My daughter came home from school one day with a piece of black yarn taped to her shirt. I started to worry. It was our first week sending our kids to a public Montessori school, and while I knew a bit about the educational model, the mildly ominous symbol raised a question that I know other parents have asked before: Is this some kind of cult?

I can now report with some confidence that, no, Montessori schooling is not a cult. They just do things differently. My daughter was 3 years old at the time, so she didn’t offer much in the way of explanation when I asked about the yarn. As her teacher later explained to me, the students were learning about controlling their speaking voices, and the teacher had held up long threads to represent loud voices and short threads to represent quieter tones. They kept the yarn as a reminder.