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Fernand Deligny, enfant et institution

Fernand Deligny, enfant et institution

Pour une histoire de l'enfance en marge

Preface by Michel Chauvière

La croisée des chemins



Fernand Deligny, child and institution
A history of childhood on the margins

While the 19th century put children in school, the first half of the 20th focused on those who didn't go. Whether described as retarded, delinquent, orphaned, insane or in moral danger, children on the margins of society saw the development of an institutional edifice around them which, between the beginning of the century and the end of the 1960s, gradually acquired material consistency and ideological unification.

By examining the trajectory and work of Fernand Deligny (1913-1996), schoolteacher, educator and writer, this book aims to redraw this history. Without limiting itself to the legislative innovations that marked the period or to the actors who were the founders, it aims to shed light on the ideological evolutions that underpin this development. By looking back at the alliances, oppositions and confrontations between the main figures of this period, this philosophical investigation aims to better situate Deligny's place, and to shed new light on two concepts at the heart of this history: the institution and the child.