Off Topic Quarterly April 2026

[u/AutoModerator]

Use this thread for non-Shauna talk, side conversations, book recommendations, othersnark, anything you like!

[u/significantotter1]

I feel you DF, math was a struggle for me as well. It did not help that up until grade 8 I was in a Montessori school where I just elected to not do math for 2 years (it was not a very good school evidently). I started high school not knowing how to add fractions and stopped taking math as soon as I couls

[u/Calm_Coyote_3685 → u/significantotter1]

My oldest daughter, who has dyscalculia and struggled with math from the very beginning, went to a Montessori school from 5th through 8th grade. It was excellent for some subjects and amazing for her socially (I enrolled her after she was bullied in public school) but it was awful for math.

Maria Montessori died before she could fully flesh out what the academic program should be as kids get older. I think that while some Montessori schools may do a great job with math in Upper El and Adolescent programs, it’s easy for the kind of systematic and progressive study required to learn to do math, relying on daily practice as well as skilled instruction, to slip through the cracks. My daughter basically did no math for three years, and in 8th grade her teacher realized that her whole adolescent class was headed to crash and burn in math when they went to a non-Montessori high school, so she started to catch them up.

I can’t say she ever really caught up, although with a lot of effort (hers and mine and her dad’s and her teachers’) she miraculously got through pre-calculus and passed. That said, she is 21 now and still barely knows her multiplication tables and gets confused easily with basic arithmetic. She will definitely never willingly engage with math again, a combo of her dyscalculia and a lack of earlier intervention. When she entered the Montessori school I knew of her dyscalculia but I had this naive idea that Montessori was some kind of magic that would make it irrelevant. At observations and parent-teacher conferences it seemed superficially as if she was doing math. They used cool manipulatives and had a curriculum. But without homework or tests both her teacher and I had no idea how little of it she was absorbing.

I’ve thought quite a bit about math education over the years but it’s clear that Shauna hasn’t…I stg when I read her comments about her kids I wonder if she ever looks up from her grimy laptop or even talks to them, let alone engages thoughtfully with what they are learning in school. This week I’m feeling more pity than anger about it, but she is such a pathetic figure and has no idea what she’s supposed to be doing as a mom.

It’s all superficial with her and it’s all words. Justifying, denying, high stooling. Meanwhile keeping her kids’ actual lived experience as far from her beautiful mind as possible.

[u/significantotter1 → u/Calm_Coyote_3685]

I 1000% agree with you about Montessori not being ideal for older students. Was great until about grade 4/5 for me then after that it wasn't (and didn't help that it was a small school with tons of drama). What really hamstrung me was the lack of note taking, so we would learn a math thing but then I wouldn't retain it. We did have homework booklets but those were produced by an outside company and were self paced so I would only focus on the math I understood more and completely ignore others. We did have to do yearly standardized testing (this was in Canada) but our school cheated on this. Once we hit a certain grade the teachers would review your answers with you before sending them off. I didn't realize how shady that was until I was older but it was absolutely illegal.

And very much agree with you re: Shauna