(born July 23, 1871, Renaix, Belg.—died Sept. 10, 1932, Brussels), Belgian pioneer in the education of children, including those with physical disabilities. Through his work as a physician, Decroly became involved in a school for disabled children and consequently became interested in education. One outcome of this interest was his establishment in 1901 of the Institute for Abnormal Children in Uccle, Belg. Decroly credited the school’s homelike atmosphere with helping students achieve better and more-consistent educational results than those typically achieved by nonhandicapped students in regular schools. Successes there prompted Decroly to apply his methods to the education of nonhandicapped children, and to this end he opened the École de l’Ermitage in Brussels in 1907.
Viewing the classroom as a workshop, Decroly based his curriculum on an analysis of children’s needs organized within the four categories of food, shelter, defense, and work. One’s needs formed the centre of a year’s study, and, within the framework of their needs, children were encouraged to develop their individual interests. His program became known as the Decroly method.
Progressive education, movement that took form in Europe and the United States during the late 19th century as a reaction to the alleged narrowness and formalism of traditional education. One of its main objectives was to educate the “whole child”—that is, to attend to physical and emotional, as well as intellectual, growth. The school was conceived of as a laboratory in which the child was to take an active part—learning through doing. The theory was that a child learns best by actually performing tasks associated with learning. Creative and manual arts gained importance in the curriculum, and children were encouraged toward experimentation and independent thinking. The classroom, in the view of Progressivism’s most influential theorist, the American philosopher John Dewey, was to be a democracy in microcosm.
special education, speacil education also called special needs education, the education of children who differ socially, mentally, or physically from the average to such an extent that they require modifications of usual school practices. Special education serves children with emotional, behavioral, or cognitive impairments or with intellectual, hearing, vision, speech, or learning disabilities; gifted children with advanced academic abilities; and children with orthopedic or neurological impairments. See also deafness; blindness; speech disorder; mental disorder; gifted child; childhood disease and disorder; learning disabilities.
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