Entre l'entusiasme i l'obstruccionisme: la realitat de l'escola valenciana durant la Segona República (1931-1939) = Between Enthusiasm and obstructionism: The realities of the valencian School during the Second Republic (1931-1939)

Abstract

Seventy-five years after the proclamation of the Second Republic, the studies that allow the knowledge of its education policy in a general field are numerous now. But, it's necessary a micro-look that brings us near, in a more specific and detailed way, both to its carrying out and to the difficulties that came up and which, to a great extent, made them impossible. Reducing these studies to the Valencian comarcas (administrative divisions comprising a number of municipalities) allows the direction to a closer and critical look on the theoretical debate and on the school practices which took place in this area. They show the way in which the constant political confrontations which came up between the most important state parties and the local parties within this territorial field, conditioned, to a great extent, the materialization of the republican education policies. A fourth debate about the introduction of the Valencian language is added to the three big debates related to the conflict Church State (unified school / freedom to teach; laicism / Catholicism, and coeducation / sex segregation). All of them acquire outstanding shades due to the introduction in the struggle between right-wing parties and left-wing parties, the particular conflict between the two Valencian political forces whose outstanding and influence are bigger: the Valencian republican Blasco party called Partit d'Unió Republicana Autonomista (PURA), (republican, secular, populist) and the Valencian right-wing party called Dreta Regional Valenciana (DRV), (catholic, right-wing, inter-class). While the laicism defences nearly exclusively the educative policy of the PURA, the freedom to teach, understood as the respect for the catholic initiative, will be the starting point of the DRV. Party interests, its successive alliances and confrontations and the hindering of the most conservative sector of the Department of Education (Magisteri), will cause the delay in the application of the National Culture Plan (Pla Nacional de Cultura), (PNC). The obstructionist measures in the development of the state school and the boycott of the secular and co-educative practices materialization impede the development of global or far-reaching educative projects and reduce the pedagogical renovation to isolated experiences. The addition of the lack of nationalist consciousness of both parties to the unconcern of the state parties in identity issues, explains the null fruition of the efforts made by sectors of the PNC to obtain a school in the Valencian language. Despite of the difficulties and limitations, the balance is rather positive: insufficient creation, but real, of state schools, construction of buildings respect for the teachers' and pupils' conscience, setting up of canteens and child summer camps, introduction of renewal pedagogical practices in rural and urban schools. All things considered, the Valencian school lived, during the republican phase, its more shining period.