Pierre de Coubertin

Pierre de Coubertin was born in Paris on January 1, 1863, to a family the ancestor of which, known under the name de Fredy, was in the service of the King of France Louis XI who knighted him in 1471. It was in 1577 that the domain of Coubertin near Paris was acquired by a Fredy who assumed the name and the estate. Since then, all his descendants preserve the name  Fredy de Coubertin. It was in Normandy, not far from the port of Le Havre, that Pierre de Coubertin lived during his youth in the domain of Mirville, brought in marriage by his mother, a descendant of a companion of the Viking chief Rollon, first duke of Normandy. Pierre did his schooling at Paris and followed courses at the School of Political Sciences. Having considered a military career, he renounced it, foreseeing a period of peace. Politics seemed disappointing to him. Thus he considered the reform of education of French youth. After informational voyages to England and the United States, embarking at Le Havre, he decided to consecrate his life to pedagogical reform - which he did unstintingly.   The life and the work of Pierre de Coubertin reposes on cultural principles capable of unravelling the antinomies of the human condition, in offering to a world in full transformation, a new manner of thinking and acting. From his school years, Pierre de Coubertin felt the necessity of a «pedagogical rebronzing» (to renew, stronger and better): «almost unconsciously and moved by a strange instinct, I indicted in my child’s judgment all French pedagogy» he affirmed before the «French Association for the advancement of Sciences» on January 26,1889. At twenty years of age, he turned to comparative pedagogy and for several years travelled abroad, indispensable for accomplishing his observations. As early as 1887 he responded to the campaign of the «hygienists» on «scholastic overwork» in proposing, as a remedy, the organization of leisure. In 1906 he founded the «Association for the Reform of Teaching» and published thereafter in three installments the program of an integral education, under the title: «The Education of Adolescents in the XXth Century». Elected President of the Universal Pedagogical Union in 1925 he finalized the Charter of Pedagogical Reform for a return to a more vast and purified life.
As early as 1891, respecting the man in each man, he called for the creation of a workers university education; in 1906 he founded the Society of Popular Sports; in 1921, he edited a work concerning workers’ universities; he brought out in 1922 a study entitled: «Between two battles: from Olympism to the Workers’ University»; in 1923 followed a thesis concerning «higher education of manual workers and the organization of workers’ Universities», after 1925 he had established the regulations for the workers’ University through the work of the «Universal Pedagogical Union», concerning secondary education. Already, at Lausanne in 1917, he had called for the creation in each agglomeration of a «Popular University», consecrated to the general culture to the exclusion of all professional training. During his stay in this city, the «Maison du Peuple» (Peoples’ House) was stimulated by his presence and manifested a great intellectual activity. One understands, thus, the fervor which animated the reflection of Pierre de Coubertin: «One is not in this world to live one’s life, but that of others.