[technothrasher]

I think it largely depends upon the child. I thrived in a Montessori environment right through sixth grade before transitioning to a standard “prep school” and found myself way ahead of the other kids in a lot of things.

  Alternately, my son was much the same as your kid.  He struggled in a Montessori school which was very similar to the one I went to (in fact, my lower elementary teacher was the learning specialist at his school while he was there).  He couldn’t handle the open structured style of the learning, and just floundered badly. We ended up getting him into a much more structured special ed school where he succeeded and is now off doing well at college.

[mcv]

It absolutely depends on the child. I phrased it too generally. I like the idea of Montessori a lot, but it depends a lot on executive skills: being able to plan, start project, finish projects, etc. My kids both sucked at that, and I'm not great at it either. My oldest son, despite his stellar IQ, completely drowned in projects. No idea what to do, when to start, how to start, how to finish it, and even when he finished it, he forgot to turn it in. He simply needs more guidance.

He's now finally getting better at it, at 16, which is about time, because at the university, you have to be able to do all of this. I sucked at it in university, so maybe it's actually good that he ran into these problems earlier than that, but for him to actually finish school, it was not a good fit.

[thaumasiotes]

> My oldest son, despite his stellar IQ, completely drowned in projects. No idea what to do, when to start, how to start, how to finish it, and even when he finished it, he forgot to turn it in. He simply needs more guidance.

> He's now finally getting better at it, at 16, which is about time, because at the university, you have to be able to do all of this.

You definitely don't.

[mcv]

Struggling with this is exactly why I never quite finished my degree. All the papers where I had to choose what to write about, without having an immediate topic I just had to write about, never even got started. Thesis is an even bigger project. Dropping out and not having to do it anymore felt like a relief.

[thaumasiotes]

At my university, a thesis was one option. You could substitute a middling GRE score.

American universities are pretty keen to graduate you if that's plausible at all. See also: remedial classes.

[em-bee]

you may be comparing different countries. not needing to be able to do all of this sounds like a very school like university. the universities i know are not like that, and you most certainly need those skills.