Reforming Public Education - The IMS Montessori Approach

The IMS approach to reforming public education begins with recognizing a fundamental misunderstanding in the use of the term "public education". Lee Havis, IMS executive director, says, "In truth, government schooling is not education at all. Rather, it is essentially political indoctrination masquerading under the guise of public education. True education comes from within the child according to infinite and eternal laws of nature. By contrast, government schooling weakens the human spirit, creating dependency on government and reinforcing conventional prejudices that prevail in the majority popular culture. It implements this type of conventional philosophy by imposing a state curriculum within a coercive context of teacher-controlled group instruction."

The IMS approach to reforming public education is to support this laudable goal and purpose through true natural means, emphasizing parental choice and free competition among all available alternatives. This parent oriented approach to responsible public education is already underway through the growing home school movement, which IMS seeks to further support by offering the following specific proposals:

1. Remove compulsory school attendance laws, freeing parents from the coercive threat of prison for non-attendance at government schools.

2. Reduce the age range of compulsory schooling; for example by changing the beginning age from "6" to "7".

3. Decentralize the delivery of government schooling, allowing each local subdivision to provide public education through a range of options, such as in-home tutoring, parental vouchers for non-government schooling, and parent run charter schools.

4. Support free operation and competition among private schools by removing academic content censorship over their curriculum through such means as government approval and licensing of these schools and their teacher training institutions.

5. Remove and/or reduce teacher training restrictions on non-government Montessori schools, such as are imposed through mandatory day care licensing.

6. Phase out taxpayer funding of government schools by gradually shifting to a "school tax" for parents who actually use these schools.

The above proposals all have the benefit of improving the quality of public education through free competition and parental choice. If the aim of public education is to achieve the hopeful, positive results of economic and social progress, rather than political indoctrination to majority opinion, then implementing these proposals for true public education is a sensible and wise path to follow.