ABSTRACT
FouRIER's importance is primarily as an acute cnt1c of the traditional system of his time. He was however a constructive critic who attempted to offer an alternative to that system, but his proposals were altogether so radical and fantastic as to be unacceptable as a whole. His ideas inevitably courted total rejection as a system. However, he did emphasize, in a highly original, if exaggerated, manner, aspects of the education of children which had been previously neglected or ignored. And so we find that if his ideas are examined individually, one by one, each on its own merits, and stripped of its fancy dress, there is frequently in them material which can assist in the understanding of modern educational thought, and particularly communist practice.1
