The origins of the Lavínia School

Abstract

The will and need to free the school from the bonds of the Franco regime in the 1970s prompted parents and teachers to take up the major challenges involved in restoring the values and democratic practices that had been banned until then. The Lavínia School in Barcelona’s Les Corts district bears witness to this. It was an open, creative, integrating and participatory secular school where everything was done in the Catalan language. Parents’ collaboration, the teamwork of teachers, and the willingness of friends and external professionals (theatre professionals, painters, businesspeople, museum experts) made it possible to turn a utopia into the reality of a favourable atmosphere for learning, sharing and establishing strong friendships among students, still evident after fifty years. There was a great curiosity and desire to study the pedagogical models that preceded us and those that at the time offered us an opportunity for reflection, as well as methods and techniques to consolidate the school project. In this respect, the link with the Freinet institutional pedagogy movement (France) and MCE (Italy) is a good example. This paper is a synthesis of the book Escola Lavínia. Els orígens d'un referent pedagògic (The Lavínia School. The origins of a pedagogical reference). It aims to disseminate the approach of a school at a specific historical moment, highlighting the ties of the school with the political, social and economic reality of the period concerned. It reflects the daily life of the school, with testimonies of students, teachers and parents, and reflections, doubts, attempts, successes and disagreements, forming the best definition of this school as a place for communication, discovery, learning, participation, and enjoyment of creation and invention. Lastly, a key aspect was to maintain the firm conviction of enhancing the values of humanity and democracy in the awareness of our students.

Keywords: Education, anti-Franco movement, pedagogical renovation, open school, Freinet, cooperative.