Workers’ Institutes: envisioned community, living community
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 aspiration…
Contextos educativos : revista de educación
El tema central del artículo es la exposición de los argumentos en favor del derecho a la identidad cultural y la discusión sobre sus límites. Pretende mostrar la problemática que envuelve la reclamación de la identidad diferenciada en la enseñanza y explorar las consecuencias que su aplicación irrestricta puede tener para las políticas educativas integradoras de la libertad y la igualdad. Siguiendo una metodología exploratoria, explicativa y descriptiva, el texto empieza exponiendo la actualidad de la identidad cultural y su alcance; realiza a continuación una relectura de los conceptos que le afectan, particularmente los de educación, cultura e identidad cultural; aborda después el derech…
Introduction: 50 years after the General Education Act of 1970
The commemorative opportunity is only a circumstance that prompts to investigate the General Education Act (LGE) of 1970 fifty years after its approval. Another more essential reason invites its study: to investigate with new analyzes and new perspectives on what the LGE meant for the modernization of the country and for the transition between Franco's education and constitutional education. This requires examining the precedents of the 1970 Law and paying attention to the place that the LGE has occupied in educational historiography, in which an evolution towards current historiographic trends is visible. In these highlights the study of international influences in the process of education…
Conversations with Antonio Viñao: years of training (1943-1982)
Uncertainties and Risks in Education Politics
Introduction to Issue
Problems and challenges for the Politics of Education before the change of prominence experienced by educational actors
This paper deals with some of the problems that the Politics of Education has to face both as a subject and as a government action. Based above all on the literature appeared in specialized journals during the last five years, our attention is firstly focused on the concern for using an active methodology in the teaching of this subject which places students at the center of the teaching-learning process with the aim of encouraging their interest in its contents and inducing them to acquire civic competences. Secondly, the new but already deeply-rooted neoliberal conception of education is used to describe some of its policies, such as accountability, assessment and free choice of school. O…
La destrucción de la modernidad republicana. (Sin)razones del exilio pedagógico español
espanolEste texto expone los motivos que empujaron al exilio —exterior e interior— a millares de maestros, inspectores, profesores y cientificos espanoles, prestando especial atencion al llamado «exilio pedagogico». Los docentes e investigadores afines a la Republica se sintieron condenados y amenazados por los insurgentes por aunar una triple identidad: la de republicanos (el enemigo absoluto, «encarnacion del mal»), la de intelectuales (extranjerizantes y «envenenadores del alma popular»), y la de maestros («traidores a la patria», laicos y propagadores del credo republicano). A esta triple identidad, motivo —sinrazon— de exilio, se anaden dos causas —sinrazones— mas de enorme importancia…
The presence of the British education model in Spain: reception through the Institución Libre de Enseñanza
Spain suffered a severe political and moral crisis in the final years of the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth. Pedagogues and politicians belonging to the Institucion Libre de Ensenanza (ILE), or those close to it, did not consider it possible to regenerate the country without attending to education and Britain was the model to be followed. Many important figures of the ILE were declared anglophiles and therefore open to incorporating British education in Spain. This research reveals the roots of this preference for Britain on behalf of two of the key figures of the ILE: one of its most relevant founders, Francisco Giner, and his close collaborator, Jose Castillejo. T…
The General Education Act of 1970, a law for the modernization of Spain
El artículo pretende desarrollar aspectos que ayuden a una mejor comprensión de la Ley General de Educación de 1970, y para ello examina los factores que permiten hablar de una Ley para la modernización de España. En este sentido se ha considerado que el rasgo más definitorio de la Ley es su ambición modernizadora del sistema educativo; de ahí que se concrete el concepto «modernización» y se estudien los precedentes y los ejes modernizadores de la Ley. También se ha prestado atención al contexto socioeconómico y político que ayuda a entender mejor su aparición. Dada su importancia, el artículo se detiene en analizar los obstáculos y resistencias que dificultaron su génesis y su aplicación, …