Fernand Oury

Fernand Oury (1920 to 1998) was a French pedagogue and the creator of institutional pedagogy. He recommended and practiced a school of the people methodology in which children were no longer passive receivers but took part in managing their own learning, methods, relations and the everyday life of the class, which he called institutions in the sociological sense. Notable elements included the pupils' council, school funds and individualized curricula. As a teacher in 1950 he reacted against overloaded classes, very large schools and absurd regulations, and with fellow educator Celestin Freinet he worked with school leadership to reform urban schools. By 1958, following the institutional psychotherapy led by his brother Jean Oury and others, he founded the discipline of institutional pedagogy. His framework of analysis rested on three pillars, materialist, sociological and psychoanalytic. In 1978 he and others established the Collective of Teams of Institutional Pedagogy and an association supporting the practice, both still in existence.