Fernand Oury
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Fernand Oury (1920 - 1997) was a pedagogue and creator of the Ecole Modern, recommending (and putting into practice) a "school of the people", where the children are no longer the passive ones "taught", but the people with a whole share in managing their trainings and the everyday life of their classes. Oury intended this to occur by means of pupil's councils, school funds, and individualized trainings.
In 1950 as a teacher Oury reacted to the horrible state of the French educational system --what he described as "overloaded classes", "colossal school sizes", and "absurd regulations" by initiating with school leadership (including Célestin Freinet) the revision of organizational practice within urban schools. By 1958, following on the heels of initiatives made by brother Jean Oury, François Tosquelles, and Lucien Bonnafe in the creation of Institutional Psychotherapy, Fernand founds the discipline of institutional pedagogy, the object of which would be the progressive analysis of liberating means of education.
His framework of analysis initially consisted of three pillars of consideration (1964):
1) Materialist: the equipment, the techniques of organisation and initiating activities, consideration of concrete situations, and concrete relations.
2) Sociological: consideration of the class, groups and grouping of groups and classes and effects; intercommunications and phenomena within groups that overdetermine behaviour and evolutions of the students.
3) Psychoanalytic: to quote Oury "acknowledged or disclaimed, the unconscious is in the class and it speak... It is better to understand that to be subjected it."
Yet as perhaps the most well-known name in institutional pedagogy, Oury maintained an open relationship with respect to defining the scope and practice of teaching.
By 1966 Oury and psychoanalyst Aïda Vasquez, along with the G.E.T. (Groups d’Education Therapeutics) begin to work out the practical and theoretical instruments Institutional Pedogagy would develop as a practice. This was accomplished primarily through the elaboration of monographs. The practice of publishing articles of analysis, case-studies and critiques also began to be encouraged.
In 1978 Oury and others establish CEPI (the Collective of Teams of Institutional Pedagogy), and the MPI (Association for the Support of Institutional Pedogagy), both still in existence today. Their primary tasks are the publication and dissemination of institutional pedagogic literature, reports, analyses and case-studies, the promotion and activism in favor of progressive pedagogic practices, and the education of teachers, social workers and others in Institutional Pedagogic practices.
Fernand Oury was the author of:
Chronique de l'école-caserne, with Jacques Pain, MASPERO - 1972
De la classe coopérative... à la Pédagogie Institutionnelle, with Aïda Vasquez, 1ère edition Maspéro 1971
Vers une Pédagogie Institutionnelle ?, with Aïda Vasquez, Éd. Matrice, 1991
Qui c'est l'conseil ?, with Catherine Pochet, MASPERO - 1979
«L'année dernière, j'étais mort...» signé Miloud, with Jean Oury & Catherine Pochet, MATRICE, 1992