[rcxdude]

I went to a Montessori school for a portion of my education (latter half of 'primary', more or less, I get muddled because I was also moving between different country's school systems), and I actually stayed a year later than normal along with 2 other kids. I enjoyed it, and there were two extremely good teachers there who were very good at giving me enthusiasm for STEM. I would say the system didn't exactly get me to push myself: the nature of the self-directed work meant I was rewarded for meeting targets I set myself, and so I tended to just set easy targets: I would pick the tests/exercises I already found easy and do stuff like a 50-digit long division because I could just churn through it, as opposed to focusing on areas I was not so good at (like writing). But still, it set me up in good stead for the rest of my education, though I found adjusting to the more strict approach of later stages a bit annoying.