Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Review of the book by Giorgio Chiosso, L’educazione degli italiani. Laicità, progresso e nazione nel primo novecento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2019)

Review of the book by Adelina Arredondo (coord.), La educación laica en México: estudios en torno a sus orígenes (México, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos/Bonilla Artigas Editores, 2019)

Arquitectura y espacio escolar

The dedication of examinations to religious, patriotic, heroic and civil characters and images was part of the ceremonial educational world in nineteenth-century Mexico. These school practices were related to a transmission of feelings of devotion to hierarchies and paternalism. This article reviews the meaning of these dedications in fundamental aspects, such as schooling, citizenship and national identity. The article is structured in two sections that refer, on the one hand, to the use of these dedications in elementary education and, on the other hand, in the higher education given in colleges and institutes. The analysis is based on Mijail Bajtin´s discourse genres and the concept of construction of Maurice Agulhon's idealizations; the notions of paternalism, construction of the hero and the formation of political loyalties are also used. The time frame covers from the emergence of First Federal Republic in 1824 until the dawn of the Restored Republic in1868. The focus of the study is Mexico City, the capital of the country, which  had the greatest concentration of educational establishments. For the purpose of regional comparison, the cases of two cities in the eastern state of Veracruz,  Xalapa, the capital, and Veracruz, the republic's main port, are also reviewed.

This article analyzes and compares the 1943 and 1948 editions of the Camp Manual, which provides instructions for the camp commanders of the Youth Front, the Francoist equivalent of Mussolini’s Balilla and the Nazi Hitler-Jugend. In these manuals, the camp appears as a microcosm that reflects the organic structure and government practice of the Francoist State, including its biopolitical aspects: health, food storage, calorie consumption... The political culture that they transmit and its variants maintain an affinity with the normalization of the bodies of the campers: while the Phalangist subculture imposes strength, martiality and rectitude upon the bodies, the Catholic subculture imposes meekness and sinuous forms. The two editions of the manual also reflect the evolution of Franco’s regime. In the 1943 edition, the leaflet of the camp leader reflects the Fascistization of the State. The 1948 edition, on the other hand, stresses the legitimization of the encyclical Divini Illius Magistri or the imposition of a Christian pedagogy (principle of self-direction), and it speaks of the establishment of a Catholic State. This includes the concept of the culture of the participative subject, linked in turn to a new normalization of the bodies (greater distention, oblique lines), without this implying the disappearance of the traditional forms of control or the automatic movements (parades, formations), characteristic of the culture of the subject that gives unity to Francoism.

Ave Maria Schools were founded in Granada in 1889 by the priest and educator Andrés Manjón. Unlike the traditional method of infant education in those years, Father Manjón centered pedagogy in the Catholic religion, considering nature as God’s work. In his concept, play, manual labor andoutdoor teaching were good Christians in a happy environment so that they would later join the working world. They quickly spread throughout Spain and other countries, Ave Maria Schools are considered a pioneering experience of teaching in their time and enjoyed great social prestige.In the subsoil of Almadén, the largest mercury deposit in the world was exploited from the Arab domination, with 2,500 workers working in the first half of the 20th century. The School of Children of Workers had been founded in 1908, but in 1926, coinciding with the proclamation of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, it was transformed into a Manjonian school. Become a secular school during the Second Republic and the subsequent civil war, he returned to act as a school of Ave Maria from 1939 until the 1960s. Minas de Almadén, like other large mining and industrial companies in northern Spain, exercised a paternalistic strategy with its operators and chose religious education as the most appropriate for the formation of their children.

The construction of professional identity is a concept that holds interest for a variety of disciplines such as Anthropology, Psychology or Pedagogy. From the perspective of social constructivism, it has a narrative, dynamic character and is shaped by the interaction of the subject with current socio-historical discourses and their interiorization. During the decade of the nineteen seventies, the labor market in Spain experienced a massive incorporation of women, brought about by social and legislative advances in education and employment. The years of Spanish democracy are essential in the configuration and renewal of female identity in the economic field. This article focuses on the influence of the school textbook - the main didactic resource used in formal education - in this configuration. It presents models and stereotypes linked to gender, with a potential influence on the transmission and configuration of a biased socio-labor culture. In order to study this influence,  our research examines a total of 20 elementary education textbooks in the areas of Language and Social Sciences in two periods of democratic Spain —the so-called Transition period and the current moment—, to explore the professional identity of women linked to the economic socialization as this is conveyed through this educational tool. Our results reveal a minimal inclusion of women as economic subjects in the textbooks; the underrepresentation of females  performing paid activities, as well the lack of professional diversity serve to highlight a substantial inequality in the socialization processes between men and women, contrary to the goals of  coeducational teaching values. 

The presence in Spain of the French congregations devoted to education comes determined by the political events that took place during the III Republic in the neighbouring country starting at the end of 19th century. Like many others, , clergymen from San Viator, a congregation founded by the French priest Luis Querbes and devoted to education since 1851, arrived in Spain in 1903 with the aim of finding refuge and continuing their educational work. After settling  at a first stage in the city of Vitoria (Basque Country, Spain), they soon developed a program of foundations in the nearby surroundings which culminated with their establishment of a centre in Asturias (north-central Spain). With the approval of the diocese and the parish, they opened their first school in 1912, in the Asturian village of Cangas de Onís, which was soon followed by other twin foundations in Ribadesella and Infiesto. Our article undertakes to review their presence in the area - largely  ignored today in the school scene of our region - by analysing those pedagogic principles which inspired their dedication to the school, their educational offer and their capacity for innovating and adapting to the interests of an industrial society aspiring to secure a top-class education for their pupils. For this commitment they used, among other things the regional press as an advertising resource that was able to guarantee them the prestige attained in the region along their educational journey.  

The objective of this article is to review the existing historiography on the Escuelas de Barriada (Rural Schools of Bizkaia Province, Basque Country), created and promoted by the Provincial Council of Bizkaia between 1920-1937, giving nuance to certain issues and providing new data on four aspects. The first of these is the question of instructional language. The use of Basque in the classroom was progressively reduced in favor of Spanish almost from the first moment and did not provoke opposition from teachers, even though many of them were Basque nationalists. Secondly, we provide an analysis of the initial curriculum, which presented a more pedagogical rather than ideological approach, oriented towards a teaching style that was more comprehensive than memory-based. This was especially appreciable in the areas of mathematics and geometry, where exclusionary political indoctrination was avoided, with content referring to both Basque and Spanish identity. Thirdly, we analyse the alleged use of books containing Basque nationalist political content in these schools, of which we have found no evidence. And finally, we offer an overview of the type of teachers that worked in these schools, including an analysis of their ideological profile: more than 90% of the faculty was composed of women, generally young, single, Basque-speaking, Catholic and ideologically sympathetic to Basque nationalism . The research focuses on the 1920-1930 period, when the Provincial Council of Bizkaia was governed by Monarchists and when the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera began. This was the period when the original pro-Basque project of these schools was transformed. Some data and questions about the later era are also presented.