EDUCATION 295 



British interest in Hegel has been exhibited by the appearance of Dr. M'Taggart's 

 Commentary on Hegel's Logic (1910) and Prof. J. Baillie's translation of the Phenome- 

 nology of Mind (1910). In the history of ancient Philosophy the main in- 

 terest, as for some years past, has lain in the study of Plato, who seems at 

 last to be receiving the minute and careful attention which scholars in the 

 last half of the nineteenth century reserved chiefly for Aristotle. As indications of the 

 revived interest in Platonism may be mentioned the two publications of the veteran 

 Constantin Ritter, Neue Untersuchungen iiber Platon (1910) and Platon, sein Leben, 

 seine Schriften, seine Lehre (vol. i, 1910); G. Werner, Aristotle et I'ldealisme Platonicienne 

 (1910); J. Adam, The Vitality of Platonism (1911); to which the present writer may be 

 pardoned if he adds A. E. Taylor, Varia Socratica (Series i, 1911). The steady progress 

 made with the Oxford complete translation of Aristotle continues to make it easier for 

 the English-speaking student to enter into the thought of the second great philosopher 

 of antiquity. (A. E. TAYLOR.) 



' y EDUCATION 1 



THE MONTESSORI SYSTEM 



In connection with the theory of education the chief point of new interest during 

 1910-12 has been the attention aroused by Dr. Maria Montessori's work in Italy. It 

 is not too much to say that, since Froebel, no such stimulus has been given to a revolu- 

 tion in the elements of educational method as her success in connection with the Case 

 dei Bambini in Rome ; and the Montessori system has given a new direction to the whole 

 " Kindergarten " idea. In The Montessori Method (trans. Anne E. George, 1912) Dr. 

 Montessori has now published a full account of her own principles and experiments, 

 excellent short accounts of which were given by Miss Josephine Tozier in the Fortnightly 

 Review for August 1911 and McClure's Magazine for May 1911 (see also A Montessori 

 Mother, by Mrs. Dorothy Canfield Fisher, New York, 1912}; the Board of Education 

 in England, in October 1912, issued a Special Report on tne subject by Mr. E. G. A. 

 Holmes. From these the main points of interest are here summarised. 



Maria Montessori (b. 1870) came to the study of educational theory after a thorough 

 training in practical medicine. She was the first woman to whom (in 1894) the Universi- 

 ty of Rome gave the degree of M.D., and as assistant doctor in the "psychiatry" clinic 

 at the university she had become specially interested in the question of the treatment of 

 the feeble-minded. At the Pedagogic Congress at Turin in 1898 she gave an address on 

 this subject, which led the Italian Minister of Education, Signor Barcelli, to ask her to 

 give a series of lectures to teachers in Rome; the result was the foundation of a new 

 school for feeble-minded children, the Scuola Ortofrenica, of which she was made 

 directress. Her ideas as to the proper way of awakening a defective intelligence had 

 been founded on a study of what Dr. Itard, physician to the Institution for the Deaf 

 and Dumb in Paris, had attempted early in the igth century in the case of the much- 

 discussed "wild boy of Aveyron," and particularly of the later work of Edouard Seguin 

 (1812-1880), author of the Traitement des idiots (1846), who opened in 1839 the first 

 school for idiots in France, and who in 1850 made his home in America and there did so 

 much for the education of defective children. In carrying on Seguin's principles at the 

 Scuola Ortofrenica for the two years that she was directress, Dr. Montessori had such 

 remarkable success that it was borne in upon her that something must be wrong with 

 the methods of education ordinarily applied to normal children. Idiots sent to her from 

 the asylums were being taught to read and write so that they passed just as good exami- 

 nations as pupils of the same age in the public-schools; and, as she says, " while everyone 

 was admiring the progress of my idiots, I was wondering what could keep the normal 

 children on so low a plane." The reason, in her opinion, was clear; the children from 

 the asylums, under her treatment, had been helped in their psychic development, while 



1 See E. B. viii, 951 et seq. and allied articles enumerated in Index Volume, p. 894. 

 For progress in various national systems, see under country-headings in the Local Part of 

 the YEAR-BOOK. 



