Maria Montessori Google Logo: Google’s Founders Childhood Education

It is well known that Google’s co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, as children were educated under the Montessori education system. They are proud of it and consider it one of the fundamental reasons they are so successful today. Today is the 142nd birthday of the late Maria Montessori, who founded that education model. To […]

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It is well known that Google’s co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, as children were educated under the Montessori education system. They are proud of it and consider it one of the fundamental reasons they are so successful today.

Today is the 142nd birthday of the late Maria Montessori, who founded that education model. To celebrate her work and contributions, Google has a special Google Logo (aka Doodle) for her.

Today, there are about 20,000 schools for children between the ages of newborns to 18 years old that use this model. Here are the fundamental components of this model:

  • Mixed age classrooms, with classrooms for children aged 2½ or 3 to 9 years old by far the most common
  • Student choice of activity from within a prescribed range of options
  • Uninterrupted blocks of work time
  • A Constructivist or “discovery” model, where students learn concepts from working with materials, rather than by direct instruction
  • Specialized educational materials developed by Montessori and her collaborators

Google’s co-founders spoke to ABC recently after their IPO several years ago about the importance of Montessori education in their upbringing. Here is that clip via YouTube:

In related news, yesterday was the 14th anniversary of the concept behind the Google Doodle. Starting with a Doodle for the Burning Man Festival. More on that at the Huffington Post.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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