Professor Andras Peto

PROFESSOR ANDRAS PETO

The founder of conductive education was born on 11th September 1893, in Szombathely, Hungary as a son of a commercial father and a teacher mother.
From 1911 he attended to the medical university in Vienna, Austria, practised there till 1938, then returned to Budapest, Hungary.

After the 2nd World War Professsor Andras Peto set up an institute – firstly the Experimental Movement Therapy Department of the Special Education Institute gave place to it in 1945, the Movement Therapy Department of the Special Teachers’s College in 1948, then founded the National Movement Therapy Institute in 1950, later (in 1963) the Institute for the Motor Disordered and Conductors’ Training College - to improve the motor-disordered children and adults.

He created the method of Conductive Education.
Peto began to work with children with cerebral palsy, whose condition had been thought incurable and after a year an inspection committee reported that the children’s condition had considerably improved. He provided motor therapy, special gymnastics, breathing exercises and motor education.

"He put ‘health’ and ‘illness’ on another basis. He approached the problem with bio-psycho-social-holistic view. It appears in his terminology too – there is ‘client’ instead of ‘patient’, a dynamic process analysis instead of the causal approach, educative-reeductive learning together instead of therapy-curing, a conductor leads towards independence instead of a doctor-physiotherapist."*

He worked persistently until his death. He died in the institute in 1967.

*Source: Lecture of Judit Forrai MD, "In Memoriam Dr Maria Hari" Commemorial Day, organised by MOIRA