Joan Comas Camps and his pedagogical studies in Geneva funded by the BAS

Abstract

Pedagogic activism, at its different levels –new schools, active methods, experimental psychology and pedagogy, psychoanalysis, etc.– was the subject of study of the primary
education inspector Joan Comas Camps during the two years he studied in Switzerland through a grant he was awarded by the BAS (Board for Advanced Studies). The knowledge acquired both at the University of Geneva and the J. J. Rousseau Institute not only completed his education, but also enabled him to carry out an important task of dissemination in Spain. Preceded by a few brief biographical pointers, his education in Geneva along with his contributions to our pedagogy arising from this are the
object of analysis of this article which aims, as well as providing hitherto unpublished information on one of our most relevant primary education inspectors in the first third of the 20th century, to demonstrate, yet again, the potential and possibilities the
Spanish pedagogy could have had, had it not suffered the upheaval of the war in 1936 and the setback of the subsequent decades of the Franco dictatorship.

KEY WORDS: Joan Comas Camps, educational renewal, Board for Advanced Studies, J. J. Rousseau Institute.