January 4, 2007 11:45AM # Maria Montessori By [Tim Lynch](https://www.cato.org/people/tim-lynch) --- SHARE The *Washington Post* had an interesting [article](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/01/AR2007010100742.html) the other day about the popularity and success of Montessori schools. The ideas of [Maria Montessori](http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Montessori,Maria) are not a trade secret and they have been around for quite some time. So … why has the education establishment been slow to adapt? University of Virginia psychologist Angeline Stoll Lillard has a stinging observation. > The psychologist Lillard was at first skeptical of Montessori’s ideas when she started her research 20 years ago. But she found that a strong body of evidence in developmental psychology supports Montessori’s major conclusions — among them, that there is a close relationship between movement and cognition, that the best learning is active and that order is beneficial for children. … > > > \[Montessori\] looked for what worked rather than what fit a theory. “If schooling were evidence-based,” Lillard wrote, “I think all schools would look a lot more like Montessori schools.” Unfortunately, instead of letting parents match individual children with a variety of schools, including Montessoris, that are tailored to kids’ unique and infinitely varied needs, politicians like the new mayor of Washington obsess over controlling current, hidebound, one-size-fits-all public school systems. Such [tinkering](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/03/AR2007010300350.html), however, won’t fix education. It will only put someone new in charge. ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).