András Pető

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Professor András Pető (born in Hungary in 1893) was a practitioner of physical rehabilitation whose work provided the foundation for conductive education.

Between 1930 and 1938, Pető published many literary, philosophical and medical works. He was the editor-in-chief of the periodical Biologische Heilkunst (Biological Healing).

His institute, the National Institute of Motor Therapy, officially opened in 1952. Instead of following the medical model of providing different therapies, Pető created a framework for an educational model in which children with disabilities could have an education that met their particular physical and intellectual needs.

Conductive education (CE) entered the public consciousness in the mid-1980s, as a result of two television documentaries —"Standing Up For Joe" (1986), and "To Hungary with Love" (1987). In recent years, CE has gained more and more acceptance in the education of children with motor disorders. While CE had been developed first and foremost for children who had cerebral palsy or brain injury, CE has also been used with adults with Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and after-stroke conditions.