What is a good school?
We all want the very best education possible for our children. But how do we know what the best is? What should we look for? How can we, as parents, judge professionals who have been educated to know what is the best education possible? How can we trust when we see and hear about so many negative aspects to school?

It is certainly important that parents become involved in their children's education, and that they know just what is happening in school. The fact that you are reading this article is a good indication that you are a responsible and caring parent, and your children will no doubt benefit from your interest.

Often, as parents, we mimic the parenting skills of our parents, until we discover a better way. Then changes usually come slowly but surely, and gradually each generation improves on the past. In education too, we tend to naturally assume that our education should be our children's experience, until we discover a way that works better. Again, change is slow, because it is always easier to fall back on what you know and do through habit. Also, we sometimes romanticize our school experiences, fondly remembering elements that we'd like to see our children experience, even though they may not be in their best interests. Spelling Bees could be an example - or happy face stamps!

Light Dawns with Maria Montessori
However, many dedicated teachers, researchers and humanitarians spend their lives searching for a better way to educate children. One of the most radical educators was Maria Montessori. While psychologists and philosophers were producing new theories on how best to teach children, systems that tried to find the most efficient ways to impart information, she was the first known to find a system that started with the child - that observed children with deep respect and discovered needs and characteristics different for different ages and common to children all over the world. She then structured a system to meet those needs - to start from the child's natural love of learning and provide materials and lessons that compel him to manipulate, investigate, imagine and discover.

"...the nurturing of caring, giving individuals with the confidence to be influences for good in the world has to balance the acquiring of academics." - Maria Montessori.

She discovered in this way

The world needs original thinkers, citizens with good self-concepts, respectful to others, regardless of differences, confident in pursuing worthwhile goals, with high moral standards and useful skills and energy.

Most of us grew up believing intelligence was the key to success. The brilliant student was the most respected and rewarded. We absolutely agree that intelligence is very necessary to society, and academic achievement is very much valued at Roots and Wings. But society’s future depends on its being balanced with emotional and social success as well, and in recognizing the gifts of those whose greatest strengths may not be reading or math. Education must, from the very start, consider the whole child and be dedicated to the highest level of achievement in every area.

Evolution of Education
Modern educators are well aware of this need and are trying hard to make necessary changes.  In order to respect children, it is necessary to grant freedom, so efficient controls such as corporal punishment, streamlining, failing grades and so on needed to be stopped. In an archaic system, based on the factory model of efficient, teacher-oriented learning, without these former tools, control becomes very difficult and a teacher's job is infinitely harder than it was. Dismayed at the resulting disorder, many parents then push for a return to education as they knew it - "traditional schools". But "back to basics" also usually means back to a system made easier for the teachers, not better suited to the needs of the child - back to the problems that educators have been trying so hard to solve - children following someone else's interests and feeling either inferior or superior, according to test scores. We don't need to go backwards but forwards to a renewed respect for the special qualities each child brings with him or her on the first day of school - and for the wonders that unfold every day at every level, when the child is given the freedom to be original and expressive, to discover and investigate, to experiment and master at one's own speed.

We don't need to go backwards but forwards to a renewed respect
for the special qualities each child brings.

Today's World
We are living in a world that is very different from the one in which we grew up. Fear curtails children’s freedom to play and explore and shuts them off from exploration of the natural world that is more and more being recognized as vital to the development of healthy minds and bodies and to the respect for the natural world necessary for its protection. Montessori began teaching with exploration of the natural world, building a basis of knowledge that was highly appealing to all children, which could then be analyzed, labeled and studied, and upon which almost all learning could then be built.

The Roots of Roots & Wings
These are the premises on which Roots & Wings Montessori Place is founded. As a community of parents, teachers and students, we work consistently to see and help the children see their relationship to the world as a whole, to discover their innate goodness and abilities, and use them to bless our society.