Montessori schools are a lovely idea that sometimes falls short. Simply put, they allow children to take their learning in almost any direction they want it to go in, and thus imposes far less limits on them than a traditional school would. However, the downside of this lack of limitations is that it doesn’t do much for the kinds of children who require a lot of structure to get anything done. Some people are just more oganized than others. The Internet is very similar in this regard.
Being online gives a person plenty of chances to search for whatever they want to know. If the person has an intense thirst for knowledge, they can do everything short of actually getting a degree online without spending money or even leaving their home. The average ten year old child can simply go online, if they have the basic skills of arithmetic and literacy, and find things their parents don’t even know about. This is an incredible and unprecedented power that take the concept of Montessori to a whole new level.
The best part of it is, this isn’t something elite or only accessible to a few people. Most everyone in society can access the Internet. All you have to do is find a computer that’s connected, and there you are. While the Internet takes some time to properly reveal its secrets, a lot of the time it has them so easily accessible it isn’t funny. All you have to do is tell the child to look for something they want to know, and within minutes they can be a virtual expert on all manner of different topics.