Conductive Education Classics: no.3

Proceedings of the First World Congess, 1990
The First World Congress on Conductive Education, ‘Preparation for the Future’, was held in Budapest, 29 November – 1 December 1990, and had delegates from all over the world, mostly from the UK. This gathering was organised by the International Pető Association and the proceedings were published by the International Pető Institute for the International Pető Association. A list of the overseas delegates, opening addresses by Mária Hári and Mr Arpád Göncz, President of the Hungarian Republic, are included with a mix of abstracts and presentations. Many of the presenters – including Helga Keil (Austria), Udi Lion (Israel), Claire Cotter (Australia), Frieda Spivack (US), Andrew Sutton (UK), Masanao Murai (Japan), Brendan McConville (Northern Ireland), Marion Fang (Hong Kong), – were well-known as pioneers of Conductive Education in their countries. Well-known Hungarians included Mária Hári , Ildiko Kozma and Eva Beck.

This publication provides a fascinating glimpse of the Conductive Education world at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s.

Not only was this the first World Congress, it has been the only one to have published proceedings. Future congresses were reported in a variety of ways but never as proceedings.

Subsequent Congresses

The second took place in Budapest, in 1995, was entitled ‘Continuity and Change’. It was recorded in magazine format. as Pető Magazine, in the summer of 1996. This included some of the presentations, news from around the world, a list of publications (including an advance announcement of the International Journal of Conductive Education, which unfortunately never became a reality), and a list of Conductive Education courses and organisations. There were no abstracts.

Number three, ‘From Creation to Development’, was hosted by the Warasibe Institute and took place in Urakawa, Hokkaido, Japan in 1999. Delegates received a list of abstracts (available in English and Japanese) of all 50 presentations and study abstracts. I am not aware of any other material.

London was the venue for the Fourth congress in 2001, organized jointly with Scope (UK). A selection of papers read were published in Conductive Education Occasional Papers, no. 8 by the International Pető Institute, and the Library has bound copies of a number of written presentations collected on the day by delegates from the Foundation for Conductive Education. A book of abstracts was published as supplement 3 to the Conductive Education Occasional Papers.

The Fifth congress returned to Budapest in 2004, entitled ‘Conductive Education Worldwide Science and Quality’. Conductive Education Occasional Papers no.11 contains a selection of papers and Supplements 4 and 5 contain the abstracts, in English and Hungarian respectively. The library also has a number of papers collected from presenters, in Power Point format as well as typescript.

Move & Walk, Sweden, hosted the Sixth Congress in August 2007 and published a programme, report and evaluation on the conference’s website http://www.ce-congress2007.com/. Bound abstracts were given to all delegates as Conductive Education Occasional Papers, Supplement 6. As far as I know no other material is available.

The Seventh, ‘East meets West: Adaptation and Development’ will be hosted by SAHK in Hong Kong in December 2010. Further details will be published on the Congress website shortly www.ce-congress2010.org/

Let us hope that it is well attended and has many interesting and stimulating presentations, and most importantly these will be published as proceedings.

The International Pető Association’s World Congresses are run in association with organisations in the host countries.

Copies of Conductive Education Occasional Papers and its Supplements can be obtained from the Hári Mária Library at the Pető Institute library@peto.hu