Integralità della persona e cura educativa nell’opera di Édouard Séguin
Antonello Mura, Antioco Luigi Zurru
A pupil of Itard and educator at Bicêtre from 1842 to 1843, Séguin is universally counted among the initiators of special education and his works represent a legacy of pedagogical importance central to any consideration of Special Pedagogy. In spite of this, the special pedagogical recommendations which emerge from his work are often linked to certain «weaknesses» in its theoretical development. The construct of will, in fact, assumes the character of a metaphysical assertion which is undefined, both with regard to the scientific tendencies of the time and on a methodological level. This impasse prompts clarification of the elements that stimulate the author’s cultural identity and the dimensions through which the moral nature of education is created. The emergence of the centrality of the subject, the founding principal of the educational process outlined by Séguin, takes on particular importance in the definition of the pedagogical and methodological principals which give substance, even today, to the process of caring for and emancipating people with intellectual disabilities.
