Ovide Decroly

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Jean-Ovide Decroly (born July 23, 1871 in Ronse; Ukkel, 1932) was a Belgian teacher and psychologist.

He studied medicine at the University of Ghent, with half a year at the University of Berlin where he studied the action of toxins and antitoxins on general nutrition in l898. He later worked with (mentally) handicapped children at the neurological clinic in Brussels.

Decroly founded the The Hermitage School in 1907. He was a freemason, and a member of the lodge Les Amis Philanthropes of the Grand Orient of Belgium in Brussels.

[edit] The Decroly plan

The "Decroly plan" lays ground rules for social adaptation of a biological organism, in the concrete case, children. It concludes that schooling is needed for children to meet their "biosocial needs".

[edit] Quotes

To educate in its fullest sense is to create conditions in which the child can live - and is led by these conditions led to live-as fully as possible through each succeeding stage of his development, meeting and solving in his own experience the problems of each stage as it comes, and so gaining the power to meet and to solve the problems that await him in further stages. Such conditions it is for a school to provide. (Decroly cited by J.H. Badley, Dr. Ovide Decroly ed. Albert Decordier, Amicale Rijksbasisonderwijs, Renaix, Belgium)