Teaching: Montessori in the Slums

Founding the first modern Montessori school in the U.S. turned red-haired Nancy McCormick Rambusch from a housewife into a stormy prophetess. Her success in setting up the Whitby School in Greenwich, Conn., led to so much demand for her advice that she went on to start the American Montessori Society. "I'm sort of the Mary Baker Eddy of this organization," she remarks, a little ruefully. But Nancy Rambusch is proud that beginning with Whitby in 1958, the Montessori movement in the U.S. has grown to 100 private schools (38 of them belonging...