The Discovery Of The Child

INTRODUCTION VL

science," which has spread my method so far over the world, so
far from the land of its birth.

Professor Godefroy, lecturer in psycho-pathology in the Uni-
versity of Amsterdam, has expressed in the following manner
his opinion of the experiment:

" In the history of culture the Montessori movement seems-
to me to be an almost unique example of the development and
extremely rapid propagation of an attitude of life, and of a
method of developing the mind and the intelligence of the young,
generation. This fact is explicable only when one understands
that the doctrine of Madame Montessori has awakened in man
a sentiment which up till now had lain unknown and still latent
in hearts, and which was only waiting for the stimulant necessary
to make it rapidly and powerfully conscious of itself, in order
to give birth to new tendencies which seem suddenly to disclose
themselves both in education and in our personal life.

" When we try to find out to what social classes the followers
of Madame Montessori belong, it becomes clear that the most,
dissimilar currents of thought and the most diverse races have
representatives among them. There are to be found Christians
and Hindus, Catholics and Protestants, Radicals, Socialists, Con-
servatives, Javanese, Chinese, Australians, Europeans—peoples
showing very different characters. When one asks any one of
these what has been the attraction to the Montessori Method,
it seems most frequently to be that in it they find the realization
of some one or other of their own intimate, personal aspirations,
of their own favourite ideas. The fact that each one finds in it
what he seeks for his own soul proves that the ideas of Madame
Montessori make an appeal to the universal needs of the
soul.

"This, however, does not mean that the experience from
which this method originates is divorced from scientific exactitude.
In this respect also the Children's Houses are the results due to
true work in psychology." (V. Ferriere, Geneva, Demieres auvres
pedagogiques.)