Édouard Séguin

Édouard Séguin ( born January 20, 1812 in Clamecy ( Nièvre), † October 28, 1880 in New York) was a French physician and educator and is regarded as the founder of a scientific and systematic mentally handicapped.

Life

Born on January 20, 1812, the son of a respected family doctor, Séguin studied after completion of the school medicine. Important impulses for his future career go from here by Jean Itard, who arouses interest in the information and education of mentally handicapped children in it. Itard methods and didactic materials Séguin will later develop into a complete theory of education.

His first attempts at teaching makes Séguin in 1837 as a teacher in the Department of idiots the Paris Bicêtre insane asylum. In 1840 he founded the first private school for the mentally handicapped in Paris, which he financed through his literary work. Séguin belongs to the district of Saint -Simon, one of whose members, among others, the writer Victor Hugo, with whom he is on friendly terms.

As a result of his educational experiences appear in 1846 the first systematic textbook for the upbringing and education of mentally handicapped children: Traitement moral, hygiène et éducation des idiots (Paris: JB Ballière ), which makes no difference in principle more between disabled and non- disabled children.

The political situation after the failed revolution of 1848 forced Séguin, who actively participated in the revolutionary period of the pre-March period of political calls for defense of the Republic, to emigrate from France to the United States in 1850. There he can be first in Cleveland / Ohio as a physician. In 1852 he made ​​the acquaintance of Hervey B. Wilbur ( 1787-1852 ), supported by the Séguin in 1854 founded the first school idiots in New York. Also in 1854 Séguin takes over the management of the "Pennsylvania Training School for Idiots ", which he, however - probably due to the serious illness of his wife - soon releases it. In 1860 he can be a doctor in Mount Vernon, Washington, down. 1861 Doctorate in medicine 1862 Séguin members of the prestigious " American Medical Association ". 1863 draws Séguin to New York, where he organized the construction of the " School for Defectives " on Randall's Iceland.

Under the title Idiocy and Its Treatment by the Physiological Method ( PDF; 813 kB) appears in 1866 a completely revised version of his textbook of 1846, which is published in 1912 in an abridged version of Salomon Krenberger ( 1861-1931 ) to German. 1873 travels Séguin as Commissioner of the United States for the education sector to Austria, where he attended the World Exhibition in Vienna, he published about 1875 a 137seitigen Report: Report on Education (Washington). 1876 ​​Séguin is elected the first President of the " Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiots and Feeble - Minded Persons".

Séguin dies on October 28, 1880 in New York.

His ideas, which have already fallen in Europe a few decades after his emigration to oblivion, rediscovered in 1900 by the Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori. Especially mediated through their work they practice up to now influence on the education of.

Bibliography

• Dagmar Hansel (1974 ): The ' physiological education ' of the feeble-minded. Freiburg ( Schulz ).
• Édouard Séguin (1846 ): Traitement moral, hygiène et éducation des idiots. Paris (J. B. Ballière ). ( German: see Séguin 2011)
• Édouard Séguin (1875 ): Report on Education. Vienna International Exhibition 1873. Washington.
• Édouard Séguin (1912 ): The Idiocy and its treatment by the physiological method. Vienna ( Graeser ).
• Édouard Séguin (2011): "Moral treatment, hygiene and education of idiots. " Marburg ( tectum ). (ISBN 978-3-8288-2814-8 )