Montessori mother - Kamelini Montessori

VI
PREFACE
answers, answers which, from the nature of the subject,
could be neither categorical nor brief. How
many evenings have I talked from the appearance of
the coffee-cups till a very late bedtime, in answer to
the demand, " Now, you've been to Rome ; you've seen
the Montessori schools. You saw a great deal of Dr.
Montessori herself and were in close personal rela-
tions with her. Tell us all about it. Is it really so
wonderful? Or is it just a fad? Is it true that the
children are allowed to do exactly as they please?
I should think it would spoil them beyond endurance.
Do they really learn to read and write so young?
And isn't it very bad for them to stimulate them so
unnaturally? And ..." this was a never- failing
cry, " what is there in it for our children, situated
as we are? "
Staggered by the amount of explanation necessary
to give the shortest answers that would be intelligible
to these searching, but, on the whole, quite mis-
directed questions, I tried to put off my interrogators
with the excellent magazine articles which have appeared
on the subject, and with the translation of
Dr. Montessori's book. There were various objections
to being relegated to these sources of informa-
tion. Some of my inquisitors had been too doubtful
of the value of the perhaps over-heralded new ideas
to take the trouble to read the book with the close
and serious attention necessary to make anything out
of its careful and scientific presentation of its theories.
Others, quite honestly,
in the breathless whirl of