Oh great, I prayed for the money to send my middle daughter to the new Montessori school that had just opened up here. My ex got a raise, and she went, became a teacher.
I liked her philosophy about children educating themselves and thought it was a good idea. Also liked their nice wooden toys, got my kids a map puzzle with little knobs for each state.
Later I've come to think of it as a snob thing. Except for one daughter (counsellor recommended Quaker school), I'd take her to school and out the other door she'd go, couldn't keep her in school. Got her GED the first try. Driving her there, I asked her how to calculate the circumference and area of a circle. She didn't know. Guess it didn't matter.
But whatever intelligence I have, my kids picked up a lot from me. My son turns out to be a sharp businessman and write well, natural extem speaker which I'm not. So it's not all credit to me. But kids do learn by osmosis from their parents.
Now I'm fighting with the Montessori daughter about sending her probable learning disabled son to elementary school, think kindergarten close to home could be adequate to start and figure out where to go from there. She is far too disorganized to home school, can't afford a private one, and wouldn't be good for her son spending all his time with her. We are all mindful that as he gets older, he is at risk for running with a bad crowd.
I was telling my middle daughter how I taught them to speak properly, enunciate correctly. I described how my oldest got stuck on wowipop and frigerator. I drilled her, very slowly and repeating the difficult sounds until she got it right. My grandson heard me, and pronounced refrigerator perfectly out of the blue. We're still working with him on sounds.
But the joke's on me. My granddaughter who spent more time with me than her mother had a speech defect I missed, had to have a special tutor for awhile.
It is a snob thing in many areas, especially the East Coast. My mother mostly operated out of her basement or garage in rural Pacific Northwest towns (Dad was in the Forestry Service before the envirowhackos ruined it), so she could be a stay at home mom. After we left home, she opened up in a real building and took on and trained staff in the methodology.
That’s all it is, a method. The real secret sauce is the phonics. Learn to read, read to learn, after that anyone can educate themselves for free at the library.
Dewey’s self serving allegiance to whole word reading (sight reading) is what gave all his other noxious theories an opening. If you can’t read well, you can’t find your own sources of information or communicate opposing ideas well, so you’re stuck with the indoctrination they are shoveling.