Edouard Séguin

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Edouard Séguin

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

Life

Séguin came from a respected family of doctors. He studied medicine. He received important impulses for his further career from Jean Itard , who aroused his interest in teaching and bringing up mentally disabled children. Itard's methods and didactic materials were later to develop Séguin into a complete educational theory.

Séguin made his first attempts at teaching from 1837 as a teacher in the "Department for Idiots " of the Paris insane asylum in Bicêtre . In 1840 he founded the first private school for the mentally handicapped in Paris, which he financed through his literary work. Séguin belonged to the circle of Saint-Simonists , whose members included the writer Victor Hugo , with whom he also became friends.

As a result of his educational experience, the first systematic textbook for the upbringing and education of mentally handicapped children, Traitement moral, hygiène et éducation des idiots , was published in 1846 , which no longer made any fundamental distinction between handicapped and non-handicapped children.

The political situation after the failed revolution of 1848 forced Séguin, who had actively participated in political calls to defend the republic during the period of the revolutionary pre-march , to emigrate from France to the USA in 1850. There he first settled in Cleveland (Ohio) as a doctor. In 1852 he made the acquaintance of Hervey B. Wilbur , who, supported by Séguin, founded the first school for the mentally handicapped in New York in 1854. Also in 1854, Séguin took over the management of the "Pennsylvania Training School for Idiots", which he soon gave up again, presumably due to the serious illness of his wife. In 1860 he established himself as a doctor in Mount Vernon , Washington state . In 1861 he received his doctorate. med. In 1862 Séguin became a member of the prestigious American Medical Association . In 1863 he moved to New York and organized the establishment of the "School for Defectives" on Randall's Island .

Under the title Idiocy and its Treatment by the Physiological Method , a completely revised version of his textbook from 1846 was published in 1866. It was published in German in 1912 in an abridged version by Salomon Krenberger . In 1873 Séguin traveled to Austria as commissioner of the USA for the education sector , where he visited the Vienna World Exhibition , about which he published the 137-page report Report on Education in 1875 . In 1876, Séguin was elected the first president of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiots and Feeble-Minded Persons.

His ideas were rediscovered around 1900 by the Italian doctor and teacher Maria Montessori . Mainly mediated through their work, they still exert an influence on pedagogy today.

bibliography

  • Dagmar Hänsel (1974): The 'physiological education' of the feeble-minded. Freiburg i. Br. (Schulz).
  • Édouard Séguin (1846): Traitement moral, hygiène et éducation des idiots. Paris (JB Balliere). (German: see Séguin 2011)
  • Édouard Séguin (1875): Report on Education. Vienna International Exhibition 1873. Washington.
  • Édouard Séguin (1912): Idiocy and its treatment according to the physiological method. Vienna (Graeser).
  • Édouard Séguin (2011): Moral Treatment, Hygiene and Education of Idiots . Marburg (Tectum). ( ISBN 978-3-8288-2814-8 )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Idiocy and its Treatment by the Physiological Method . (PDF (813 kB)) In: th-hoffmann.eu (private website). Retrieved on August 14, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Séguin, Édouard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French doctor and educator
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1812
PLACE OF BIRTH Clamecy (Nièvre)
DATE OF DEATH October 28, 1880
Place of death new York