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Based on the potential of educational materials to forge and shape the collective memory, this article analyses the representations of the Francoist Hunger Years (1939–1952) in recent history textbooks for secondary schools by a wide range of publishers. The main thesis of the paper is that while there are textbooks that provide a complex narrative of the hunger experiences, others – even some of the most recent ones – depict the period in an oversimplified and historiographically outdated way and fail to address various social perspectives. This article also argues that it is possible to detect the persistence of the official Francoist discourse on the years of hunger in some textbooks that continue to implicitly perpetuate the distortion and oblivion the Franco dictatorship tried to impose on the famine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the social and economic implementation of the reform of industrial vocational training during Primo de Rivera's dictatorship in Spain (1923–1930), based on the Industrial Education Statute of 1924 and the Vocational Training Statute of 1928. Framed within an international context affected by the consequences of the First World War, the project formed part of an authoritative corporate structure within the ideological paradigm of "reactionary modernism": a combination of social tradition and the modernity of industrialisation, exemplified in the vocational training of industrial workers and technicians in the work schools. In particular, the objective is to identify the effects of the implementation of this reform on a local level from a training, socio-professional, political, and economic perspective. To do this, the legislative and newspaper sources of the reform have been analysed, together with annual reports and reviews of the educational centres and the statistical yearbooks of enrolment. The results indicate that, in spite of the institutional re-launch of the reform, the ideological basis of the project clashed with the specific interests of the local reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The General Education Law was approved half a century ago. It was designed by Francoism to reform the educational system, adjusting itself to the liberal-developmental approach that Franco's regime followed in its last few decades. The oppression that the so-called "vernacular languages" were subject to during the former years of Francoism made their learning recognition stand out amidst the rest of the changes and developments that this law provided. The aim of this paper is to review the concepts and measures that structured Francoist educational politics in regard to languages. Special attention will be paid to the causes, foreseen in the Libro Blanco (Spanish for "White Book"), that fostered the change established in the 1970 Law. The idea will be presented that the incorporation of regional languages in the new policies happened to fulfil the idiomatic regulations requested by UNESCO and the Catholic Church, and to meet the need to cope with the popular currents of linguistic demand emerging in the scenario of socio-labour conflict that characterised the final years of the dictatorship. This moment was determined by the tensions generated within a system reluctant to change its traditional values, although it was forced to resolve the external and internal pressures that urged it to recognise the multilingual reality of the Spanish State in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the approach to experimental pedagogy adopted by the new Spanish pedagogy which arose after Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War. To this end, it first outlines the spiritualist and anti-scientific approaches which prevailed in the new pedagogy of the postwar era, before charting the survival, lying beneath this anti-modernist rhetoric, of an experimental tradition linked to certain clergymen. It then shows how the leading pedagogue of Franco's Spain, Víctor García Hoz, ended up endorsing this school of thought, and analyses the influence in this evolution of the neo-scholasticism of the University of Louvain and the experimental pedagogy developed by Raymond Buyse, who maintained close ties with Spain throughout the 1940s. The paper also focuses on the key role played by Spanish pedagogy in the construction of an international network of Catholic pedagogues. Finally, a number of explanatory hypotheses are presented to explain the paradox posed by this endorsement of the more scientific version of pedagogy by a vehemently Catholic group of academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 1930s the Spanish Civil War captured the international imagination to an extraordinary degree. As in other countries British men and women were moved to intervene directly and the memory of the war, and of British participation in it, has held an enduring appeal in the UK. The Civil War was also notable for its use of the visual as a weapon of propaganda, and the Spanish Republican Government deployed visual imagery to great effect as an instrument through which it exhibited its progressive educational and welfare reforms to an international audience. This article focuses on the visual and textual representations of displaced children in Republican educational colonies in Spain that are preserved in British archive collections. Taking as its starting point a series of photographs of children in colonies gathered together as part of the International Brigade Memorial Archive in London, the paper will consider the construction, use, and circulation of these images and associated texts by British and American political and humanitarian networks and their subsequent collection and preservation in British archival institutions. The paper will assess the effectiveness of the images and texts as pedagogical and political agents and explore how their meaning shifted as they travelled through a range of performative spaces on a journey from their construction as artefacts designed initially to record and communicate the Spanish Republic’s progressive educational project, to commemorative objects in the archive. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The history of popular education is a long-standing field of research. Its beginnings trace back at least to the mid-twentieth century and it maintains its attractiveness for many researchers, both historians and educators. But, using the same label, quite different lines of research have been developed. They correspond to different ideas about what has to be considered as popular education. The paper starts by revising some of the outstanding works and authors in this field, analysing the main terms used and their underlying concepts. Popular education is then confronted with other close concepts, such as people education, popular or working-class self-education, adult education, women's education or social education. The author argues that the approach and perspective adopted for identifying a popular education subject of research are more determinant factors than an a priori thematic demarcation. From this point of view, popular education is centred on the study of education activities and school provision addressed to the lower classes and individuals taking part in them. This social origin and position of the public and not of the providers is what really defines this field of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to reconstruct the pedagogy of Leonor Serrano, a Spanish school inspector working and developing her theories between 1914 and 1939. We use an interrogative-analytical methodology based on content analysis of her texts to reconstruct her educational theory. The theoretical deductive elements are uncovered in the analysis of the answers Leonor Serrano gives to the “basic questions of education”, issues that provide the bases for the scientific field of the theory of education to define a specific pedagogy and are identified through a process of historical-educational review. The study outcome is an explanatory narrative. The paper ends with a discussion of the method and the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reviews school practice in Spain through the long historic period of the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco between the 1936 Civil War and Franco’s death in 1975. For this purpose, an analysis is made of the most relevant documents (school materials, reports, direct testimonies by practising teachers, scientific papers on education and education legislation) of each period of Franco’s Regime. Those different types of documents objectify, in accordance with Agustin Escolano’s terminology, three distinct modalities of school culture: the practical, experience‐based culture which is shaped and transmitted by teachers while practising their profession; the scientific culture, which is organized around the knowledge acquired from teaching speculation and research; and the political culture, which comprises political‐institutional discourses and practices that are translated into regulatory provisions supporting the formal organization of education. These three different cultures were supported by three different logics, which proved to be autonomous and at the same time interdependent during the long Franco period. The result will be a presentation of the different importance attached in school practice to tradition, teaching innovations, professional routines and changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Spanish Golden Age, language was developing fast. An important debate on orthology and orthography was taking place at the time. Many authors posed different proposals for a reform of spelling. The arguments discussed in these works also included educational considerations in favour of their proposals, which makes them an invaluable source in the history of education in Spain. In this paper a number of books published between 1531 and 1631 are analysed in search of relevant ideas on literacy education, the teaching of reading and writing in primary schools, and the skills and training needed for primary teachers. Many of these ideas are surprisingly modern, and anticipate current views on literacy education that would not begin to be put into practice in Spain until the late nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Congregation of the Brothers of Christian Schools (the De La Salle Brothers) has grown since its arrival in Spain in 1878, and today it is the second most important Congregation – in terms of the number of students and schools – in the private school sector in Spain. This article aims to present, first, the educational contributions of De La Salle, which are based upon discipline, Catholic schooling and popular education. This pedagogical approach became the foundation of traditional education, and was a success in their schools and a model for other institutions. Second, our study is focused on the situation of the De La Salle schools in the Basque Country during the Franco regime. The case of the Basque Country is very important, because it showed a significant increase in centres for vocational training and secondary education. The paper concludes that the De La Salle schools make up a Catholic school model adapted to the educational and social reality of the Basque Country and that, during the Franco regime, the model went through a period which balanced tradition and modernity regarding educational provision. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses photography as a tool for reinforcing textual discourses in the written press and supporting the popularisation of certain methods and practices in the illustrated press and magazines. The photographs will not be analysed as educational documents or testimony to educational activities but rather in an effort to explore the attempts to illustrate a message graphically so as to influence public opinion and change society’s perception of schools’ role and the functions of education. The way in which the Maria Montessori method was graphically disseminated in Spanish illustrated magazines between 1911 and 1931 is the focus of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Seventy years after the insurrection of Spanish military forces against the democratically elected government of the Second Republic, several political, cultural and scientific initiatives have set out to reinforce the historical memory of the Spanish Civil War. An objective historical debate about the war was impossible in Spain under the Franco regime and quite difficult during the transition period to a democratic state because of the ongoing conflict between Francoists and democrats, which led to an attempted military coup against the new Spanish democracy in 1981. The stable democracy Spain now enjoys allows us to revisit the history of the Civil War from a republican and democratic point of view, in order finally to offer a just remembrance of the war's victims on the Republican side, something which has been neglected for decades. This paper explores the representation of the Spanish Civil War in children's drawings, which were collected by several institutions, among them the Biblioteca Nacional de Espana. The existence and preservation of these drawings is the result of unique circumstances. The Spanish Civil War was the first conflict in which modern arms were intentionally used against the civil population on a large scale, so that children became eyewitnesses of military attacks. The government of the Republic organised the evacuation of the civilian population, especially children, from the war zones, using an existing system of school colonies. Guided by their educators, these children started to reflect on their new experiences - the bombardments, the evacuation, the separation from their parents, but also the games, lessons and other activities in the school colonies - in their drawings. These drawings had a double purpose. On the one hand, they were designed as a therapeutic measure to help the children to overcome the traumas produced by the war. On the other hand, these drawings were used as propaganda in order to convince the Western democracies to support the legitimate Spanish government and to stop their policy of non-intervention, which only favoured the military rebels and their supporters, National-socialist Germany and Fascist Italy. Today, the children's drawings of the Spanish Civil War represent a valuable and direct testimony of different aspects of this conflict: life before the war, the breakdown of the Lebenswelt of the children, the presence of the war in daily life, humanitarian support and evacuation, organisation and life in the school colonies and the politicisation of the children. Nowadays, children who suffer the horrors of war continue to draw their experiences. The only difference with the drawings of the children of the Spanish Civil War is that today there is more blood, weapons are more powerful, and society is indifferent and has become accustomed to coexisting with injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the origins of mankind, hygiene and education have been linked. However, the emergence of the hygienist movement in the mid‐nineteenth century, the social transformations and educational changes related to the schooling process that took place in that century and in the first decades of the twentieth century, and the scientific study of infancy all encouraged the rise of associations, the creation of new professions, the holding of congresses, the proliferation of publications and the enactment of legal provisions. Covering the last decades of the nineteenth century until the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, this paper provides a brief historical review of the complex process of convergence between hygiene and education, the influences and repercussions that the reception of international hygienist trends had on the school setting, its impulses and resistances, its signs and the breadth of its applications. Attention is focused mainly on some of its most noteworthy repercussions, such as the buildings and spaces dedicated to schools, the distribution of school time, the teaching of hygiene in teacher training and primary education, and the creation and encouragement of certain initiatives in non‐formal education. The extent to which the intensification of the link between hygiene and education influenced the modernization process of the Spanish educational system is shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we attempt to explain how Spanish schoolteachers built their knowledge around Progressive Education and just how they assimilated these new teaching practices, a process we conceptualise as "appropriating the New". Our source consists of the 287 files presented by state schoolteachers from all of Spain as part of their candidacy in the competitive exams held in 1932 for the position of school headteacher. These files, which contain the professional history of each of these teachers, elaborated by him or herself, allow us to analyse the discourses and practices developed and used in their classrooms. Drawing on these teachers' accounts we have designed a typology with five different levels of appropriation of the ideas and practices of Progressive Education. These five categories are (1) Recognising the New; (2) Understanding the New; (3) Bonding with the New; (4) Applying the New; (5) Internalising the New. These levels, which represent the gradual implication of this sample of schoolteachers with the ideas of Progressive Education, bear witness to how their identification with these concepts led to a transformation of their teaching practices. We will then use this typology to study the appropriation of one of the best-known progressive ideas, i.e. self-government, which under the Second Republic of Spain in the 1930s acquired a particular political relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mechanisms of dissemination of the counting frames in the teaching of mathematics in Spain during the nineteenth century are studied. José Mariano Vallejo and Pablo Montesino proposed them in order to facilitate an arithmetic initiation based on intuition, following Pestalozzi's proposals. The diffusion channels considered were pedagogical texts, professional journals, and school material catalogues. Moreover, these proposals are compared with the existence of references to the counting frames in primary school textbooks in the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a strong ethical component to historical memory which means that no group should be left out. Hence the need to recover the voice of half the population, women, so often rendered invisible by the narrative. In more traditional education history this silence is even more apparent. University education museums, supported by the pertinent legal regulations, are duty-bound to rescuing, interpreting and exhibiting a historical-educational heritage that takes them into account. To this end, it is essential to use a gender perspective in these institutions, aiming for more critical, inclusive and realistic memory policies. In this study, supported by a descriptive qualitative research methodology, we evaluate to what extent and how the eight Spanish university education museums are working actively for equality and non-discrimination. We do this by means of a semi-structured diagnostic questionnaire, supported by personal interviews with those who coordinate these museums and by the analysis of their regulations and websites. The results show that, for half of them, this task continues to be a pending challenge in many respects. However, the sensitivity on this issue of the other half is striking, as shown by the range of practices and decisive actions they have undertaken, and which, if shared, could help to improve everyone's situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines, from the perspective of the new cultural history of education, the historical process of codification of school architecture in Spain at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, a period of special importance in the configuration of the spaces that the state dedicated to teaching. It also shows how the material structures of the school may be analysed as a record of educational discourses and practices, as well as the social norms of the actors who came together on the scenarios which provided for a shared building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the political, religious, and ideological backdrop to psychology and pedagogy under Franco's dictatorship. To this end, it analyses the important research carried out between 1940 and 1944 by the psychologist and pedagogue José J. Jover y Piquer into the intelligence, mentality, and moral judgement of a large number of abandoned and vulnerable postwar children. The article demonstrates how, although the approach adopted by Piquer was a scientific one – with the usual aims, techniques, and methods – the research contents were subordinated to ideological and religious considerations and aimed to determine the extent to which these children could be re-educated and integrated into the new regime. Thus, psychology became the scientific packaging for studies that were eminently ideological and politically subservient, turning pedagogy into a key instrument of the biopolitics aimed at building Franco's New Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to show the influence of caciquism on the creation and functioning of public schools as well as its effect on the professional performance of teachers. We have used the model developed by Abram de Swaan, who suggested that three social sectors be distinguished to analyse the attitudes that spark the dissemination of literacy: the metropolitan elite; local dignitaries; and regional communities. Here, we describe and attempt to explain the uncooperative attitude of the local dignitaries or “caciques” towards public schools. The third section deals with the control of the educational administration by caciquism and the private profit that some of these local figures reaped from the budgets assigned to the public schools. Lastly, we will present examples of how the local authorities favoured schoolteachers who were political patrons of theirs and persecuted those who belonged to the opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Second Republic of Spain (1931-1939) and within the framework of ambitious social reform, the government of the Generalitat of Catalonia launched a social and educational assistance system. This new system would be independent, modern, and capable of surpassing the traditional welfare system based on religious charity that was predominant in Spain at the time. One of the initiatives performed to obtain funding consisted of the sale of Christmas seals, whose earnings would be allocated to the fight against childhood tuberculosis. The Segell Pro Infància organisation was created for this purpose. This article analyses the origins of this institution within the socio-political context of Catalonia during the Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War, in addition to its work and activities during its brief existence. The series of actions financed by Segell were primarily directed at improving institutions that provided a social welfare system, such as crèches and nursery schools. In this analysis, the commitment of early twentieth-century Catalan nationalism to social and educational modernisation, in addition to its development of social justice policies, is revealed. This reform fits into the framework of a broader pro-sovereignty project in which Catalonia would build state structures independent of Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revisions of textual and audio-visual materials reveal the educational vision of Spanish anarchists. Through research, we have discovered the importance of aesthetical education and art in general for this protest political party. By studying the three key historical moments of the movement (1868–1939/ 1901–1910/ 1910–1936–1939) we have traced the evolution of the concept and practice of cultural learning. What stands out in the origins of the movement is the concern to introduce art and culture into school subjects while disseminating this knowledge to the whole population. Later, when the Modern School opened, the arts were introduced into the syllabus of teaching-learning. The aesthetic principles defended in the first period were turned into literary works with the aim of educating children from rationalist schools. Finally, we identify a time when the materials created by the Modern School were disseminated to working-class schools as a form of resistance against the politics proposed by government parties. The outbreak of the Civil War turned the corpus of aesthetical education into a cultural programme of demilitarised political resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores visions of war and peace in the education system during the Spanish transition to democracy. During those years, the Spanish state was faced with the challenge of leaving its authoritarian political past behind and forging a democratic civic culture. As the concepts of war and peace are inextricably linked to those of state and citizenship, they are a useful tool with which to examine changes in civic education. A wide variety of educational sources has been explored, with particular attention to the emotional nature of the depiction of both war and peace. This study reveals two opposing styles. The official discourse demonstrated a factual treatment of war and a tendency to concentrate on international bodies and their actions, when it came to fomenting peace. The treatment of peace in the circles of teachers’ local initiatives was different. First, peace was defined not only as the absence of war but also in terms of social equality and solidarity. Second, there was a conscious effort to get the students involved in opposing war, reinforced by emotionally charged messages regarding its horrors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses the child psychiatry and psychology developed during the Spanish Civil War and immediate postwar period. The aim is to demonstrate that, despite the existence of a certain degree of disciplinary continuity in relation to the pre-war period, both disciplines were placed at the service of Francoism. This meant that the association of psychology and psychiatry with pedagogy in order to educate/cure children played a key role in legitimising the child intervention policies of Franco’s regime, and this strategy was best reflected in Vallejo Nágera’s proposal regarding “biological pedagogy”. Finally, it analyses how psychiatry and psychology were used outside the school context to re-educate and control an infant population trapped between two worlds as the result of the Civil War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Until around 10 years ago, the conventional wisdom in educational historiography held that the start of the Civil War (1936–1939), marking as it did the placing of education at the service of the war effort, involved a rupture, in both the Republican government and the “rebel” or Franco camp, with the preceding years as to the educational politics and the pedagogical discourses. However, in the last few years a number of works have been published which, without denying the changes that undoubtedly occurred, emphasise the continuities in the discourses. This article sets out to elucidate and clarify just what there was of rupture and or continuity in educational politics and politico-pedagogical discourses during the years of the Civil War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War the republican authorities started organising what came to be known as “children’s colonies”. These children’s colonies became both home and school for all the children who were evacuated from Madrid. The purpose of this article is to study in depth the transformation of many of these children’s colonies into educational communities. The teachers accompanying the children often shared the republican ideals ofactive citizenshipand strove to make conscious citizens out of these children. The educational model chosen for achieving this aim was the community model, based on the transformation of every children’s colony into a self-sufficient community of teachers and students, along the lines of similar experiences organised by the international New Education movement in the 1920s and ’30s. The article discusses the iconic experiences of children’s colonies during the Spanish Civil War and the ways in which their different concepts of “community” were represented. By studying the photographic collection put together from different public and private archives alongside the written information preserved in unpublished diaries we are able to develop a methodological model for analysing the construction and/or destruction of the community ideal in these educational experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the Workers’ Institutes (WI), one of the most important educational initiatives undertaken by the Spanish Republic during the Civil War (1936–1939). After framing their creation within the context of European trends in higher education for the working classes and within the Spanish socio-political context, this article examines the role of these institutions as an envisioned community and as a living community, dedicated to serving the Republic as an imagined community. Legal documents, political and pedagogical speeches, as well as opinion pieces, portray the WI as an envisioned community. As such, they represented the transformations and disseminated the aspirations of the new political regime. Furthermore, the experiences of those who studied in the WI, collected via a range of texts, as well as oral and written interviews, portray the institution as a living community. Accordingly, this article describes students’ attitude regarding the political discourse on the WI as envisioned community, and their memories of their lives in the Institutes. It also conveys the WI students’ perceptions of themselves as part of that community, a representation shared by the political discourse on WI as envisioned communities. The article concludes by confirming the existence of these organisations as imagined communities and reflecting on the way that WI communities have been relived from the point of view of the present. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The progressive education movement was known in Spain from its very inception, and in fact many of its pedagogical theories and practices reached Spain before reaching other European countries. Yet traditional historiography has always maintained that Spain was never integrated in the progressive education movement, a misconception that helps explain the lack of research in the field. Recent historiographical research, however, has shown that numerous Spanish schools served as laboratories for the implementation of progressive education methods in the 1920s and 1930s. The Spanish educational system proved itself to be especially open to international innovation in general and Spain actually enjoyed a privileged position for the study of how innovative pedagogical ideas could be incorporated and appropriated. Proof of this affirmation can be found in the introduction and dissemination throughout Spain of the experimental public school movement of Hamburg known as Gemeinschaftsschulen. This article will focus on the way this movement was received in Spain. We will examine the phenomenon from a double perspective, corresponding to the different positions that scholars found themselves in within the educational panorama of the time. On the one hand we will examine the role of the “grass-roots” educators who wished to change schools “from below”, starting with classroom practices. On the other hand we will take a look at the representatives of “high pedagogy”, who were intent on formulating a pedagogical theory on which to base a political–ideological model that would serve to change the school “from above”. Tensions arising among the different pedagogical groups, along with the ambiguity of the translation into Spanish of the term Gemeinschaftsschulen, led to the different groups appropriating the concept in different ways. The evolution of the term Gemeinschaftsschulen, from its original identification with a localised school experiment in Hamburg to its becoming a symbol for virtually all European school vanguards, will be addressed at the conclusion of the article. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses the schooling process in rural areas of Galicia (Spain) from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, considering educational initiatives promoted by both the state and the rural population. The former, which were governed by the official school culture, were driven by a moralistic approach; the latter, within the framework of popular school culture, were essentially aimed at literacy. The confrontation that arose between the two initiatives was finally resolved in favour of the official school. Our main goal here is to analyse how popular schools (ferrado schools) were perceived by official culture (school administrators and education experts) as well as by those who were directly involved as protagonists, i.e. the schoolteachers who ran these schools (escolantes) and their pupils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been little study of political exile as a means for transferring pedagogic ideas and models, which has been important in Latin America, especially in the case of the Spaniards exiled in Mexico after the defeat of the Second Republic at the end of the 1930s. The Mexican government's sympathy with the Second Republic allowed many teachers to come to Mexico, but this assistance was politically and professionally selective. Most teachers worked in private schools founded by the Republican Government with the support of liberal politicians and intellectuals. The institutions established in Mexico City were based on the Free Teaching Institution (Institucion Libre de Ensenanza, or ILE) principles but formed a school culture around the Spanish exile and were forced to reduce their co-educational intentions; those established outside the capital taught Mexican children and the children of earlier Spanish immigrants. The Freinet projects survived through individual effort. The three private schools that were founded represented the entrance of active or progressive schools into Mexico and became more popular in the 1960s and 1970s. The public education system tended towards the unification of school content and work, and was not very open to incorporating educational initiatives - even less so if these questioned the curricular structure, as was the case with Freinet. However, a group of very experienced Spanish inspectors and professional teachers managed to have a significant influence on the transition from teacher training college pedagogy to university pedagogy through their teaching and above all their pedagogic textbooks, which filled a void left by the eclectic pedagogy that prevailed in Mexico until the beginning of the 1940s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a group of intellectuals and Spanish scientists found it necessary to resume cultural relations with Latin American countries that had been Spanish colonies in the past. In order to do this, they promoted a school of thought called 'Hispano-Americanism', which aimed to create a Spanish-speaking geopolitical space that would counteract the growing influence of other European powers and of the United States in Latin America. This American projection would serve at the same time to 'regenerate' cultural and scientific life in Spain and to improve the country's position in the international field. This movement relied on the financial support of the Spanish communities settled in Latin America. They contributed to the creation of cultural institutions to disseminate Spanish scientific progress. The first and most successful of these creations was the Institucion Cultural Espanola de Buenos Aires (Spanish Cultural Institution of Buenos Aires), which became a model to imitate in other Latin American countries. The associations tended to impose their own interests and priorities, focusing on acquiring more prestige and social recognition in the countries that had settled through links with local political and cultural elites. This was due to the absence of a genuine Spanish foreign policy and to the financial responsibility adjudged to the local communities of Spanish immigrants regarding cultural and scientific initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we wish to propose a debate on postcolonialism and its role in the history of Latin American education. Our starting point is the acknowledgement of the reality that postcolonial historiographic perspectives have yet to be applied in studies of one of history's great empires, namely, the Spanish Empire. This is surprising for several reasons: firstly, because debate about postcolonialism has been very present in the culture, thought and politics of Latin America for many years; and secondly, because while the postcolonial approach can be found in the historiographic debate surrounding the Portuguese Empire and in recent comparative studies on the history of education in Portugal and Brazil, it has scarcely been brought up in the historiography of the Spanish Empire. We approach the subject by applying a genealogical and conceptual analysis of the three defining terms in this field of study: 'postcolonial', 'transnational' and 'cultural transfers'. The main body of the article analyses postcolonial approaches in cultural studies, contemplating a double perspective: that of the Iberian Peninsula, in which we analyse the emerging tendencies and trends in Spain and Portugal, and that of Latin America, for which we provide an overview of the various postcolonial discourses, focusing on some of their principal areas of reflection. Finally, we analyse the situation of postcolonial studies in the history of Latin American and Iberian education by pointing out current lines of investigation worthy of being included in this field and emphasising themes and approaches that concur with postcolonial theory. We analyse the trajectory of Spanish educational historiography in relation to that of Portugal, and propose future investigative agendas. The articles included in this special issue could be considered a sort of preview of this novel and engaging theme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise during the 1950s of a discourse centred on development, together with the elaboration of the concept of human capital, led to an altogether new paradigm of economic modernisation. The expansion of education and professional training was now viewed as a key strategy for those countries wishing to join the developed world. As a result, educational systems, especially in the more 'backward' countries, began to pursue objectives of a decidedly economic and social nature. The different theories of development were all in agreement that one of the most important tools for achieving these objectives, and one that would have a profound influence in the realm of education, was the implementation of planning policies. The goal of this article is to approach the history of the relationship between development, education, and planning in Latin America between 1950 and 1970. After the Second World War, Latin America provided especially fertile ground for innovating and experimenting with a great variety of development strategies. We pay special attention to what was known as 'integral planning of education', a technique which later would spread, through the mediation of 'experts', from the periphery towards the centre, in other parts of the world. As a case study, we analyse the way in which the discourse on planning of education that emanated from Latin America at the end of the 1950s was the determining factor in the gestation of educational reform in Spain, which culminated with the General Law of Education of 1970. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Educational Missions in the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1936) had the purpose of making available, 'especially to those living in rural areas, the feeling of progress and the means to participate in it, as well as in its moral stimuli and in the examples of universal progress, so that all the peoples of Spain, even those in remote areas could participate in the benefits and noble joys reserved at that time only for urban centres'. It was an idea that came to insist on the Free School (ILE, Institucion Libre de Ensenanza), founded in 1876 by Francisco Giner, who believed that it was necessary to send the best teachers to the most remote Spanish villages so that their people, who lived in a sort of mental universe alien to the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, became involved in the modern views that had already been disseminated in the cities. Between 1931 and 1936, a group of about 700 young intellectuals, artists, writers, teachers, school inspectors and university students went about these villages, which were isolated, carrying books, movies, phonograph records and gramophones, plays and copies of the Prado Museum's masterpieces as well as other activities to encourage peasants to be keen on culture and remove the huge chasm separating urban and rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dieser Artikel versucht, die verschiedenen und manchmal sogar widerspruchlichen Interpretationen zu analysieren, die den Ideen und Methoden der Reformpadagogik in verschiedenen sozialen und raumlichen Kontexten zugeschrieben wurden. Die Studie konzentriert sich speziell auf die Projektmethode, ein padagogisches Konstrukt, das anscheinend gut definiert und allgemein bekannt war, und das ein bestimmtes Ausmass an Einfluss in der Schulpraxis des 20. Jahrhunderts genoss. Zuerst werde ich eine Analyse des Ursprungs des Konzepts in den Vereinigten Staaten vornehmen, sowie seiner Aneignung von Padagogen der University of Columbia und der darauffolgenden Debatte, die von dem undifferenzierten und missbrauchlichen Gebrauch des Begriffs ausgelost wurde. Der zweite Teil der Studie untersucht die transnationale Prasenz dieser Methode und ihren Platz in der weltweiten Reformpadagogikbewegung. Dabei wird deutlich werden, wie die verschiedenen Interpretationen der Projektmethode klarer im Licht des weitergehenden Konflikts zwischen den paidozentrischen und den sozialisierenden Ansatzen innerhalb der padagogischen Bewegung verstanden werden konnen. Zuletzt wird der Fall Spanien untersucht, wo die Methode in den 1930er Jahren sehr popular war, und das nicht nur aus padagogischen Grunden; auf eine mehr oder weniger okkulte Art und Weise wurde sie mit einer demokratischen Schulform und der Sehnsucht nach einem Leben in einer Demokratie identifiziert. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies the current international interest in the institutionalisation of pedagogic knowledge to the study of its origins as an academic discipline in Spain. The focus of attention lies in the unexplored issues, the ideological tensions and the recurrent discontinuities that surrounded this process. The starting point is a cryptic reference to the pedagogical seminar in Prague in a report from the Spanish Council on public instruction regarding the appointment of Manuel Bartolome Cossio to take the chair in Higher Pedagogy in the doctoral studies of the Faculty of Philosophy, created at the Central University in Madrid in 1904. The inclusion of pedagogy in Spanish universities made a longstanding wish come true but, as often happens when adapting to new circumstances, it was also the effect of a mutation that added a degree of discontinuity, which in this case was both institutional and doctrinal. The appeal to the seminar in Prague - arguably at the initiative of the Catholic Herbartian Otto Willmann - may then be interpreted not only as a way to justify the pertinence of the theoretical and practical knowledge of education, but also as a nod to placate traditional minds and act as a bridge between tradition and modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The monitorial system of education was the most promising device in the field of primary education at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Its astonishing spread across the five continents represents one of the earliest processes of internationalization in the field of elementary schooling, which has rarely been analysed from the point of view of the network of its supporters. This article reconstructs the transfer of knowledge and experiences related to the monitorial system of education from England and France to Spain in the first decades of the nineteenth century, its dynamics within the country and its overlooked intermediary role in the further diffusion of this system of teaching in its former colonies. Of the many possible aspects of networking, it focuses mainly on the spatial dynamics of the dissemination of the method in Spain in order to discuss traditional interpretations of its spread in Spain and its supporters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of the New Education Movement in Spain throughout the twentieth century is examined here because the reception of the educational ideas and the teaching practices of an avant-garde international movement are of inherent interest in the history of education. Among the many routes such an introduction might take, the authors will look in detail at the specific case of manuals on the history of education for teacher training colleges: given the lack of media and travel facilities of the time, such manuals were the principal – and at times the only – means of knowing of the existence and the importance of the New Education Movement for primary-school teachers, particularly during the first half of the twentieth century. Between 1898 and 1976, one can distinguish two significant periods, 1898–1939 and 1939–1976, and two different programmes in each of them. Two different types of history of education manuals within these periods were studied: principally, the textbooks written specifically on the subject by Spanish authors, almost all of whom were lecturers at teacher training colleges, but also manuals by foreign authors that had been translated into Spanish, a total of some 60 books. As some of them had second and third editions, more than 80 volumes were examined. First a straightforward bibliometric study was conducted to record the presence or absence of information related to the New Education Movement in each volume. Once these data had been gathered, the authors proceeded to a qualitative analysis. This approach was used in order to be faithful to the data and the way of thinking of the institutions represented. Also considered were the critique and the type experienced, the complete or incomplete conditions (taking into account, of course, the nature of the compendium of each manual), whether the author is strictly aware or not of the pedagogic and ideological influences of the book, of the capacity of synthesis in the presentation, of the half-truths, etc. It is concluded that Spanish primary school teachers, at least during their initial training, had to wait several decades before being informed of the New Education Movement. Moreover, for political and ideological reasons, the first information they received was negative and portrayed these innovations as opposed to sacred patriotic and religious values and the correct way to educate children. Only in the 1960s did this movement and the different viewpoints associated with to it became an official subject in the history of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay presents a novel estimate of human capital in Spain during most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as measured by average years of schooling at the three main educational levels. The new estimate confirms long-term, regional and gender trends already identified by literacy levels. It shows that most of the human capital embodied in the Spanish population until well into the second half of the twentieth century was due to expanded primary schooling rather than to secondary or university studies and it identifies the Civil War of 1936 as one of the most serious setbacks during two centuries of slow and irregular human capital accumulation. Primary schooling determined labor mobility in twentieth-century Spain during the 1920s and the 1960s as people moved away from agriculture and into industry and services. The decision to migrate was a household rather than an individual one: the education of those who did not emigrate — elder males and females of all ages — was as relevant as that of the actual emigrants. The Civil War and the early years of the Franco regime, by contributing to the depletion of the stock of human capital, had negative effects upon labor mobility as recently as the 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a new source, the draft records of Spanish recruits in the first half of the twentieth century, this article shows the relationship between literacy, measured by a survey and from signatures, and the level of welfare, measured by height. The first section shows how literacy contributes to economic growth, establishes the distinction between descriptive and functional literacy and introduces the sources that provide data. The second section is dedicated to the presentation of the source used in this article: the enlistment records (hoja de filiación) that Spanish recruits filled in at the moment of enlistment and its advantages: universality, information that can be related in time and space, on various levels. In the third section, two different series of literacy at a national level are calculated and compared: literacy rates and quality of the signatures of Spanish recruits between 1893 and 1954. The fourth section shows the relationship between the literacy levels and height. The final section presents conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]