An Educational Pilgrimage to the United States : Travel Diary by Raymond Buyse, 1922

In 1922, Raymond Buyse, a young Belgian "pedologist," undertook a study tour of the United States of America. He made this trip together with Ovid Decroly, a founder of schools, educational reformer and professor of child psychology at the Universit Libre de Bruxelles. Both men were keenly interested in the "scientific" study of the child and especially in applied American psychology as well as in psychological tests. They met well-known American professors and visited universities that were developing these aspects of psychology. Back in Belgium, Buyse and Decroly dedicated several books and articles to the issues discussed during the trip. Less known is that Raymond Buyse noted his impressions and reflections of the three-month trip in a diary. Buyse writes in a lively style about his encounters with the great psychologists and pedagogues of that time. This diary, unpublished until now, adds a new dimension to the study of the history of psychology in Belgium and far beyond.