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The ongoing debate The figure of Maria Montessori stands out above most of those who were involved in the New Education movement. Rarely have attempts been made to establish a set of educational precepts, which would have such universal validity as hers, and very few others had such a powerful influence on developments in the world as a whole. The all-embracing nature of her ideas is perhaps all the more astonishing in view of the fact that in the initial stages of her research she concentrated on work with very young children, and only later extended it to include older children and the family. She regarded infancy as the critical phase in the evolution of the individual, during which the groundwork for all subsequent development is laid, and hence ascribed universal validity to statements about this period of life. Montessori was also an exemplary figure in that she sought to establish a meeting ground of theory and practice in the form of the Children’s Houses and her didactic materials. No other representatives of New Education put their theories into practice on the same scale; she initiated a varied programme on an international scale that remained without equal. The truly remarkable thing is that the discussion surrounding her ideas is just as livel