Montessori Goes to College: A Vision for Self-Reliance

The Montessori method has been associated with primary education but Reliance College, inspired by its principles, is due to open in 2024

Students participate in an architecture tour during one of Marsha Enright’s summer seminars, The Great Connections. From these seminars, the idea of a college was born. Courtesy of Marsha Enright

We hear a lot of negative news these days about the state of our colleges and universities: low-bar requirements for admission, the abandonment of such survey courses as literature and U.S. history, grade inflation, professors with a leftist agenda, censorship, and of course, ever-rising tuition and fees.

Less noted is the dramatic decline in liberal arts majors. Fewer than one in 10 students now pursue a degree in the humanities. Lump together philosophy, history, English literature, and foreign languages, and in 2020, less than 4 percent earned their bachelor’s in one of these fields.

Often neglected in this dismal news from academia are those institutions of higher learning, both secular and religious, that have remained bastions of liberty, free speech, and the liberal arts. Among these, we find schools such as Hillsdale College, Bob Jones University, Franciscan University of Steubenville, and Hampden-Sydney College.

In the past few decades, other institutions, many of them quite small, have joined these ranks, colleges such as Christendom, Patrick Henry, and Wyoming Catholic. More recently, places such as North Carolina’s Thales College and the University of Austin have opened their doors. In their mission statements, nearly all of these schools, old and new, advocate for tradition, freedom of inquiry and civil discourse, and the pursuit of truth as vital to a free society.

And if all goes well, in 2024 Chicago’s Reliance College will be joining these robust institutions.

The Mission

From its website, Reliance College proclaims its mission, a proposal that promises “to provide a superior education that promotes the values of reason, individualism and a free society ... to instill the mores, the habits of thought and action, necessary for free, independent, self-reliant persons to be autonomous. We help young people become entrepreneurs of their own lives.”

To achieve those goals, Reliance aims to combine a Great Books learning approach with training in business, finance, and fields selected by individual students. This intention is summed up in this Reliance goal for the student: “Do you want to be your own Master? Learn how to be an entrepreneur in life, no matter what you do for a living.”

Two other remarks on this website are equally significant. The first is delivered by founder Marsha Familaro Enright: “Achievement and success require the vision of the possible and the ability to weather the actual.”

The second quotation comes as a surprise, as it originates with Maria Montessori, creator of the Montessori method of education, which is usually associated with young children:

“Discipline must come through liberty. ... We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immoveable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined.”

Maria and Marsha

In her online essay “The Ordered Liberty of Montessori Education,” Enright explains to readers the educational philosophy of Montessori and its practical application in the system of education named in her honor. Writing of such schools, Enright notes that “its fundamental principle is freedom in a structured environment,” that children are treated with respect, and that the intention is always to cultivate the student’s powers of reason and judgment.

Enright knows whereof she speaks. In an interview with The Epoch Times, she related that several decades ago, when her son was 3, she enrolled him in a Montessori school in Chicago. When her son was in third grade and the school had to move, she and a group of parents started Council Oak Montessori School, which she managed for 27 years. Trained in the Montessori method, she instructed teachers employed there in addition to performing her administrative tasks.

Yet Enright’s credentials and interests in education extend far beyond Council Oak. A graduate of Northwestern University, where she majored in biology, she then received further education in the field of social research at New York City’s well-known New School. Over the years, she has written on subjects ranging from neuropsychology to the philosophy of biology to culture and literature.

The Next Step

More than 20 years ago, her reading, research, and passion for the well-being of young people led Enright to develop a deep interest in the field of higher education. Aware that many universities, most of them under the influence of the left, were moving away from the Great Books, studies in Western culture, and freedom of thought and speech—“I’d seen this coming for a long time,” she says—Enright devoted a year to researching colleges and universities, their histories, philosophies, and curricula.

In 2006, Enright founded the Reason, Individualism, Freedom Institute, an organization reflecting her interests in those areas, including entrepreneurship. Three years later, the Institute began sponsoring a sort of summer school, which became The Great Connections. Since then, this program has featured a mix of Western classics, inspirational speakers, Socratic discussion groups, and activities that include workshops in improv comedy to encourage student interaction and collaboration skills.

The young people ages 16 to 30 who have taken part in this program experienced all sorts of positive changes, both in their approach to their studies and in their personal lives.

“About 75 percent of the students told me their lives had been transformed,” Enright says. The idea behind these summer gatherings was “to help them become entrepreneurs of their own lives.”

From these summer seminars blossomed the idea of a college, an institution that would combine classic literature, philosophy, and history with hands-on, real-life teaching tools and opportunities, all designed to increase a student’s sense of independence, reasoning powers, and self-respect.

In other words, a Montessori college.

Marsha Enright’s students work on a writing exercise during a summer seminar. Courtesy of Marsha Enright

Students during a speed networking event. Courtesy of Marsha Enright

Higher Ed, Higher Aims

Mention “Montessori college,” and you may get some questioning looks. After all, isn’t Montessori meant mostly for preschool and elementary school kids?

Yet the Montessori stages of development among the young—or planes, as they are called—are fourfold: ages birth to 6; 6 to 12; 12 to 18; and 18 to 24. Montessori schools in the United States are common for the first two planes, and about 150 high schools operate according to Montessori principles and practices. A few colleges offer teaching degrees or training in the Montessori method.

But if Marsha Enright has anything to do with it, Reliance College will be the first institution in the United States to deliver an education based on Montessori principles.

Under “Benefits” on the school’s website are listed independence, skills, mentoring, and portfolio. These four key features are designed to give students the chance to foster interpersonal and social skills; enhance their appreciation of their culture, history, and the ideals of liberty; provide real-life work experiences in areas that interest them; and assemble portfolios that act as tools for gaining employment as well as reflecting their accomplishments.

Enright and her board of directors, which includes her husband, poet and playwright John Joseph Enright, hope to open Reliance in 2024 with at least 50 students. Like a few other colleges in the United States, federal loans won’t play a part in student tuition. Plans also are underway for the college to offer some type of continuing-education program for older adults.

A Last Word

Enright said: “I want to reiterate one point. I’m knowledgeable about positive psychology and am making sure to incorporate those principles into the program.” She wants to see students and graduates flourishing, confident, and thriving in whatever they undertake.

Because of that training, the Great Connections, and her well-founded concerns about the mental and emotional trials faced by today’s young people, Enright, therefore, intends a curriculum that imparts hope and optimism to students.

In her article “What Vision Do Young People Need?” Enright writes: “Vital are a hopeful view of the future, a vision that life can be an adventure worth the striving, and heroes that embody the highest reaches of human nature. Without these elements, the young are lost, adrift—only too susceptible to depression and even suicide.”

That’s the aim of Reliance College and some other independent schools: to provide the young with hope where there is despair, a spirit of quest and adventure, and a sense that their lives can be meaningful and worth living.