Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/618

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614
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

cation, but it would also seem that she is in harmony with modern progress and has made some contribution to educational practise. Just how large this contribution will be, we can not yet say. Montessori herself is still experimenting both with children of the age with which she began and with older pupils, and schools on a purely Montessori basis or in combination with Froebelian or other methods are springing up everywhere and are likely to obtain illuminating results. It is possible that a new method may yet arise for the lowest classes in our schools, which will combine the best characteristics of both the Froebelian and the Montessorian pedagogy. At any rate, the existence of either as a system, cult or propaganda should end, and both should be based upon and merged with the wider and more dynamic principles of modern educational practise. The Montessori method can be accounted a fad only when half-baked devotees treat it as something that has leaped full-panoplied from the divine head and prostrate themselves before it in blind worship.