There things might have remained till the ideals and economics of the twenty-first century saw off the remnants of the old ways of providing educational services for children with disabilities. Conductive Education remained almost unknown outside Hungary (remember, these were the years of the Cold War and the Iron Curtain) but in 1984 a BBC television documentary called Standing Up for Joe brought Petö’s State Institute vividly to the attention of families in the United Kingdom already profoundly dissatisfied with the provision made for their children by the health and education services in their country. Iron Curtain or no, many took their children to Budapest. Then, gathering enormous momentum from the fall of the Curtain at the end of 1989, they took steps to bring Hungarian conductors to work over here.

The British lead has been followed by families in almost all the developed economies and since the mid-nineties the conductive movement has been international rather that Hungarian. The emergence of the Internet has played an important role in facilitating this spontaneous grass-roots movement. Its driving force is largely the powerful commitment of parents who share the belief that positive and effective education for life will play a vital outcome in preparing their children for adulthood. They reject a ‘passive-acceptive’ approach to their children’s learning difficulties and along with this often the goals, means and rhetoric of their respective state systems.

The exercise of choice and new experience of ‘partnership’ with professionals has therefore been an important factor in the ideology of the conductive movement as it has spread out beyond its society of origin.