The Montessori Method of teaching has been around for over one hundred years, so it’s no surprise that there are a large number of successful, creative and very famous alumni. Many of them credit the tenets of the method for starting them down the path of their success.
Jeff Bezos
This chairman and chief executive officer of Amazon founded the company in 1994, initially setting it up in his garage. In 2017, he was the wealthiest person in the world and he’s easily on track to becoming the wealthiest man in history. According to a Wall Street Journal interview with Jeff Bezos’s mother, “Jeff would get so engrossed in his activities as a Montessori preschooler that his teachers would literally have to pick him up out of his chair to go on to the next task.”
Julia Child
An American chef, author, and TV personality, Julia Child is most noted for her debut cookbook, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” in which she introduced a curious American audience to haute cuisine. In another book, “Julia Child and Company,” she noted that Montessori learning “taught her to love working with her hands.”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a Columbian author, screenwriter, and journalist noted for his use of the literary style called “magic realism.” He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. About the Montessori Method, he stated “I do not believe there is a method better than Montessori for making children sensitive to the beauties of the world and awaking their curiosity about the secrets of life.”
Katherine Graham
Katherine Graham was the quintessential Washington hostess, an author, and the first female publisher of a major U.S. newspaper, The Washington Post. She ran it for over twenty years. She once conceded that she was uncertain (at first) about shouldering the responsibility until she remembered the Montessori Method: “learn by doing.” Her memoir, Personal History, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998.
David Blaine
Called a ‘modern-day Houdini,” David Blaine is a magician, illusionist, and endurance artist. His many television specials have expanded the traditional focus on the magician to include the reactions of the amazed spectators, with spectacular success. He became interested in magic when he was four years old, attending a Montessori school.
Sean “P Diddy” Combs
Thrice-Grammy-winning Sean “P Diddy” Combs is a musician who has written, rapped, produced, acted, and started his own record label. He’s also a fearless entrepreneur, with a clothing line as well as stakes in restaurants, vodka brands, television production companies, and healthy drinks for athletes. In 2017, Forbes dubbed him the richest hip-hop artist in America. He once stated the Montessori school he attended in his youth made him feel “nurtured into wanting to be somebody special.”
Larry Page and Sergey Brin
The ninth and the thirteenth richest people in the world, these founders of Google are proud of their Montessori roots. “You can’t understand Google,” says Wired Magazine, “unless you know [its founders] were Montessori kids.”
