“Letters to a social worker” by Fernand Deligny

In the 60’s and 70’s, in a hamlet in the Cévennes, Fernand Deligny made an “attempt” to create an alternative educational environment for autistic people. He wrote a dozen books, and then this documentary, “Ce gamin-là,” where we hear Deligny’s voice talking about Janmari, a mute child who opposes his silence to his words. But we must go back to 1945, and to the publication of the militant book, made of aphorisms, Graine de crapule, which was meant to be “Advice to educators who would like to cultivate themselves,” to know the voice of Fernand Deligny, the one who will remain as one of the great voices of special education. A great voice that we find again in these Letters, written in 1984 and 1985, where once again, we follow his language, sinuous, ingenuous, sometimes hermetic, as he has often been reproached…