When making the move to Orange County, we were excited as years of planning had come to fruition and the long-awaited beginning of our eldest son's formal education at what we consider the best school in existence, Van Damme Academy, was finally upon us. There was just one small matter to attend to: a preschool for our little girl needed to be selected. After speaking to over a dozen Montessori schools in the area, we had settled on Monarch Bay Montessori Academy. A Montessori training facility headed up by women who apparently valued the Montessori philosophy as much as I do was worth the higher tuition and a commute.
As the school year started, we could not have been more pleased with Van Damme. Lily's environment, however, served to dampen the joy. She was placed in a classroom with an inexperienced teacher who was off to a rough start. Still, after a series of talks with the administration and the teacher, I found I was able to influence the situation and the initially inappropriate behavior by the teacher was rectified. I was frankly astonished at the change and relaxed. Now that the school year is drawing to a close, I am revisiting my doubts.
Though Lily seems relatively happy and likes her teachers, she is in anything but a proper Montessori environment. The classroom is noisy. The kids are frequently misusing the materials. Presentations are not what I have come to expect from Montessori. The teachers are over-involved with the students and the whole thing is kind of sloppy. Still, this is not the primary factor making me depressed.
Why is it that preschools have taken it upon themselves to preach political agenda? It commonly takes form of extreme environmentalism and multi-cultural ideas. Leaving aside my own philosophical and political views, which do not mesh well with the content, I am distressed by the notion that a school ostensibly dedicated to teaching children to interact with the world, physical materials and engaging their senses, takes on the teaching of such controversial points to three-year-olds? It is developmentally inappropriate as ideas reach far beyond the preschooler's capacity to reason. Thus it is nothing more than propaganda and is contrary to the Montessori spirit of providing children with experiences and information they can easily grasp and advancing at the child's developmental pace.
There is nothing particularly wrong with teaching children to take care of nature. Many schools have gardens and classroom pets that kids learn to care for with love. Similarly, it is entirely appropriate to teach kids about polite manners and friendly demeanor toward others regardless of their color, creed or beliefs.
Yet when my three-year-old comes home and talks about trees "breathing all the air on earth", so we need to protect them, I note how impossible it is for her to grasp the ideas that go into that statement: photosynthesis involved in "breathing the air" or the "protection" measures involved with the trees, let alone the reasoning necessary to weigh the factors involved in choosing to "protect" them.
The multiculturalism ideas similarly involve all kinds of bad thinking. The notion of respecting anyone's beliefs is preposterous: some beliefs are evil and should not be condoned! No respect is due to villanos philosophies of the Communist Russia, Nazi Germany, cannibalist tribes of Africa or terrorist cultures of Palestine. I do not, however, presume to teach any of this to my own young children as they are simply unprepared to make such judgements - so why does their preschool feel the necessity to do so?
Monarch Bay is not the exception. They, thankfully, are not engaged in the multicultural preachings - of the two I find those more harmful, but are so over the top on environmentalism that I wonder when the children have the time to work on the proper Montessori materials at all as such a large portion of materials is dedicated to these age-inappropriate ideas! Peninsula Montessori, where my children began their education leaned heavily on the multiculturalism ideas and spent half the year preparing for, and immersed in the international festival, an event that attempted to ingrain the utmost respect to the backward, mystical and often dangerous ideas of other parts of the world.
Tomorrow, Lily is going on a field trip to clean up the beach. A delightful hike to the beauty of the Pacific Ocean with the time there taken up by sorting through trash instead of admiring the beauty of the planet we live on, nor the mysterious forces and amazing wonders of the ocean. My husband advocated keeping her home. My response (and the source of my present distress): "I don't expect that day to be any different from any others. Instead of learning about "protecting" endangered species, she will be picking up candy wrappers. I don't wish to deprive her of an opportunity to spend time at the beach for the sake of avoiding just one in the long series of unnecessary and inappropriate lessons!" "I didn't realize it was that bad," said Jeff, "Perhaps we should look at moving her."
Moving her where??? How are we to find a school in southern California, Orange County of all places, which does not feel that raising "responsible citizens"is its primary duty? I too grew up in an environment that busied itself with raising responsible citizens: Soviet Russia. Perhaps for me, this hits a bit close to home...
I realize that these ideas will fail to take hold and after a few months at Van Damme, Alex has corrected his views and brings home information about real science, spelling and art. Notably, they are not weighed down by any philosophical ideas inappropriate for his age. The word rational, for instance, is not yet in his vocabulary. For now, he is actually learning about the way the world works - a subject that is plenty big to fill a five-year-old's calendar... Still, the wasteful arrogance of the culture, in which we are forced to raise our children brings me pain.
Why, oh why, isn't Lisa VanDamme willing to open a preschool? Oh, right... because the number and perversity of government regulations would make her job so miserable that training young minds might not work out to be worth all the pain. Can't say I blame her. How sad!
As the school year started, we could not have been more pleased with Van Damme. Lily's environment, however, served to dampen the joy. She was placed in a classroom with an inexperienced teacher who was off to a rough start. Still, after a series of talks with the administration and the teacher, I found I was able to influence the situation and the initially inappropriate behavior by the teacher was rectified. I was frankly astonished at the change and relaxed. Now that the school year is drawing to a close, I am revisiting my doubts.
Though Lily seems relatively happy and likes her teachers, she is in anything but a proper Montessori environment. The classroom is noisy. The kids are frequently misusing the materials. Presentations are not what I have come to expect from Montessori. The teachers are over-involved with the students and the whole thing is kind of sloppy. Still, this is not the primary factor making me depressed.
Why is it that preschools have taken it upon themselves to preach political agenda? It commonly takes form of extreme environmentalism and multi-cultural ideas. Leaving aside my own philosophical and political views, which do not mesh well with the content, I am distressed by the notion that a school ostensibly dedicated to teaching children to interact with the world, physical materials and engaging their senses, takes on the teaching of such controversial points to three-year-olds? It is developmentally inappropriate as ideas reach far beyond the preschooler's capacity to reason. Thus it is nothing more than propaganda and is contrary to the Montessori spirit of providing children with experiences and information they can easily grasp and advancing at the child's developmental pace.
There is nothing particularly wrong with teaching children to take care of nature. Many schools have gardens and classroom pets that kids learn to care for with love. Similarly, it is entirely appropriate to teach kids about polite manners and friendly demeanor toward others regardless of their color, creed or beliefs.
Yet when my three-year-old comes home and talks about trees "breathing all the air on earth", so we need to protect them, I note how impossible it is for her to grasp the ideas that go into that statement: photosynthesis involved in "breathing the air" or the "protection" measures involved with the trees, let alone the reasoning necessary to weigh the factors involved in choosing to "protect" them.
The multiculturalism ideas similarly involve all kinds of bad thinking. The notion of respecting anyone's beliefs is preposterous: some beliefs are evil and should not be condoned! No respect is due to villanos philosophies of the Communist Russia, Nazi Germany, cannibalist tribes of Africa or terrorist cultures of Palestine. I do not, however, presume to teach any of this to my own young children as they are simply unprepared to make such judgements - so why does their preschool feel the necessity to do so?
Monarch Bay is not the exception. They, thankfully, are not engaged in the multicultural preachings - of the two I find those more harmful, but are so over the top on environmentalism that I wonder when the children have the time to work on the proper Montessori materials at all as such a large portion of materials is dedicated to these age-inappropriate ideas! Peninsula Montessori, where my children began their education leaned heavily on the multiculturalism ideas and spent half the year preparing for, and immersed in the international festival, an event that attempted to ingrain the utmost respect to the backward, mystical and often dangerous ideas of other parts of the world.
Tomorrow, Lily is going on a field trip to clean up the beach. A delightful hike to the beauty of the Pacific Ocean with the time there taken up by sorting through trash instead of admiring the beauty of the planet we live on, nor the mysterious forces and amazing wonders of the ocean. My husband advocated keeping her home. My response (and the source of my present distress): "I don't expect that day to be any different from any others. Instead of learning about "protecting" endangered species, she will be picking up candy wrappers. I don't wish to deprive her of an opportunity to spend time at the beach for the sake of avoiding just one in the long series of unnecessary and inappropriate lessons!" "I didn't realize it was that bad," said Jeff, "Perhaps we should look at moving her."
Moving her where??? How are we to find a school in southern California, Orange County of all places, which does not feel that raising "responsible citizens"is its primary duty? I too grew up in an environment that busied itself with raising responsible citizens: Soviet Russia. Perhaps for me, this hits a bit close to home...
I realize that these ideas will fail to take hold and after a few months at Van Damme, Alex has corrected his views and brings home information about real science, spelling and art. Notably, they are not weighed down by any philosophical ideas inappropriate for his age. The word rational, for instance, is not yet in his vocabulary. For now, he is actually learning about the way the world works - a subject that is plenty big to fill a five-year-old's calendar... Still, the wasteful arrogance of the culture, in which we are forced to raise our children brings me pain.
Why, oh why, isn't Lisa VanDamme willing to open a preschool? Oh, right... because the number and perversity of government regulations would make her job so miserable that training young minds might not work out to be worth all the pain. Can't say I blame her. How sad!
