When I used to be in school, I was usually bored when I got to the upper grades. A dream school is one that cultivates a lifelong love of learning in all children regardless of background. It shouldn’t matter what race you are, or how affluent your parents are. The sad state of modern society is that these are the limiting factors of what happens in school. Teachers have enough on their hands trying to make lesson plans fit into a 50-minute block of time. A great deal of school reform focuses on the smaller problems and tries to apply a band-aid to what is essentially a person bleeding out from an artery.

The main ideas of Montessori’s Method are put forth in nine principles and they are all discussed in this book. So if you are like me and never really had any grounding in the Montessori method this book is really informative and well done. Since it is the third edition that I have read, it means that a lot of the developments since the first edition were included as well. As a scholarly work, it does an outstanding job with tons of references to studies and other works.

So this book was really interesting to me. It takes Montessori’s teachings and methods and exposes them to scientific scrutiny. It demonstrates that Dr. Montessori was a Genius before her time. ( )

Most of the schools for most of the kids are boring or to put it in another way, they are the killers of innovation. Even the most curious kid with an insatiable desire and a healthy dose of intellectual energy knows what it feels like after 5-10 years of schooling, some even remember vivid accounts of how their energy was sucked out of their souls. It is a cliché to say that education is very important but then what kind of radical reforms we witnessed during the last 100 years?

I don't have any particular expertise in the field of education, pedagogy or child development, but I spent a lot of time studying cognitive science, was involved in psychology research, and practically taught kids how to program (heck, I even read Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas from Papert long time ago!). I'm not a foreigner to Piaget and read from books from and on Vygotsky. But I heard about Montessori only about a few months ago (well, to be fair I must admit that Papert's book mentions Montessori, only in one page, in a single sentence and negatively). If Montessori method of education was something very new, or just a few years old, or even one or two decades old, I would not consider my situation very odd. Or if the method of Montessori was put to use only in a few schools in a few distant countries I would forgive myself for my ignorance. But to my surprise I learned that Montessori method is about 100 years old and put to test daily in many countries including many European ones as well as USA (some of the most famous names in my field turned out to be educated in Montessori schools: Larry Page and Sergei Brin (founders of Google), Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon.com), Will Wright (the inventor of "The Sims"); read "The Montessori Mafia" from The Wall Street Journal for more information).

I'm so much thankful to Dr. Lillard for presenting a highly readable yet scientific, evidence-based account of this wonderful method of education. I'm yet to witness a Montessori school in practice and I did not send my child to such a school, so maybe I should keep the skeptic inside me very alive. But if half of what Lillard describes is true then I'd say it'll be very difficult for me to choose any other type of education for our child. "Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius" answers almost all of the questions that a parent or a researcher can ask. And whenever there is a concrete answer you are provided with relevant results from scientific literature. If your question is still open to discussion, if there is no conclusive evidence then Lillard does not hesitate to state this, too. She also stresses a few points from Montessori methods which are almost proved by scientific research (but these points are very few, Lillard shows that a very big part of Montessori method is supported by evidence).

There are other books explaining or advocating Montessori method but I believe no book yet surpassed this book in terms of scientific rigor. Thanks to the comprehensive overview by Lillard, I can clearly see the problematic points of mainstream educational methods and how negatively they affect children. I can also easily see how Montessori method solves a lot of those problems without introducing them to begin with. Many times I found my self marking pages from the book, smiling to myself and thinking "yes, that's the way it should be!".

If you think your child, or any child is something more than an empty vessel waiting to be filled by "knowledge" by a teacher, if you ever said to yourself "if only they let me be engaged with whatever I was interested in so that I could learn much more and have fun", if you think that a human being's destiny is probably something more than trying to fit into stereotypes and find herself of a fine 9-to-5 job, if you ever thought that accomplishing something beautiful, overcoming a real challenge was a feat in itself and you did not any extrinsic motivation for it, your inner drive was the source of greatest pleasure... Well, then you owe yourself to read this book. This book may not change your life, or maybe you'll never have the option of sending your child to a Montessori school for this or that reason. But one thing for sure, this book will completely change the way you look at and think about educating children and preparing them for life. And every minute of it will be well spent. ( )