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The Formation of the Argentine Public Primary and Secondary School System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

John E. Hodge
John E. Hodge*
Affiliation:
Greensboro College, Greensboro, North Carolina
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Extract

With the acceptance of the Federal Constitution of 1853 by the province of Buenos Aires in 1862 and the assumption of the presidency of the Nation by Bartolomé Mitre, the main constitutional problem besetting the region since independence was, in theory at least, solved. The permanent location of the capital had not been settled, but a national government was a reality. Leaders who had brought about the downfall of Rosas, negotiated an end to full-scale civil war, and organized the outline of the patria grande now faced new challenges. The spirit of anarchy, the rule of force, provincial allegiances, and a widely scattered, largely illiterate population were awesome impediments to the creation of a modern nation state. The response to these problems by the politicians, economists, scholars, technocrats, artists, and soldiers of Argentina during the last forty years of the nineteenth century, working towards the goal of a unified, peaceful and cultivated nation, is an enthralling topic.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , July 1987 , pp. 45 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1987

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References

1 Belgrano published his views on education in the Correa de Comercio March 17, April 14, June 23 and especially July 21, 1810. All reprinted in vol. II of Museo Mitre. Documentos del archivo de Belgrano (Buenos Aires, 1913).

2 Along with his conclusion that England and the United States had reached a level of religious morality through industry, while Spain could not achieve liberty or industry through piety, he made the rather startling comment that “el idioma inglés, como idioma de la libertad, de la industria y el orden, debe ser aun más obligatoria que el latin: no debiera darse diploma ni título universitario al joven que no lo hable y escriba.” Bases y puntos (Buenos Aires, 1938), p 63.

3 Mitre’s views were expanded in a famous speech in the Senate several years later (July 16, 1870) found in the journal of the Senate, or more easily in his Obras completas (17 vols., Buenos Aires 1938–1959), XVI, 568–594. He makes much of the moral uplifting of a people through education and stresses the tie between the intellectual level of those people and the quality of their political system.

4 Text of circular in Memoria presentada por el ministro de estado en el ministerio de justicia, culto e instrucción pública al congresos nacional de 1863 (Reimpresión Oficial Buenos Aires, 1900), pp. 21–22. (Hereinafter cited as Memoria, followed by year).

5 Reply dated March 4, 1863, in ibid., pp. 23–31.

6 Reply dated March 27, 1863, in ibid., pp. 32–34. An apparently more careful survey, appended later (n.d.) showed a total of 305 students in San Luis.

7 Memoria, 1864, p xi.

8 Congreso Nacional. Diario de sesiones de la cámara de diputados, 1863, (Oct. 8), pp. 503–524.

Eventually the budget of the National Government for 1864 provided (Article V, item 10) for 44,000 pesos for subsidies to the three provinces. It is not likely that Costa ever saw more than a portion of that sum.

9 Juana Paula Manso de Noronha (1819–1875) first published in 1862 her Compendio de la historia de las Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata desde su descubrimiento hasta la declaración de su independencia el 9 de Julio de 1816. A decade later the work was in its fifth edition bought up to 1871; the last edition published in Buenos Aires in 1881 contained her last corrections and updating to 1874, the year before her death. She translated many textbooks and pedagogic treatises into Spanish. The best succinct account of this remarkable woman’s career may be found in Chavarría, Juan M., La Escuela Normal y la cultura argentina (Buenos Aires, 1947), pp. 315–330.Google Scholar Manso deserves booklength treatment and well merits the title given to her by Mary Mann in a letter to Sarmiento, “maestro sin vacaciones.”

10 For material on Jacques, see Arturo Andres Roig, “Amédée Jacques, un ecléctico francés en el Río de la Plata. Un capitolo de la influencia del pensiamento francés en América latina,” Cahier du Monde Hispanique et Luso-Bresilien, XIX (1972), 145–156. For a more popular article by the same author, including many interesting photographs, see “Amadeo Jacques French Educator on the River Plate,” Americas, XVIII (July 1966), 7–13. Also of great value is Amadeo Jacques, Escritos (Buenos Aires, 1945) which includes a fifty-seven page biographical and analytical essay by the editor and noted educator, Juan Mantovani.

11 Manuel de Philosophie à l’usage des collèges (Paris, 1846). Jacques’ contribution was entitled “Introduction et Psychologie.” Co-authors were Jules Simon and Emile Saisset. Spanish translation by Martínez del Romero, published by Callego of Madrid.

12 Paul Groussac remembered him well in his section on José Manuel Estrada in his Los que pasaban (Buenos Aires, 1919). Miguel Cané in his delightful literary reminiscences Juvenilia, 3rd ed., (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Estrada, n.d.) devotes most of chapters seven through thirteen to impressions of Jacques. Cané, who spent a good deal of his time figuring out how to get out of the colegio at night to enjoy theatrical performances, dances and cafe life and to avoid schoolwork as much as possible, recalled nevertheless that “adorábamos a Jacques a pesar de su carácter, jamas faltábamos a sus clases, y nuestro orgullo major que ha persistido hasta hoy, es llamamos sus disciples.”

13 Memoria, 1863, pp. 87–90.

14 Father Aguero was a patriarchal churchman-educator who had refused to kowtow to Rosas and was granted the title of Rector in honor of past services, while the real work was to be done by Jacques. Aguero died the following year and Jacques assumed his title. Cané remembered that discipline was lax, school administration chaotic and scholarship deplorable until Jacques took the helm, due no doubt to the fact that “el doctor Aguero estaba ya muy viejo; buenos y cariñoso, vivía en un optimismo singular respecto a los estudiantes, angelos calumniados siempre, según su opinión.” Cane, ρ 32.

15 “Plan de estudios preparatorios para el Colegio Nacional,” Memoria, 1863, pp. 91–94.

16 Memoria, 1865, pp. 110–118.

17 Agote, Pedro, Recurdos del pasado (Buenos Aires y Barcelona, 1968), pp. 119–123.Google Scholar

18 For a succinct biographical essay on Torres (1823–1895) see Chavarría, pp. 330–347. On the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Escuela Normal de Paraná, Celia Ortiz Arigos de Montoya examined his intellectual foundation in a lengthy paper entitled “José María Torres y su pensiamiento pedagogico” (pamphlet, Santa Fe, 1957, University of Pittsburgh Library).

19 Memoria, 1873. This annual message, the last of five presented by Avellaneda as Minister of Public Instruction, contains detailed reports from each of the provinces and is the most informative of all those sent to Congress by him. All five may most easily be found in his Escritos y discursos, 10 vols., (Buenos Aires, 1910), VIII.

20 In 1872, for example, the federal government appropriated 29,775 pesos for elementary schools in La Rioja and 5,350 for those of Buenos Aires.

21 The indispensable work on this topic is Chavarría which is a mine of information, particularly valuable for the major changes in curriculum and duration of teacher-training which took place in 1870, 1886, 1914, and 1941. See also an informative speech by Juan Mantovani, “La Escuela Normal y su misión de cultura,” given in 1937 at the inauguration of a new building for the Normal School in La Rioja. (pamphlet, Buenos Aires, 1937, Library of Congress).

22 Avellaneda, , Escritos y discursos, 10, pp. 132–133.Google Scholar

23 Born in Montevideo, Sastre (1808–1887) had opened a school in Cordoba on his own at the age of twenty while still a student himself. One of the many exiles from the Rosas regime, he escaped a few steps ahead of the mazorca to Santa Fe where his reputation as an educator grew by leaps and bounds. A pioneer in the establishment of libraries and book exchanges, he published many texts for classroom use as well as pedagogical treatises. For details of his life see Chavarría, pp. 303–315.

24 Salvadores, Antonio, Historia de la instrucción pública en Entre Rios (Paraná, 1966), pp. 141–142.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., pp. 146–147.

26 Just before his death in 1865 Jacques drew up a Magna Carta for the Argentine academic world, Proyecto de plan de instrucción general y universitaria. … y memoria, generally simply referred as La memoria de 1865. Printed in Jacques, Escritos, pp. 7–65.

27 See note 18.

28 This topic and the role played by the public school law has been treated definitively in Kress, Lee Bruce, “Argentine Liberalism and the Church under Julio Roca 1880–1886,” The Americas, 30 (Jan. 1974), 319–340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar