Dévaud, Eugène

DÉVAUD, EUGÈNE. - Priest, b. in Fribourg on 7 March 1876. First an inspector of elementary schools, he was afterwards a professor and director of the normal school of his Canton. From 1910 he was professor of the science of education and rector at the Catholic University of Fribourg; he died there in 1944. D., a Swiss and a Catholic, found before him the claims of the "new schools," which in Switzerland had found and still find a welcome and followers.

The problem that D. poses for himself in the face of the claim of the "active" school is that of seeing whether a movement such as the activistic one, bent, at bottom, entirely upon "natural" man, can be reconciled with the Christian order, or rather whether the activistic principle of education is not implicit in the Christian order, without Christianity for that reason taking it over on loan. Methods and their technique do not constitute the whole of pedagogy: they are empty forms if within them there is not concealed a content that is our own humanity, our human and religious world, which resolves the value of the means (method) in the value of the end

(God). "If these points are neglected," D. affirms, "the acquisition of knowledge is merely a corrupting and deceptive exercise." The old school, the one that D. calls "passive," was based entirely on means, neglecting the ends of man's life. Not differently, however, did the "new" school act. To D. it seems that the active school strives "to make the child alert materially, no doubt, but above all spiritually." Now, this aim, if it is considered as the conclusion of the education of the intelligence, is insufficient and is outside the Christian order, because "it remains too exclusively bound to the adaptation of man to material realities." D., in agreement with Foerster, thinks that the methods which train the child's aptitudes to extricate himself skillfully and to take the best advantage of the resources offered by the environment are good, yes; but it is not from them that the greater educative force flows. This flows rather "from the great supra-individual truths, from the supreme ends clearly established, which join the passing and wavering being to something that stands above temporal effort and above fragile and ever-changing human opinions" (Foerster). The school must have God as its center, as the end of man and of life; the various forms of activistic schools have instead fixed, in general, their curricula by centering on man, individual and society. In an active school according to the Christian order, such as it is in D.'s conception, the teacher has a wholly particular function, and anything but a secondary or negative one. If "the true causes of the pupil's intellectual formation are external, the truth is internal: the intelligence, which, being ordered to truth, reaches out to it with an eager and spontaneous movement," the teacher has the task of striving "to present the truth to the boy in such a way that he recognizes it as true, is 'gripped' by it, loves it, wills it, opens his intelligence to it, and effectively disposes himself to submit his person and his life to it."

Works: L'école primaire sous la République helvétique 1779-1804 (Fribourg 1904); L'enseignement de l'histoire naturelle à l'école primaire (Lausanne 1909; Namur 1935); La correction des défectueuses du parler (Lausanne 1911); La pédagogie scolaire en Russie soviétique (Paris 1932); Pour une école active selon l'ordre chrétien (Ibid. 1934; Italian trans., Brescia 1940); Pédagogie du cours supérieur (Fribourg 1935); Le système Decroly et la pédagogie chrétienne (Namur 1935; Italian trans. Brescia 1940, constituting part 2 of the volume: Per una scuola attiva secondo l'ordine cristiano); Quarante exercises de lecture silencieuse (Namur and Lausanne 1937); L'école affirmatrice de vie (Namur and Fribourg 1936); Les leçons de pédagogie d'un manuel de lecture américain (Tamines and Lausanne 1939); Pédagogie à ciel ouvert : le Chauvène Manjon et les écoles de l'Axe Maria de Grenade (Fribourg 1939).

Nino Sammartano