[JustAPerson]

Yes, I went to a Montessori school through 6th grade (now 25 years old). I have mixed feelings about the experience.

I agree that it did well to set my up academically. I ended up going to middle/high schools that were relatively average academically, so I was pretty strong in all subjects in comparison to my peers. Ultimately I went to a very prestigious college and now work in a wonderful finance job I love. However in the many years of therapy I’ve had as an adult, I continue to identify Montessori school as a foundational contributor to my social anxiety, and ultimately my ensuing clinical depression over a lack of social life which haunted most of my college years.

My Montessori school had about 15-25 kids / class year. Some of the larger years were split into two groups with separate teachers. Every year, maybe one or two kids left to go to other schools and one or two new kids joined, but for the most part I grew up with the same core set of children for seven years. I honestly believe this had a permanent negative effect on my ability to socialize and form new friendships that I am only barely beginning to correct over a decade later. Admittedly I did not participate in any extracurricular outside of Montessori school (particularly because it had its own after-school programs). So when I transitioned to a public school for middle/high school, it was a sharp culture shock and I definitely struggled to fit in.

I think Montessori schools are worthwhile academically, but you should be careful to keep your children in contact with other kids outside the Montessori bubble.

[simiones]

At least in my country (Romania), the norm in all public schools is to have the same set of ~30 children you'll go to school every day with from grade 0-1 (6-7 years old) to grade 8 (14 years old). Since there are very few to no electives, you'll spend ~all of your time in school with all of these kids every day for 8 years - and virtually everyone in the country has this experience (private schools are very rare).

Edit to add: the whole school would have significantly more people, typically around 5-10 30-pupil classes for each of the 8-9 years. So perhaps the difference is the total number of children in the same school - though typically interaction between different classes, even of the same year, was far less than within-class.

[rejectfinite]

Same here in Sweden. All school is like this. Not just Montessorri.

[morgelgluff]

It used to be the norm to mix up the groups every three years, when transitioning between low/mid/high school stadium.

I appreciated that change of social dynamics every time.

[wholien]

Same in China (Shanghai). Same 30 to 35 students in the same class would do 1st to 6th grade. Then you'd usually go to a different school for 7th to 9th grades, then take a test to get into a high school for 10th to 12th grades. All three would have the same class you'd stick with, usually with way more intra-class interaction than inter-class interaction.

Sports was usually one thing that was more inter-class, but that was it.

[bawolff]

Yeah, i went to public school in canada. It was all the same kids up to grade 8. Each year had basically 2 classes of about 27 kids each.

[Moissanite]

I had never heard of Montessori schools before this thread so I'm sure there is more going on than I'm aware of - but I wanted to point out that what you describe here:

> school had about 15-25 kids / class year. Some of the larger years were split into two groups with separate teachers. Every year, maybe one or two kids left to go to other schools and one or two new kids joined, but for the most part I grew up with the same core set of children for several years.

seems perfectly normal from a UK primary school perspective (up to age 11 or 12 depending on the area). I'm surprised to hear that kids younger than that age would be expected to have larger peer groups in the US.

[JustAPerson]

Huh, is that the maximum number of students of the same age? To be clear, the Montessori school I went to had a little over 100 students with all 6 class years combined.

For context, in the US many public middle/high schools are like two orders of magnitude larger per class year. Many schools have like 1000 kids / class year.

[Moissanite]

It would be fairly typical for a UK primary school (up to age 11) to have up to 30 kids per class, but only 1 class per year - so ~210 kids total. Some schools have 2 classes per year, so double that for 400-500 in the whole school - but that many is rare in my experience.

Secondary school (11-16) is more commonly around 30 per class, 7-12 classes per year, 5 year groups in the school - so 1000-1500 kids. 16-18 can either be at the school (which would then be a smaller cohort than the 15-16 year group due to some people going elsewhere), or an external college which is highly variable in size.

[WastingMyTime89]

In France, a typical primary school will have between 100 and 200 kids total maybe 250 in Paris but that would be a large one. A middle school will be between 400 and 800 students and a high school around 1000.

1000 kids / class year is unheard of. That seems huge to me to the point I can’t understand how it would work. I knew mostly everyone in my class year up to high school and even then I probably knew more than half. Might explain why the social scene is far less brutal here than in the US.

[matthewowen]

The 38th biggest high school in the US is Cypress Bay, with 3980 students (presumably over four years).

1000 kids / class year is quite unusual!

https://highschoolguide.org/624/top-100-largest-high-schools...

[agent008t]

It is also the norm in parts of Eastern Europe - having the same 20-30 class year between the ages of 6-7 and 16-17.

Could it be that the social life at the 'prestigious college' was just rubbish, e.g. geared towards extraverted mba-types with 'default' social activities being clubbing and drinking?

[wccrawford]

I went to school in a rural area of the US and we also had about 20 kids in most classes. It started to get a little more crowded towards high school as there seemed to be a lot of people moving to the area and it didn't seem to be expected. But everyone was worried there were too many kids in class when there were 30 at that point.

So I think this varies quite a lot across the US. I tend to feel that large cities have more crowded classes than rural areas, but I have no data for that.

[WastingMyTime89]

> Every year, maybe one or two kids left to go to other schools and one or two new kids joined, but for the most part I grew up with the same core set of children for seven years. I honestly believe this had a permanent negative effect on my ability to socialize and form new friendships that I am only barely beginning to correct over a decade later.

While I believe your experience to be entirely legitimate, what you are describing is the norm throughout most of Europe and I can assure you that most of us are socially adjusted (or at least somewhat socially adjusted).

[rejectfinite]

>, but for the most part I grew up with the same core set of children for seven years

uuh this is how regular school is in Sweden...

You have a class of people in grade 1-6, then grade 7-9 is a new school, then high school is a new school.

But I guess we all have anxiety so ur right xD

[foobarian]

We have a Montessori nearby we considered, but ultimately decided it was too risky due to the small class size - if we went in blind and ended up with a bunch of kids ours didn't get along with it would be painful to roll back.

The local public school seems to be fine (this is elementary/middle grades). Thinking about going from there to a more elite private high school though, biggest downside being that it will require a bit of a commute.

I wish you could load this all up into a world simulator and see which option worked out best 10 years into the future :-)

[em-bee]

i am very confused by the reasoning for your choice. i believe the smaller the class size, the less likely there are going to be any problems. for one, the teacher will have more time for each child and be able to notice and deal with conflicts, and also your child will spend more time with the same kids, and so they will have more opportunity to get along.

but most of all, i do not believe that children can not learn to get along over time. so any issue with kids not getting along is going to be temporary.

[foobarian]

It was mostly a numbers thing. If probability of any given kid being a good match is p, I wanted a good chance of getting 3-4 good matches i.e. wanted (1-p)^(N-4) to be small, while not losing too much quality due to overpopulated class. I thought a cohort of 20 in the class year was too small. We've also had a cautionary experience with an earlier grade where too many classmates were aggressive little shits who were no fun to deal with (though with enough good eggs to counterbalance).

[em-bee]

ok, i do agree that prior bad experience does shape ones expectations, and i could not say that i would not allow my self to be influenced by such an experience. that said, from an outside perspective, i don't think the odds are stacked like that. from my personal experience, a large class size doesn't make it more likely for any one child to make friends. on the contrary. in my class of 25-30 kids i had no friends at all. i believe that a smaller class of say 15 kids would have increased the opportunities to make friends because there would be less opportunities for others to exclude me from their activities.

even if your child makes friends easily, large classes allow the class to split into multiple subgroups, cliques that stick together. the smaller the class, the less likely this should happen. at least that is what my intuition suggests. i would put the limit for that to 10-15 kids though. any more than that is an invitation to form subgroups.

but we also must not forget the montessori aspect here, which has a strong influence on the group dynamics and individual childrens behavior.

for one, i believe that the montessori approach is driving and motivating children in a way that they simply don't show as much negative behavior as they would exhibit in a traditional class.