The founding of Conductive Education is associated with Dr. Andras Peto. The highly educated physician and educator was born on September 11, 1893 in Szombathely, Hungary where he also attended school.  The shaping of his view of life was probably determined by the strict upbringing he had received from his mother who was a teacher by profession and the fate of his father who was suffering from Parkinson's disease.

His concern with the therapy for motor disabilities originating from damage to the central nervous system began in 1922 in Simmering Sanatorium.  The basic principles of Conductive Education appear already in his articles published in 1931.  In 1938 laid the foundations of his conductive pedagogical system which he later elaborated in detail.

Professor Peto started to implement his original, comprehensive personality development in 1948 for children with motor disabilities.  Following a successful two-year experimental period in 1950 he could launch the National Institute for Movement Therapy which has been in function to date and remained under his directorship until his death in 1967.

Today conductive pedagogy, the Peto method is a 'Hungaricum'.  We cannot say it is the sole miraculous answer for everybody with a motor disability.  It has been proved, however, that at least one third of individuals with motor disabilities of central nervous origin develop better with Conductive Education than with other methods.

Conductive Education began to make its appearance in North American in the 1990's as pilot projects staffed with Hungarian-trained conductors began cropping up.  The first and only North American conductor-teacher training program began enrolling at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan in August 2000.  Conductive Education in North America received another boost when CBS aired a special on CE at the Peto Institute in February 2004. 

Currently, there are approximately 30 centers providing Conductive Education in North America.