His procedures included various activities designed to promote motor co-ordination, such as climbing ladders or walking along lines, and a wide range of experiences aimed at educating the senses, including exposure to bright colors, varied sounds, and objects of different shapes. Seguin built on this approach by applying what he called the “physiological method” of developing the motor and sensory capacities of the mentally deficient. This led him to the realization that even though mentally defective children could not be brought up to normal, they still possessed capacities which could be trained and developed.Itard’s educational methods were based on principles of the associationist school, which holds that an accumulation of sensory experience is the basis of all mental growth. Although Itard considered these attempts a failure because the boy learned only a few words, Seguin was impressed with the fact that he was able to master a number of useful habits. A psychologist as well as physician, Seguin was a pupil of the Parisian doctor Jean Itard, who became famous for his work on mental retardation and his attempts to educate a boy who had apparently lived nearly all of his eleven or twelve years in the woods of central France.
0 kommentar(er)
