A School of Experience
Montessori's Vision for the Future of Secondary Education
Schools as they are today are neither adapted to the needs of the adolescent nor to the times in which we live.
—Maria Montessori, From Childhood to Adolescence (1948)
If you only read one Montessori text in your life, make it the final chapters of From Childhood to Adolescence (p.66). Why?
They're short.
They’re the single most powerful call for educational reform I’ve ever read.
Written over seventy years ago, in the wake of global conflict and social upheaval, Montessori’s critique of secondary education is savage and on point. She describes a society evolving into a state of “utmost complication and extreme contrasts,” a world in crisis in which “the peace of the world and civilisation itself are threatened.” And yet, secondary schools remain stuck in “a kind of arrested development”—focused narrowly on exam preparation, compliance, and outdated ideas of academic success.
The result? Teenagers are simply treated as “overgrown children,” subject to rewards and punishments, reduced to marks and numbers, and compelled to study “as a duty or a necessity.” Their individuality is suppressed, their energy wasted, their learning stripped of its dignity.
Montessori’s vision is striking in how it reframes adolescence—not as a problem to be managed, but as a vital, creative, and social phase of becoming.
“The chief symptom of adolescence is a state of expectation, a tendency towards creative work and a need for the strengthening of self-confidence.”
Teenagers need respect, guidance, and real autonomy—not rigid control or false independence. They need adults who treat them not as children to be managed, but as people becoming who they are meant to be.
“It is better to treat the adolescent as if he has greater value than he actually shows than if he has less.”
I wrote recently about the Future of Jobs report, which predicts a radically transformed employment landscape by 2030. The report calls for creative thinking, adaptability, emotional intelligence, and systems awareness—skills that are largely absent from today’s secondary education. But Montessori was already articulating this need in the 1940s.
She argued that secondary education must do more than prepare young people for exams or jobs. It must help them become whole human beings—capable of navigating complexity, contributing meaningfully to their communities, and shaping a more just and sustainable world.
Erdkinder - The Farm School
So what does an education like that look like?
Well, Maria Montessori had a pretty radical idea. She determined that really the best environment for adolescent education is...a farm.
She called this model Erdkinder, or “children of the earth.” Not because she believed all teenagers should become farmers, but because she saw the farm as a prototype: a place where adolescents could engage in meaningful work, develop independence, and experience real responsibility within a living community.
She envisioned a “school of experience in the elements of social life”—a centre for study and work where teenagers could step into adult roles and feel what it means to contribute.
Why a farm? Because adolescents, she argued, need:
Physical work that challenges both body and mind—“work of the head, heart, and hands”
Real-life contributions to a community that depends on them
Distance from their family to establish identity and independence
Time in nature to process change, regulate emotion, and find perspective
Authentic economic activity—earning money through real enterprise
A sense of ownership over their environment and learning
A life of variety and meaningful activity
The farm, then, is symbolic: it represents a micro-society. A place where young people learn not just academic content, but how to live with others, solve problems, and build lives of integrity. Laurie Ewert-Krocker describes it as “a community environment that reaches adult-level social purpose.”
Montessori called the ultimate aim of this model valorization of the personality—a sense of dignity and capability that arises from real contribution, effort, and self-respect.
Beyond the Farm: Applying the Spirit of Erdkinder
While some Montessori adolescent programs do run working farms (see Hershey Montessori in Ohio), many schools adapt the spirit of Erdkinder in different ways, including:
Microbusinesses and community roles: Students run coffee shops, farm stands, bike repair workshops, or help manage school operations
Service learning: Volunteering and local engagement foster empathy and systems thinking
Student governance: Circle time and meetings support shared responsibility and collaborative decision-making
Expeditions and travel: Self-directed planning and exploration build independence
Maker and repair spaces: Echoing Montessori’s “Museum of Machines,” students work with tools, technologies, and hands-on problem-solving
Project-based learning: Interdisciplinary themes replace siloed subjects, rooting knowledge in real-world context
Take, for example, our timetable from Lumiar:
In Montessori’s terms, Lumiar aims to be a modern-day school of experience in the elements of social life. In our program, school is treated as a living community. Adolescents help shape daily life, run initiatives, plan experiences, and support one another.
Here are some of the other programs I’ve helped build:
Sterling Montessori Middle School (North Carolina): A large US public charter with 120+ students in Years 7 and 8. Students ran a community garden and vegetable box business, among other microeconomies.
Cardiff Montessori High School: A small UK private school where Year 7 and 8 students ran a coffee shop and partnered with a local farm for land-based work.
Lumiar Secondary (my current school): A small UK school on a working farm. Our students will run a microeconomy, participate in farm work, and help shape a program grounded in Erdkinder principles.
There are both private and public models of what I’m describing already in existence. This doesn’t have to be a model just for the privileged.
Toward a New Model for Secondary Education
If we are serious about preparing young people for a rapidly changing world, we cannot keep doing more of the same. We need bold, humanising models of education that prioritise:
Character formation and critical consciousness
Economic and social independence
Collaborative, interdisciplinary learning
Purposeful work that connects head and hand
Student agency and real-world impact
Montessori’s Erdkinder vision is not a fixed model—it’s a provocation. A reminder that adolescence is not a time to be subdued, but a time to be honoured. And that schools can be places of growth, belonging, and transformation.
“Today, there is a need for a more dynamic training of character and the development of a clearer consciousness of social reality.”
Let that be our shared goal. Education should not prepare young people for a system that no longer serves them—but help them imagine and create the world that could.