'Education through life and work': pedagogical programme of care for physically disabled children and youth in the Czech lands in the first half of the twentieth century
Abstract
It is reconstructed in the first part of the chapter, there was a search for the 'healthy', 'eubiotic' forms of life (eu = good; bios = life) and the 'natural' forms of education of the 'new school', which were based, among other things, on the results of experimentally oriented educational sciences and research such as 'child study' (Kinderforschung). In no case should children with severe physical disabilities be excluded from this reform life.
The second part of the chapter uses the example of the pedagogical reform work of two directors of an exemplary institution for education and training of severely disabled children (the Jedlička Institute in Prague) in order to analyse how the principles of the reform of school and education designed for 'common school' also determined the concept and focus of the pedagogical work in institutions and schools for children and youth with severe physical disabilities. And one asks whether and how the discourse of 'new school' in the case of the education of severely disabled children and youth has been biologised by eugenic concepts?