Education First

In 1907, Maria Montessori founded the first Montessori school in Rome. Its overall purpose was to give four to seven year old children from low-income families a full-day educational program.

The idea quickly developed and grew in popularity and thus more Montessori schools were formed in Europe and India. It did not take long for the school method to cross over to the United States of America.

In fact, Montessori’s teaching methods created great interest in the United States from 1910 through 1920. Unfortunately, Montessori’s methods seem to be largely forgotten in the United States until the late 1950s.

It was around that time when a second Montessori movement started in America. This time, the main focus was on a set of private schools that served an almost entirely middle-class population.

The Montessori educational system struggled with it’s own success when it started having trouble finding enough teachers. In fact, it took that teacher shortage to start the creation of free-standing private Montessori teacher training centers. Each of these centers were not associated with any college or university and taught the Montessori teaching methods to aspiring educators.

In the late 1960s, some parents started to call for the public schools in their local areas to offer the Montessori education model for their elementary school children who had graduated from private Montessori pre-schools.

The public’s rush of support was given a boost by government funds being made available for new Montessori programs starting up in public school areas. Today, over one hundred U.S. school districts have some type of Montessori program.

But just why has Montessori become so popular ? Many believe it is due to the program’s ability to overcome three major problems that the public school systems are still faced with. While the public school system has been put into a state of upheaval, the Montessori school systems have flourished.

Using their unique teaching methods, Montessori students have demonstrated a consistently high level of reading comprehension and academic performance. In the book “Montessori Parents Guide”, we dive deeper into how a Montessori program is powerfully unique and sets itself aside from current teaching methods.

As the information technology industry has grown, so have the related educational opportunities. Educational curriculum isn’t always the best gauge of industry changes within a particular field, although the rules which make that fact a plainly evident reality for most industries rarely apply in the modern world of information technology. In fact, unlike disciplines such as medicine, the very nature of the current IT industry promotes the idea that advancements in technology are only truly valid and successful when they are recognized and widely accepted by all. For this reason, IT curriculum is often on the heels of the latest developments, with competition among educational providers also helping to spur the cutting edge component of the coursework.

Lately, another trend is beginning to emerge, with more universities offering specializations in the field of IT. While IT and computer science related programs with specializations are becoming more commonplace than ever, the marriage of IT and education was not always such a happy, fruitful union. Not long ago, computer science curriculum could be summed up in two phrases: network administration and programming. Large scale hardware and software IT implementations were performed by technicians certified by Cisco or Microsoft. These were the certifications one sought after they graduated from college but before attempting to find employment. Now, with the implementation and operation of server based intranet systems having long ago been de-mystified, most IT professionals are going from cap and gown to business casual with few if any stops along the way. The reason this is possible has a lot to do with changes in the educational system’s view of information technology.

Most institutions are moving toward a diverse curriculum that incorporates IT fundamentals with an emphasis on a particular area of specialization. Educational institutions are reacting to the needs of employers in the job market. From the implementation of infrastructures to systems security, an area of study that once might have had a course or two devoted to it now comprises an entire degree program.

The result of these changes in the educational landscape regarding IT is indeed a direct reflection of changes in the workplace. As alterations to the structure of IT management have occurred, so have evolutions in the way IT personnel are educated and trained.