In 1972 a book was published, detailing the story of a family of four children brought up in a rather hothouse Montessori-homeschooling-style environment, and the impressive talents at least two of them had developed by late primary school age.
The book itself is journalistic rather than scientific, and I’m curious to see what happened to the kids later in life, and whether the portrayal of them in the book was at all accurate. But it’s very difficult to find any further information, since pseudonyms are used throughout.
Anyone know anything about this?
I found this, which is… odd, at best. Despite not having been contacted for 30 years, a single telephone call supposedly reduced the mother to gibbering terror.
Sounds as if she/they may be incredibly, needlessly self-absorbed. Nuts even.
Definitely a little… out there! :eek:
That is a fascinating link, thanks.
One of the reasons I was interested in this - and this hardly counts as a data point, because my recollection is so faulty - back in the 80’s my class saw the documentary. I was late that day, so I missed the teacher introducing it, but from some of the things people were saying when we discussed this after, I got the impression that subsequent to the film one of the children had killed themself.
I never actually confirmed this, but something like that would certainly explain some of an extreme reluctance to allow further publicity. Especially as the parents (and the mother in particular) were clearly enormously invested in their children’s development (to put it mildly!)
It’s sad, because a lot of their educaitonal theory was stuff which was extremely countercultural at the time, but is much more mainstream now (all the Montessori stuff, a de-emphasis on punishment, allowing progress in “spurts” as the children become interested in something) but clearly something went deeply wrong somewhere along the way.