The tantrum started several blocks away. We'd told her that we were taking her to Patilantsi (fun park) in Mladost. Otherwise we'd have had to pin her to the bed and forcibly dress her. But by now she'd sussed us out. She was sobbing, shaking and bawling. As we approached our destination she started kicking furiously. Daddy had to carry her to the gate. She managed to escape my clutches and grabbed a railing in front of the garden, clinging on with all her might. It seemed that she had chained herself to the ramparts, rather like suffragette Emily Pankhurst. You'd have thought we were trying to take her into a torture chamber. But it was only the local kindergarten.

This daily battle of wills probably strikes a chord with many parents having to cope with recalcitrant darlings in the morning. That's why I was surprised to find children at the Kamelini Montessori in Mladost 1 so happy and obliging, bouncing in eagerly, happily trading snow boots for slippers and joining in a group sing-song as a prelude to the day's (as we shall see) unorthodox activities.

School conjures up many contradictory thoughts. Although fairly studious, I nonetheless harboured rebellious fantasies. Why should I be forced into group activities that I detested? Why put me through a physics class when I have no interest whatsoever? Why should I be held back by that dullard in the French class, to whom the teacher has to dedicate so much time explaining rudimentary facts? Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could proceed at my own level without the pace of the class being decided by the average progress of the class or under-performers?

Self-motivation
Regimentation is at the heart of the whole educational system. You are segregated into groups and told what to do. It begins early on in your conventional kindergarten and gets steadily worse. Children are thrust into group activities that they may have no aptitude for whatsoever. To this day I remember art and design classes at school. I couldn't even set up the easel properly without falling over or causing an accident. At that stage it would have been better for all concerned if I'd been shunted off to the English class rather than enduring a perpetual reinforcement of failure.

The Montessori system of education, on the other hand, avoids the normal structured type of group activities. There are no formal classes, no competitions, no gradings and no reports. Children are free to explore their surroundings and indulge in whatever attracts them within the grounds of any (theoretically) well-equipped Montessori. If a child wants to play with a jigsaw map of Europe, experiment with opening locks on miniature cabinet doors or even practise with some basic cooking utensils, then they're free to do so.

Contrary to what you may be thinking, anarchy doesn't reign in your typical Montessori. A framework lies behind the expression of self-will. Jenny Piriankov, head of the Kamelini Montessori, explains: "Children have to respect each other's borders. They mustn't interfere with each other's pursuits or touch each other's work. They must learn that their own work is their responsibility." As children progress, they're encouraged to help younger classmates and complete projects within a time limit.

Kamelini Montessori has been open for three months now. Having spent 12 years in South Africa, Jenny recently returned to her native Bulgaria. She cites crime as the number one reason for leaving. (Her husband, Atanas, says he routinely carried a firearm on his way to work). In 1992, she and Atanas bought a house in Johnannesburg,  which she converted to a Montessori pre-primary school. The mother of three children, two girls aged three and seven (the youngest of whom attends the Kamelini Montessori) and a nine-year-old boy, Jenny is well placed to compare different styles of education. She isn't a great fan of conventional state kindergartens.

"They just give them group exercises and says `this is the picture I want you to draw.' They don't motivate the children at all," she says.  "A lot of their activities involve just playing with cuddly toys."

The Montessori is an old concept but relatively new to Bulgaria. It eschews formal education, which, Jenny says, "excludes the sensoral part of learning" in favour of touch-related exercises and tangible arithmetic, not just numbers on a blackboard. For example, in order to demonstrate a number eight there would be a three-dimensional figure the children can feel, a representation (such as eight sheep) or simply beads on an abacus. This, she believes, is far more effective than scrawling numbers in front of children and hoping that the joys of mental arithmetic will somehow become clear. One is an exercise in tangible logic, the latter is just purely abstract.

In Jenny's words, "children are owners of the classroom". Each child finds what he/she is interested in. "The children here learn to do their own homework more easily and we cultivate a desire to learn. Children are not here to meet standards but need to learn to prepare for life," she says. She says that children who have had a Montessori education learn to read much faster than other children and also master other assignments more easily. "The Montessori method will enable them to become more independent workers and achievers and more contented and patient," she says.

A silent presence
Children in the Montessori system direct their own learning, choosing from the various sections of the classroom that are graded according to level of difficulty. Subjects covered in a typical Montessori embrace practical skills, mental arithmetic, geography, science and art. The role of a teacher is to introduce children to materials and then remain a "silent presence" in the classroom, to be a facilitator rather than a pedagogue. It advocates a self-learning rather than didactic approach. The term Montessori does not necessarily involve very young children, even though they are its most common age group. America now has elementary and even high schools adhering to the Montessori method, although most are within the private sector. 

Kamelini Montessori is beautifully decorated and well stocked with sundry materials: flags, toy animals, games, jigsaws, locks, kitchenware, geometric solids, binomial and trinomial cubes, Russian dolls, block houses, three-dimensional gloves, sets of identical cylinders which make different sounds (to ascertain if children have a problem with their hearing), all with the emphasis on experimentation, sensory perception and practicality.

Ideally, space constraints notwithstanding, the Montessori is a kind of world in miniature. Children learn the value of objects through experimentation, not through abstract concepts. By playing with a real piece of glass they learn more about it than merely seeing a picture in a book. If it breaks, they'll soon come to realise its value. The Montessori method posits that the hand is intimately connected to the developing brain in children. That's why children are encouraged to touch the shapes and letters they are learning about, not just watch a teacher or TV screen telling them about these discoveries.

Kamelini Montessori's curriculum is in English, although most children are Bulgarian. Children are aged between two and six years old in what Jenny refers to as a "vertical grouping system" in which the older children help each other. When I was there, Jenny's eldest child, Kamen, was away from school because of the heating crisis and was helping out with the other children. As I watched him, I couldn't help but notice how mature his behaviour seemed for his age, supervising a toddler and helping his mother, who, after all, must have been an excellent example. But then again, you never forget a good...facilitator. 

CRITICISM AND PRAISE

Various charges have been directed against the Montessori method. Its two most famous critics were William Heard Kilpatrick (1871-1965) - who actually travelled to Italy in 1913 to meet Maria Montessori herself - and John Dewey (1859-1952), both renowned American educationalists. Kilpatrick and Dewey thought that the Montessori system was too restrictive and said it failed to emphasise social interaction and development. In his review Kilpatrick wrote: "The Montessori child, each at his own chosen tasks, works, in relative isolation, his nearest neighbours possibly looking on….We criticise Montessori that she does not provide situations for more adequate social co-operation."

A common current complaint is that Montessori schools do not traditionally assign homework. It is also said that they teach children using highly specialised materials that ordinary parents may have trouble acquiring, in other words, Montessori education is fundamentally elitist. 

Evidence regarding the effectiveness of the method is, as so often, contradictory. Testimony to the sucess of "the method" comes in Dr Angeline Stoll Lillard's 2005 book Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius which presents a comprehensive comparison of the performance of children educated in Montessori schools with those educated conventionally.

Lillard cites research indicating that Montessori-educated children do better in later schooling. They performed better across the board, not just in traditional academic areas such as language and maths, but also in terms of social skills. 

ORIGINS AND THEORY

The Montessori form of child development is based on theories advanced by Dr Maria Montessori (1870-1952), the first woman to graduate from the University of Tome Medical School. She first became interested in education as a doctor treating mentally challenged children. After returning to the university for further study, she began her work with non-handicapped children in 1904.

Dr Montessori noted the specific characteristics associated with the child's interests and abilities at each plane of development. She argued that a school carefully designed to meet the needs and interests of the child would work more effectively because it would not fight human nature. Montessori taught teachers how to "follow the child" through careful observation, allowing each child to reveal his/her strengths, weaknesses, interests and anxieties; and strategies that work best to facilitate the development of the child's human potential.

This focus on the "whole child" led Dr Montessori to develop a very different sort of school from the traditional adult - centred classroom. To emphasise this difference, she named her first school the "Casa dei Bambini" (Children's House).

The Montessori philosophy posits that there are numerous "sensitive periods" of development (periods of a few months or even weeks), during which a child's mind is particularly open to learning specific skills or knowledge such as crawling, sitting, walking, talking, reading and counting. These learning periods often involve periods of intense solitary concentration that must not be interrupted by the teacher. Again, the teacher oversees progress but does not necessarily intervene.