To my great surprise, when I arrived for the first time in Kathmandu, I saw posters and advertising banners in almost every street for Montessori schools! Unfortunately, almost all kindergardens call themselves « Montessori » (sometimes accompanied by "paradise" or "mickey"!) This attracts parents who want a different way of learning than in the government schools, but behind the names, there is often nothing or hardly anything that relates to Montessori.
MODERN EDUCERE - Kathmandu
For some schools, it is pure and strategy. For others, the desire, energy and motivation to provide quality education to children are real, but they have no choice than to do with the means at hand, with a first obstacle: the lack of a real Montessori training center in Nepal. There are some, which is better than nothing. They teach how to use some material. But to take a full course, one needs to go to India.
In this school on the outskirts of Kathmandu, the principal, Nimdiki, trained in Nepal, is deeply convinced in the benefits of Montessori on children. Although she doesn’t have a complete training, she struggles as much as possible to make her bilingual school (which goes up to 12 years old) a real Montessori school. It was created in 2005 by her husband (a mountain guide) and herself. They are both Sherpas (ethnic group originating in Tibet) and lead this project with passion.
The school’s walls are covered with posters quoting Maria Montessori (ex: « Teach me to do by myself » The 3-6 material is complete, but ... it lies almost entirely in a room upstairs, inaccessible to children. Educators come pick what they need to give a group lesson to the children (with the exception of practical life that the youngest use in free choice) and then bring it back.
When I ask Namdiki why the material is not available to children, she explains that when at first they had put everything in the classes, children touched everything and the teachers did not know how to handle them. It is in this kind of examples we see the limits of an incomplete training of a pedagogy that is a whole. So here they separate children by age: a class of 2-3 year-olds, another with 3-4 year-olds ... 12 year-olds. Multiple-age classes are essential to the functioning of a Montessori school, children taking the older ones as models, who are often the best teachers.
To the older children (elementary), the concepts are explained with the material, but afterwards, it is not left for them to handle. They then work on notebooks. However, they do have some freedom of movement, left free to move around in the classroom and sit where they want to. I also note that if a child takes more time to understand the exercice, the teacher spends time explaining individually again. But, and this is again where one sees that the Montessori method is a whole, and that one cannot only take a few tips here and there, in the meantime the other children are waiting or start bustling about
All teaching staff provides great efforts in order to make sure the children integrate the basics while including the notions of pleasure and freedom. But when, as I am asked, I give them an oral presentation reminding them of the principles of the pedagogy and of the management of a Montessori environment, I understand by their unanimous response, that they are very concerned about the reactions of parents (no homework , multiple ages...)
They lack the support it gives having seen, if only once, a real Montessori environment that works.
It does not take much for this school to become a real Montessori school. Real organizational skills, teachers with the vocation, and especially a real motivation helps this school, over the years, to approach its goal. Their first need is to get trained volunteers. Socially, most children are middle-class, but Namdiki has a project to open a school for disadvantaged children. Nepal has great need of children able to change tomorrow’s society and bring the country out from the deadlock it’s in and doesn’t seem to get out of. It’s one of the poorest countries in the world. It’s GNP ranks it among the 10 poorest countries in the world. Currently, it survives on foreign aid and global organizations. Before this international assistance, the life expectancy of a Nepali was only 26 years old. It has now increased to 50 years for men and 49 years for women. That is to say the efforts that have been made in all areas to improve the living conditions of a population that an isolationist policy has condemned for centuries.