A . PLEKHANOV The Pedagogical Theory and Practice of

“It seems to me that we have been wrong to discard Montessori altogether . . . ,” said Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaia at a Moscow gathering of teachers of zero-level groups in 1931. It is worth recalling that Nadezhda Konstantinovna more than once drew the attention of preschool upbringing theoreticians and practitioners to the necessity of making a critical study of the pedagogical views and pedagogical experience of Froebel and Montessori. It was indisputable that they were engaged in “arch-bourgeois preschool upbringing”; nevertheless, it would be worthwhile to “borrow those things that are useful to us.” But what is “useful to us” in the theory and practice of Montessori? This is the question that we will attempt to answer. I t would be erroneous to approach the evaluation of the pedagogical heritage of any particular educator purely from a hackneyed angle and demand an unambiguous answer. Any “measurement” needs to be made on the basis of several parameters-namely, the worldview orientation of pedagogical views, the natural-scientific validity of the conception, the psychological-pedagogical architectonics of the theory, and the practical significance of the methodology. The methodological