The Data We Trust

Montessori, Ontology, and the Radical Power of Paying Attention

There is a wonderful chapter in The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt's book, which I am really enjoying. He speaks about the fractured nature of our focus and attention. And it is even worse for children, who bounce between games and social media and systems at school, computer systems, with only small amounts of human interaction in between. In the worst cases, none at all.

He speaks about finding moments of connection with family members. He speaks about community, and also about anything that pulls you out of the everyday. A moment of pause. He talks about having a digital day off. So, if we no longer celebrate Sunday in its faith-based tradition, perhaps we do it as a day free of digital technology. And we decide that, family by family.

That would be easy in a Montessori school. Elementary, middle, and high school students are using technology daily for their work. It would be very easy for us to choose one day, randomly, whatever day. Maybe Friday. Even Monday would be a good day.

And it is a digital-free day. No screens. No computers. No phones. Phones are already put away in bags in many Montessori schools.

So, there would be no technology, but what would there be? Well, their usual work, comprehensive connection with humans. Debate groups. Interactive, cooperative games. Teams solving real problems. Group building projects. Maker spaces. Just as many things as we can find that are purely physical, purely human, purely connected.

It would be easy for us, as Montessori, to hold this screen-free day sacred. Upper elementary, middle, and high students all use technology, and even we can get captivated, seduced, as Montessorians would say, into the computer as the way of life.

So, what is interesting with this idea is that we start it in schools. And then we request that the children go home and ask their parents, their families, to also choose a digital-free day. Again, it could be a weekend day, so the family is all together. Or one night in the week, when they go home and everyone is available, or they all go out with another family. No one is otherwise occupied.

It is an easy thing to start, and children are really, really good at starting things within families. They come home engaged, passionate, fired up about something, and the family just wants to do whatever the child has said, because the child is so fired up.

And our Montessorians are used to being fired up. That is their mode.

So, if we have a digital-free day in school, and a digital-free day at home, then what if we saw the computer time that we do spend as an opportunity for research?

When I am on my computer researching, it is exciting. I am enjoying it. I do not see it as a problem. Whether my family members see it as a problem, because I spend one, two, three hours on the computer straight, I do not know. But I know I need to make sure I balance my schedule with time with my husband and family members, and also to keep fit, to have three days where I exercise.

All of us are already managing our work life balance, time in the real world versus time in the digital world. If we are exhausted, and we come home from work, and our children are home, and they have homework, and we say, “Go do your homework,” that is not time spent in the real world with the ones we love. Unless we help them, that is not time with them.

And then there is the question, what is valuable time? Doom scrolling? Does that count as education? How is it valuable?

Some people say, “Well, I am learning about the news,” or whatever it is. But how do we separate that from doom scrolling? Hours and hours of just seeing the next thing, as the algorithm locks in our brains, and we see another YouTube, another short, another video about the same shark attack or whatever we have been watching month after month. But it now knows, that is what we want to watch.

So how do we separate that? Are we wasting time when we are doom scrolling? Are we actually learning? Is there benefit?

Maybe this, again, could be something for the students to research. Elementary students and upwards. What if the four days of screens in school included data crunching?

Each individual can look at the data in any way they want. They could put the data together, make it anonymous. Make a list of all the different things they do in a day on any digital technology, whether it is social media, texting with friends, whatever it is, even within the classroom.

Once they have made sure that all subjects are covered, then they can create a scoring system to rate their time. Maybe down to the minute, or the second, of technology use.

But actually, the students can really start to look.

And exploration of data offers them something deeper. The language of inquiry. The architecture of how we know what we know.

What is ontology? What is epistemology? What is a research paradigm, and how does one choose the right one? These are not abstract academic questions. These are invitations. What kind of world do you believe exists? What kind of knower do you believe you are? And what kind of knowledge do you believe is worth collecting?

Montessori children are perfectly poised to explore this. They already question. They already observe. They already collect data on the living world, the material world, and the inner world.

And we, as Montessori educators, are already researchers. That is our natural default. We do not need to be trained into this way of being. It is already ours. We observe. We note. We shift. We adapt. We listen again. None of this is new.

So let the students not just gather data but reflect on the act of gathering. Let them not just analyze, but ask: “Why am I asking this question in this way?” Let them consider: “Is this qualitative, or quantitative? Or is it both?” Let them wonder: “What does it mean to know?”

Maybe they start that at the beginning of the school year in August, and then they revisit it over the school year. If they have implemented the idea of having a tech-free day at school, that could be part of the data. If they have decided to do it at home, that could also be part of the data. The whole situation is data rich.

And there are companies like Y Montessori who would love to support crunching this Montessori data with students, who would love to have this as part of their research. What our students say about themselves. What our students feel about their own digital use. And then somehow map that against how they are feeling generally. They could score one to ten for mental well-being, physical well-being, emotional happiness, and so on. These things are important.

But what if we did not just treat this as measurement? What if data were not just something we extract and analyze, but something we tend to? What if data were a form of care?

When a child observes their own life, when they take note of their time, their feelings, their habits, that is not just analysis, that is relationship. That is attention. That is trust. This kind of data is not cold. It is warm. It is real. It is a way of saying; “I am paying attention to myself. I am learning how I live.”

Our students could get into the habit of going, “Ah, that is interesting. I have seen my happiness rating go up, as we implemented that one day a week in school.” They might notice, “My well-being rating went up when my whole family decided that Mondays were going to be the screen-free day.”

All of us have ideas that will play into this data research.

But unless we start seeing data we can trust because we have created it, the Montessori-created community might remain suspicious of technology. But, by creating data we can point to…“Here are our students. Day one. This is what our students were saying about their mental health, mental well-being, digital use, screen contact, and so on. Here is their well-being in August, and here are the results for May. Here is their well-being at home and at school…”

What if our students return to school in August 2025 with a high rating of calm and well-being, they have been on holiday, they are content, and then they enter the school and they are still calm, happy. And they are going through the school year, and they are still calm and happy. There is no stress. What would that say about their private or public Montessori school experience?

Would we be willing, then, to partner with any of the public-school systems who would like to do the same experiment, and then compare data? What would the comparison look like, would we find similarities or differences?

Our baseline starts at a very high level. And we, as Montessori educators, know that. But we do not have the data to prove it. There are some amazing researchers who are doing this type of research, but we need to make sure our students are leading this process.

If we want to move the needle in any way for the Montessori community, this is the year to do it.

The questions are there, the questions are endless:

What does it feel like to be on a digital-free day?

What happens in the classroom, in the home, when no one is distracted?

What is the emotional texture of screen time versus shared time?

What human experiences are being crowded out?

What is not being formed?

What have I missed noticing in my own life, simply because I have not paused to look?

And what might we all begin to see, if we really started paying attention?