Montessori; the best stepping stone in education

MUMBAI: Sunday, 17th March, 2024 saw all the Montessori Schools in Mumbai get together for a Montessori Walk, flag off from Carter Road, Bandra to raise awareness about the profound benefits of the Montessori way of teaching for the children’s education and well-being.

Besant Montessori School, Juhu which is a 75 year old institution and one of the finest Montessori Schools in the country obviously participated too.

Yesteryear actress Poonam Dasgupta was a student of Besant Montessori School, Juhu in the early 70’s and today half a century later her son Navam is also a student of Besant Montessori School. Poonam is absolutely convinced that the Montessori way of teaching is by far the best as this method ensures that children not only learn to pronounce words properly but are able to spell words correctly as well.

Poonam says that this gives Montessori students a big advantage over children from other schools and in this competitive world of education any advantage is a huge, huge bonus. This is exactly why Poonam who stays at Aksa Beach near Madh has no qualms that her son travels all the way to Juhu for which the to and fro travel time for Navam is about 3 hours. As Poonam puts it, “It’s surely worth the effort.”

While modern schools are becoming fancier and creating an unhealthy air-conditioned environment to justify absurd fees of Rs. 10 lakhs plus a year, Montessori Schools though largely have air-conditioners which are only used on very hot days have a simplistic environment and normally a fee structure of a very reasonable amount of Rs. 1 lakh a year.

This is why Montessori is the right and best stepping stone in education, opines Poonam.