Every neighbourhood today sports its own set of preschools and parents are faced with a bewildering array to choose from. And yet they often lack a pedagogical basis to make an informed decision.

The preschool as an institution was conceived to provide stimulation for the child’s physical, intellectual, social and emotional development in ways that she could not get in the home environment. It was suggested as a compensatory measure for disadvantaged children, so that they could keep pace with ‘normal’ children when they started formal schooling at the age of six. Of course this was how it was conceptualized.

Over the years, however, preschool has become a natural downward extension of the formal schooling system in most countries the world over. In India too, though not compulsory, it has become almost a norm in the urban and semi-urban areas.

I chose to undertake a study to compare two of the most prevalent methods of pre-school education in India: the Montessori and the Nursery methods - and to study their effect on the child’s intellectual and social development. There are some clear differences in approach between these two methods.

The Montessori House of Children follows a child-centered approach, where the child sets the pace of activity. The apparatus that is used is structured, standardized and designed to stimulate the senses. Put simply, it means that all teaching is materials-based and very, very concrete.

The other prevalent method, the nursery method, was started on the principle of being a nursery for children below 5 years- i.e. providing basic care of the physical, emotional, intellectual and social well-being of the child in a warm and protected environment. That was how it was meant to be.

Now, however, the Nursery is oriented more towards preparing a child in pre-academic skills and readiness for the first standard. The modes of teaching are group instruction, teacher-made teaching aids, black board, paper and pencil. This method relies heavily on the child moving and keeping up with the group where he or she develops skills in memorization and rote learning. To a large extent, this method is also adult- oriented in the sense that the adult chooses the activity and the pace of the classroom teaching. On what basis does one compare the Montessori and the Nursery systems?

When a child enters preschool, the child does not come to the school unprepared. A great deal of intellectual and social development has already taken place within the boundaries of the child’s family, peer and adult interactions. In the first year of preschool, especially at the beginning of the session, the child spends most of the time adjusting to the alien setting and its rules and regulations. The activities of this stage are directed towards creating a rapport between the child and others in his environment than towards the development of any particular ability.

In my study, children from the two streams showed no difference in performance in the first year. It is by the third year of preschooling that we see a marked differentiation. Through the preschool years, there appears to be a uniformly high performance by the Montessori children on most facets, such as intelligence, visuomotor coordination and attention. It is not that the Nursery group children performed below par, but that the Montessori group performed significantly better.

It would be meaningless here to contend that the Montessori method fosters a higher speed of development. It may be more functional for teachers and educationists to look at the difference in performance between the two groups as qualitative rather than a difference of speed or pace of development. It is more probable that different teaching methods influence the schemes of organization of information rather than the actual learning strategies. A good preschool education sets off a chain reaction including the development of readiness skills, school adjustment and effective organization of perceptual information culminating indirectly in cognitive development.

Cognitive development in the preschool years can be understood on two dimensions: one, that the child creates his own knowledge. Using the tools they are born with and interacting with the environment to make sense of the environment and its objects, children arrive at their own construction of the world. This idea is not new and has survived since Piaget, who saw children governing their own development.

Second is the idea of how children do this: they do it by playing around with things, people and ideas. Basically all theories of early development emphasize learning through activity.

Theoretically and practically, the Montessori methods adhere well to these tenets: they recognize the importance of structured, sequential approach to learning leading in small steps from simple to complex, from concrete to abstract and from precept to concept. Since the Montessori method places so much emphasis on sensorial learning, it may explain why these children are so much more sophisticated in their cognitive level than the Nursery children. As opposed to the Nursery method, the child learns the skills necessary to go about learning a task, rather than getting tutored in the task itself.

Another basic premise of Montessori methods is that the child passes through certain sensitive periods which guide the child in selecting certain activities. Put simply, in this stage, the task chosen by the child will be learnt easily and joyfully; if not, the child definitely will learn it but with a lot of effort. This concept is the same as readiness, which explains how the child is ready for First standard at the prescribed age of 5 ½ -6 years.

The research study also pointed out the drawback of the Montessori school in paying little attention to the social development of the child. Probably because these schools pay very little emphasis to group activities and efforts, competition and cooperation, the results show the child’s social development scores dipping in the first standard, whereas the Nursery children show a steady increase.

The Nursery method as practiced today emphasises the teaching of specific skills in a group setting. It has started resembling a regular primary school with formal instructions and group teaching by an adult, totally unlike the concept proposed by the Macmillan sisters who are credited with the starting of Nurseries; or Froebel, who started the Kindergarten.

Clay-work, drawing, painting, and activities for eye-hand coordination and oral group activities follow initial rapport formation. These progress to training in the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic in a very rapid manner. Here, too, the tasks progress from simple to complex and teaching aids are usually teacher made along with a heavy reliance on blackboard, chalk, the written word and pictures. The emphasis in all three years is on acquisition of skills required for academic work, and on the traditional methods of memory and rote learning.

What are the other drawbacks of the Montessori methods? There is an increasingly growing perception that the practitioners are becoming too restricted and restrained by their own methodology and materials and most are not willing to look at the merits of new ideas proposed by other theorists, for the simple reason that they were not proposed by Montessori! I am sure Montessori would have encouraged innovation and addition to her methods and methodology.

This is not to assert that Nursery teachers are very up-to-date with the theories of child development, but we find that most good Nursery professionals have adopted methodologies from Montessori, Macmillan and Froebel, and have emerged as stronger pre-school teachers. There is much that the Montessori teacher can draw from our own context and culture.

In a country like ours, with both parents working, access to affordable, high quality childcare becomes an economic as well as a social necessity. Research shows that school performance is influenced by the quality of early education, hence the reason for investing a little more thought and effort into pre-school education. An amalgamation of the nursery and Montessori methods and a research-backed application of Montessori materials to group settings might be a good solution!