ANDRÁS PETŐ AND THE DOCTORS
The
past... and the future
András Pető was at loggerheads with much of the Hungarian medical establishment of his time.
D-4

András Pető was at loggerheads with much of the Hungarian medical establishment of his time.
The professional
community despised him. They were circulating rumours that he didn't
have a medical degree, that he was a quack. They were constantly
trying to dump him. Well, he was an eccentric. He wasn't a
conformist.
(Péter
Popper, p.79)
They said he was a
charlatan who treated patients with strange instructions, methods and
medication!
Mária
Hári, p.87
He himself was to
blame for the fact doctors and other professionals believed it to be
some kind of personal magnetism or suggestion.
Károly
and Magda Ákos – p.85
This
is how he put the problem –
Look, they bring a
person in here, he can't move. They roll him in here, then I
meditate. I look for the therapeutic movements that he needs, then
we'll do those.
Then they ask me
– How are you
healing?
I can't say 'I'm
meditating', they'll regard me as a cretin and they'll take the
children off me', and so on and so on.
So he couldn't say
this but he had to say something, and meditating wasn't a good enough
explanation.
(Vekerdy, p. 81)
By
1953 he was boldly asserting the overarching, explicitly stated
theoretical statement of his career, that his conductive motor
therapy was in fact a special pedagogy.
The
Ministry of Health did not like András
Pető and more than once tried to
close down his Institute.
Gábor
Palotás, who also belonged to his
circle of friends, came in out of breath.
– The Professor
has been put into retirement.
– That's no
problem, said the Professor, the problem is that the paper boy is
still a long way down the street.
He picked up the
receiver and called the Party Central Committee, one of the bigwigs,
I'm not saying his name on purpose, and he said –
– Pető
here. I have been put into retirement, yet again.
The Ministry
rescinded its intent to retire him a week later and apologised to
Pető.
They didn't like
Pető, they would have done
anything they could to close the Institute.
(Péter
Popper, p. 83)
He
wanted to be out from under their control and their persistent opposition.
They rejected him. Correspondingly, he rejected them.
Pető
kept assuring that he could not justify curing as was expected, so he
would go over to the Ministry of Culture and provide education, and
then he might be allowed to work in peace.
(Éva
Beck – p.80)
He
finally pulled this off.
The medical
community wanted to destroy Pető. Then a stroke of genius came to
mind... the main idea, he cooked it up together with Sándor
Török
(the writer), was this --
– I can't warrant
'curing'. I have to get rid of the doctors. I don't cure, I 'bring
up' and I 'educate.'
Therefore the
original name – Movement Therapy Institute – was changed to
Movement Education and Teacher Training Institute.
– This gambit
will transfer me from the Ministry of Health to the Ministry of
Education. Education is allowed, since it's not a science – not in
the same sense as medicine. I'll say I educate, and then they'll
leave me alone.
Tamás
Vekerdy, p. 80
His
victory came only after a long, political battle –
...through the
cooperation and help of many friends, including Sandor Torok, there
came the great twist; Peto – and his Institute – do not treat
these children, they educate and develop them. So the Institute was
not a therapeutic, a medical institution, and no longer came under
the Ministry of Health.
Tamás
Vekerdy, p. 84
In
the end, only in 1963, he finally succeeded in politicking his
Institute out from Heath and into Education, with the particular help
of ministers Gyula Ortutay, Béla
Bizsku and György
Aczél. The Minster of Culture at
that time was Pál
Ilku who wrote to congratulate him on this transfer, and on his
seventieth birthday –
You have had to
face lots of difficulties on your way, and lack of understanding, but now it is clear that the large-scale introduction of our pedagogical
method is inevitable. I honour your strength and persistence in
pursuing your noble aims.
(Tamás
Vekerdy, p. 81)
The
above selection was extracted from the Pető
Quotationary to which the page numbers refer.
Myth
or reality?
True
of false? Is this narrative a fair account of what really happened,
or something more partial, part of the smokescreen that András
Pető
generated around himself, his ideas and his work? Is it just part of
conductive pedagogy's Creation Myth, or has this tale been in itself
an essential component of the continuing story, part of the glue been
vital to holding the system together through all its travails? Who
knows?
Now
in 2017, at the direction of a very different government with very
different goals, PAF (the former András
Pető
Insittute)
is to be incorporated into the Semmelweis Medical University, at the
heart of Hungary's medical establishment. What will happen to this
story now?
Reference
–
(2013) CEP
Quotationary of András
Pető
and his Conductive Education,
Birmingham, CEP
http://www.blurb.co.uk/b/4627506-cep-quotationary-of-andr-s-pet
Labels: Education, Hári Mária, History, Pető András, special education
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