DECROLY, OVIDE. — Born at Renax (Eastern Flanders) on 23 July 1871 and died at Brussels on 12 September 1932, he was one of the most eminent representatives of the “new schools” movement. From the results obtained with normal children he was led to apply the same methods to normal children, for whom, in 1907, he opened an institute at Ixelles called, after the street in which it was established, Ecole de l'Ermitage. In 1914 D. obtained the chair of pedagogy at the higher institute of Bull Temps and in 1920 that of child psychology at the University of Brussels. D. founded his method on psychological bases (for this purpose he had founded the Belgian Society of Pedotechnics in 1905) and proceeded from the well-known principles of the active school, giving a system based on certain points, such as the environment, the composition of the classes, and the premises, and deriving its value and significance above all from the so-called “centres of interest.” Interest, in D.’s conception, is the pupil’s active participation in the life of the school, indeed in life itself, because the school—that is, the child’s interest—is identified with human life itself in its primordial and fundamental needs. If the centre of interest is, let us say, wool, it can give rise to a great variety of exercises capable of keeping the children’s attention and minds alert for a considerable period of time. Knowledge—and therefore the method that leads to it—would no longer be dispersed among a series of disciplines detached from one another, but linked to a principle, to a centre, from which it would unfold, recognizing itself in every part as an aspect of a whole. From this principle there arose in D. the other particular aspect of his system, namely the global method now adopted in the schools of many countries. It consists in grasping the word in its totality, which is the very reality of the word, and not in its syllabic fragmentation, which has no reason to exist in the child’s consciousness. The child learns to pronounce the whole word, not the syllable; therefore he must learn to read and write, not by analytically breaking the word down into syllables, but by inserting the word into the sentence. The adult can perform the analysis because he has already arrived at, and is conscious of, the synthesis.
D.’s method, with its centres of interest, is certainly not without its fascination; but, on closer examination, it reveals at least a particular limitation and insufficiency. There is no doubt that, if the principle that there can be no school where interest is absent is valid, it must nevertheless be said that interest must be living and real; and it must not only proceed from the centre of human life, but must embrace the whole human being, who is nature and spirit, body and also soul; who walks upon the earth, but feels that the goal of his journey cannot be exhausted or brought to completion in this world. The child is aware that his inner life is rich in affections linking him to the family, society, tradition, religion, and God. From the methodological point of view, it may be good for the child to be placed at the centre of the school; but it must also be recognized—and the child himself recognizes it—that outside and above him there is a truth toward which he must strive with all the impetus and strength of his soul. The school must not give the child only the ability to function in the environment in which he lives; it must ensure that the child himself recognizes within him a more concrete humanity that raises him to an ideal world which he would seek in vain within the circle of his life, wholly woven from biological needs.
Studies: A. Hamaide, La méthode D., Neuchâtel-Paris 1922; E. Euguenin, La méthode D., in L'éducation, 1923; I. Dechamps, L'autoéducation 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 translation, in Per una scuola attiva secondo l'ordine cristiano, Brescia 1940); A. Ferrière, D., in Éducation, part 2, February 1936, p. 68; Fr. De Moor, L'école active par la méthode de D., Brussels 1937; G. Gabrieli, La scuola in cammino, Florence 1938, pp. 102–33; E. Codignola, Le « Scuole nuove » e i loro problemi, there n. d., pp. 74–79; E. Planchard, La pédagogie scolaire contemporaine, Tournai-Paris 1948, pp. 263–68 and passim. Nino Sammartano