DECROLY, OVIDE. — Born at Renaix (East Flanders) on 23 July 1871 and died in Brussels on 12 September 1932, he is one of the most eminent representatives of the "new schools" movement. From his work with abnormal children, he was led to apply the same methods to normal children, for whom, in 1907, he opened an institute in Ixelles known, from the street on which it stood, as the Ecole de l'Ermitage. In 1914 Decroly obtained the chair of pedagogy at the École des Hautes Études in Brussels, and in 1920 that of child psychology at the University of Brussels. Decroly bases his method on psychological foundations (for this purpose he had founded in 1905 the Belgian Society of Orthopedagogics) and starts from the well-known principles of the active school, developing a system based on several key points, such as the environment, class composition, the physical setting, and which takes on particular value and meaning in the so-called "centres of interest." In Decroly’s conception, interest is an active participation of the pupil in the life of the school, indeed in life itself, because the school—i.e., the child’s interest—is identified with the very life of man in its primordial and fundamental needs. If, for example, the centre of interest is wool, it can give rise to a wide variety of exercises that can hold the attention and mind of the children for a considerable period of time. Knowledge—and thus the method that leads to it—would no longer be dispersed across a series of disconnected disciplines, but would be linked to a principle, to a centre, from which it could be articulated and recognized in every part as an aspect of a whole. From this principle arises another distinctive aspect of his system: the global method, now adopted in schools in many countries. It consists in grasping the word in its entirety, which is the reality of the word itself, and not in its syllabic fragmentation, which has no place in the child’s consciousness. The child learns to pronounce the normal word, not the syllable; therefore, he must learn to read and write not by analytically breaking down the word into syllables, but by inserting the word into a sentence. The adult can perform the analysis because he has already attained and is conscious of the synthesis.
Decroly’s method, with its centres of interest, undoubtedly has its appeal; but, on closer examination, it reveals at least a particular limitation and inadequacy. There is no doubt that if the principle holds that no school can succeed without interest, it must be said that this interest must be alive and real, and must not only spring from the centre of human life but must engage the whole person, who is both nature and spirit, body and soul; who walks on earth but feels that the goal of his journey cannot be confined or concluded in this world. The child senses that his inner life is rich with affections that bind him to family, society, tradition, religion, and God. While it may be methodologically sound to place the child at the centre of the school, it must also be recognized—and the child himself senses it—that beyond and above him there is a truth toward which he must strive with all the ardour and strength of his soul. The school must not merely equip the child to function in the environment in which he lives; it must also enable the child to recognize within himself a more concrete humanity that elevates him to an ideal world which he would vainly seek within the circle of a life entirely woven from biological exigencies.
Studies: A. Hamaide, La méthode D., Neuchâtel-Paris 1922; E. Euguenin, La méthode D., in L'éducation, 1923; I. Dechamps, L'autodéduction à l'école appliquée au programme du dr. D., Brussels 1924; E. Flayol, Le dr. D. éducateur, Paris 1934; E. Devaud, Le système D. et la pédagogie chrétienne, Brussels 1936 (Italian trans., in Per una scuola attiva secondo l'ordine cristiano, Brescia 1940); A. Ferrière, D., in Education, part 2, Feb. 1936, p. 68; Fr. De Moor, L'école active par la méthode D., Brussels 1937; G. Gabrieli, La scuola in cammino, Florence 1938, pp. 102-133; E. Codignola, Le «Scuole nuove» e i loro problemi, 1938, pp. 74-79; E. Planchard, La pédagogie scolaire contemporaine, Tournai-Paris 1948, pp. 263-68 and passim. Nino Sammartano