Jean-Ovide Decroly (

Ronse Ronse (; ) is a Belgian city and a municipality in the Flemish province of East Flanders. The municipality only encompasses the city of Ronse proper. History Early settlements to 14th century The hills around Ronse show clues of human a ...

, 23 July 1871 –

Uccle Uccle (French language, French, ) or Ukkel (Dutch language, Dutch, ) is one of the List of municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. Located in the southern part of the region, it ...

, 10 September 1932) was a Belgian

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. w ...

and

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and explanation, interpretatio ...

. He studied

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at the

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, with half a year at the

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where he studied the action of toxins and antitoxins on general nutrition in 1898. He later worked with (mentally) handicapped children at the neurological clinic in

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

. Decroly founded The Hermitage School in 1907. He was a

freemason Freemasonry (sometimes spelled Free-Masonry) consists of fraternal groups that trace their origins to the medieval guilds of stonemasons. Freemasonry is the oldest secular fraternity in the world and among the oldest still-existing organizati ...

, and a member of the lodge

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of the

Grand Orient of Belgium The Grand Orient of Belgium (, ; or G.O.B.) is a Belgian cupola of masonic lodges which is only accessible for men, and works in the basic three symbolic degrees of freemasonry. History The Grand Orient of Belgium was founded in 1833, three y ...

in Brussels. Nowadays the "Ecole Decroly" (based in

, Brussels, a school reaching from kindergarten to baccalaureate) follows his pedagogical approach.

The Decroly plan

The Decroly plan laid ground rules for social adaptation of a biological organism, in the concrete case, children. It concluded that schooling is needed for children to meet their biosocial needs. Followers of Decroly have gone on to create and start schools that primarily focus on these "biosocial needs", and better augment the student's educational experience.

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, Ronse, Belgium)

References

External links

* *
BiographyEcoledecroly in Uccle (Brussels)Ovide Decroly, A hero of education, Van Gorp
19th-century Belgian educators 20th-century Belgian educators Belgian educational theorists 1871 births 1932 deaths Belgian psychologists People from Ronse {{belgium-bio-stub