Extract from a talk by :
David Kahn: American Montessori Educator and expert on Montessori Adolescent Education
Children grow into adolescence in very individual ways. What is unique about Montessori adolescents is that they have a school whose mission is to accommodate their individuality and the changing needs of a new stage of life.
Though there has been a proliferation of Montessori secondary programmes in North America, these have been experimental, with no governing standard or consensus of design.
He quotes Montessori, in an essay on Erdkinder;
“It is impossible to fix a priori a detailed programme for study and work. We can only give a general plan. A programme can only be drawn up under the guidance of experience.”
Montessori argued for the need to provide adolescents with work and study which exceeded the usual definition of schoolwork. Work and study, she believed, should be bound up with the larger functions of society. It should include the integration of the intellect and the physical, indoor and outdoor activities, and vocational opportunities in the workplace. Hence her concept of Erdkinder, a farm on which adolescents could work at real work, real economic maintenance and real collective enterprise.
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