Els Orígens del pensament educatiu de la Segona República = The origins of the educational philosophy of the second Republic

Abstract

The educational philosophy pursued by the Spanish Second Republic was not improvised in 1931. Like the republican project itself, its development can be traced back to the fall of the First Republic in 1874, which by squashing the influence of the Krausist ideal of social reform, and the Krausist challenge to monolithic Catholic dogma, spurred the creation of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza (ILE) by Francisco Giner de los Ríos in 1876. The aims of the ILE adhered broadly to the Fröbelian movement that at that time impregnated the thought of the majority of non-ecclesiastical European educationalists. When Manuel B. Cossío, Giner's principal disciple, attended the International Teaching Congress held in Brussels in 1880, he entered into direct contact with this movement and was able to appreciate the impact of its ideas in Belgium, France and other European countries. Cossío and other ILE teachers who attended other European teaching congresses between 1880 and 1889 established links with Ferdinand Buisson, James Guillaume and others, and became the chief representatives of the Fröbelian movement in Spain, where in planning the educational innovations that they began to experiment with in their school in Madrid they were mindful of the reforms carried out by Ferry in France and Humbéeck in Belgium. A generation later, a further influx of educational ideas and experience from abroad was promoted by the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios (in the creation of which Giner had played a significant role), which in 1911 organized the first of a series of visits to France and Belgium by primary school teachers; and a few years later Lorenzo Luzuriaga, a product of the ILE who had joined the Escuela Nueva of Núñez de Arenas following 2 years in Germany, was promoting the concept of the «single school» as the expression of a broadly shared, dogma-free educational ideal. By 1918, when this concept was incorporated in the socialist programme, awareness of the promise inherent in a model of independent, active, non-ecclesiastical education was gradually spreading throughout Spain, and this model was to play a conspicuous part in the social achievements of the Second Republic.