De Perray-Vaucluse à La Jemmerais.

Klein, A. (2021). De Perray-Vaucluse à La Jemmerais. Revue d’histoire de l’enfance « irrégulière », (23), 123-137. 

During the ten years (between 1920 and 1930) that he was in charge of the colony for feeble-minded children in the Perray-Vaucluse asylum, psychiatrist Théodore Simon (1873-1961) worked to reinvent the way of taking care of his young residents. Following his own psycho-pedagogical work, done at the beginning of the century with his mentor the psychologist Alfred Binet (1857-1911), he imposed a regular educational and psychological evaluation of the children in order to determine both their learning capacity and the yield of their training. He thus created an original model of abnormal children’s care founded on experimental pedagogy. This model inspired the organization of the first Quebec institution for teachable feeble-minded children, the École La Jemmerais that was inaugurated in 1928 and was directed by one of his former student, the Quebecois psychiatrist Jean-Charles Miller (1898-1952). This paper describes this original model of abnormal children’s care and the story of its transatlantic transmission.

This content has been updated on 17 November 2021 at 11 h 48 min.