Apart from these wider considerations, what has to be realized is that the right care of young children is highly skilled work, which parents cannot hope to do satisfactorily, and that it is quite different work from school-teaching in later years. To quote Miss McMillan again: The Nursery child has a fairly good physique. Not only do his neighbours in the slums fall far short of him: his “betters” in good districts, the middle-class children, of a very good type, fall short of him. It is clear that something more than parental love and “parental responsibility” are wanted. Rules of thumb have all broken down. “Parental love” without knowledge has broken down. Child nurture has not broken down. It is very highly skilled work. As regards the finances: A Nursery-School of 100 children can be run to-day at an annual cost of £12 per head, and of this sum the parents in the poorest quarters can pay one-third. A Nursery-School staffed by students will cost more, but the greater part of the increased cost would be paid as fees and maintenance of future teachers. An open-air nursery and training centre, numbering in all about 100 children and thirty students, costs as nearly as makes no difference £2,200 per annum. One more quotation: One great result of the Nursery-School will be that the children can get faster through the curriculum of to-day. When they are half or two-thirds through the present elementary school life they will be ready to go on to more advanced work.... In short, the Nursery-School, if it is a _real_ place of nurture, and not merely a place where babies are “minded” till they are five, will affect our whole educational system very powerfully and very rapidly. It will quickly raise the possible level of culture and attainment in all schools, beginning with the junior schools. It will prove that this welter of disease and misery in which we live, and which makes the doctor’s service loom bigger than the teacher’s, can be swept away. It will make the heavy walls, the terrible gates, the hard playground, the sunless and huge class-room look monstrous, as they are. It will give teachers a chance. The nursery-school occupies an intermediate position between early training of character and subsequent giving of instruction. It carries on both at once, and each by the help of the other, with instruction gradually taking a larger share as the child grows older. It was in institutions having a similar function that Madame Montessori perfected her methods. In certain large tenement houses in Rome, a large room was set apart for the children between three and seven, and Madame Montessori was put in charge of these “Children’s Houses”.[19] As in Deptford, the children came from the very poorest section of the population; as in Deptford, the results showed that early care can overcome the physical and mental disadvantages of a bad home.