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- Convenor:
-
Jens R Hentschke
(Newcastle University)
- Location:
- Malet 630
- Start time:
- 4 April, 2014 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel wants to unite political, social, and intellectual historians who explore the spread of the various schools of European positivism to and within Latin America, the ways how these ideas were creatively digested, and the impact the suggested 'scientific politics' had on education reform.
Long Abstract:
Late nineteenth-century Latin America has been associated with economic modernization,state formation, and nation-building under the auspices of positivism. Yet, positivism never represented a homogeneous worldview. Not only is it possible to distinguish between different strands and generations of European positivists; the intellectual trajectory of some of its leading proponents, first and foremost Auguste Comte, also displays evolutions and ruptures that allow for different readings and applications. Latin American intellectuals, linked to international circuits, were all but passive recipients of these ideas. Their contact with them differed in time and space, and they always creatively adjusted them to changing national and regional particularities and needs. Different positivisms could coexist, and often they merged with other, even opposing, ideological currents, such as liberalism and Krausism. While republican Rio Grande do Sul came closest to a Comtean 'sociocratie' and Uruguay remained the exclusive domain of Herbert Spencer, in Mexico and Argentina French and English positivism interacted. In Chile, with its relatively stable post-independence polity, positivism could do no more than color liberalism, allowing for Krauso-positivist mergers earlier than in other countries of the region. Education reform, as a means of belated nation-building, figures prominently on the agenda of all fin-de-siecle positivists and therefore offers a suitable testing ground for the varying appropriations of this philosophy of science and its translation into socially cohesive practices. We would like to see papers on different countries, reform projects, and model schools, in order to allow for comparisons.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This paper provides an introduction to the case studies of the impact of Positivism upon educational reform in specific countries. It (re-)evaluates the conventional historiographical assumption that Latin America was transformed in the late-nineteenth century by this process.
Paper long abstract:
It continues to be assumed generally that in the first half-century or so after Independence the dysfunctional states of Latin America were characterised by political, social, and economic chaos, whereas thereafter a gradual process of 'modernisation' - embracing not only foreign investment, the improvement of internal and external transport links, and immigration but also educational reform - brought in its train peace, order (the key Positivist terms) and stability. The paper casts a critical eye over these assumptions.
Paper short abstract:
In 1864 President Benito Juárez entrusted Gabino Barreda, who had returned from his medical studies in France as a convinced Comtean, with the reorganization of education in Mexico. This paper concentrates upon the subsequent creation by him of the National Preparatory School.
Paper long abstract:
The creation of Mexico's National Preparatory School, of which Barreda was the first director, was central to the education of Mexican Positivists. This paper examines its activities, as well as the differences between the Comtean Positivists and the so-called Spencerians both within and beyond the School.
Paper short abstract:
For the architects of Uruguay's Reforma Vareliana, education was vital to erase frontier backwardness. This paper explores their gradual move from liberal 'popular' to positivist 'scientific education' between 1876 and the 1882 International Pedagogical Congress in Buenos Aires.
Paper long abstract:
In the late 1870s, Jose Pedro Varela, highly mythologized in Uruguay but little studied outside his country, embarked on a profound reform of primary education, which his brother Jacobo extended to the normal school sector during the following decade. Both saw no alternative to 'civilizing' war-torn Uruguay but lending their services to reform-willing military rulers. For Jose Batlle y Ordonez and his followers, who established Latin America's first welfare state democracy after 1903, this decision represented a mortal sin. While building upon the school reform of the 'militarist' era, batllistas distanced themselves from not only the Varelas but also the political philosophy that had guided them, positivism. Yet, varelistas with their rationalist roots never propagated a Comtean enlightened dictatorship but adhered to the more liberal English school and placed emphasis on the establishment of a nation-wide school system, the reconstruction of curricula, and scientific (often dogmatic) pedagogy. Their overriding concern was the very survival of their country in a perceived Darwinist competition of nation-states. This paper will explore the evolving normative ideas behind school reform and nation-building in Uruguay from the publication of Jose Pedro Varela's 'La legislacion escolar' in 1876 to the 1882 International Pedagogical Congress in Buenos Aires that helped spread the varelistas' doctrines in Argentina and Brazil.
Paper short abstract:
Established in 1896 by a group of young and politically active military engineers, the Porto Alegre School of Engineering became one of the most successful positivist-oriented educational enterprises in Brazil. The paper discusses the models of technical schooling that inspired the school founders.
Paper long abstract:
Established in 1896 by a group of young and politically active military engineers, the Porto Alegre School of Engineering became in the first decades of the 20th century one of the most successful positivist-oriented educational enterprises in Brazil. Planned as a 'Comtean project of technical university' and supported by the ruling elite, the School was the centre of a reformist attempt to provide higher education in different branches of engineering and, at the same time, cast a wide net of vocational and technical education for young workers. Very critical of the 'literary' nature of Brazilian education and the ubiquity of Law graduates ('bacharéis') in social and political life, the ideologues and first managers of the School of Engineering were inspired by the models of the German Technische Hochschule and the North American Land-Grant College, defending the central place of technique in education. Although the provision of excellent higher education remained the focus of the institution, its proactive role in the establishment of secondary vocational and technical institutes was equally celebrated. Contemporaries considered this emerging system of technical schools to be the accomplishment of a core positivist directive: to incorporate the proletariat into society. The paper discusses the choice of the German and American technical school models by positivist ideologues and educators in Rio Grande do Sul as a way to overcome the elitist nature of education in Brazil.
Paper short abstract:
This paper looks at the complex and often contradictory ways in which positivist ideas have influenced indigenous policies in the Andes around the turn of the 20th century.
Paper long abstract:
The late 19th century saw the beginning of a flurry of ideas to incorporate the indigenous populations in the sacred ideal of the nation state. Pessimism about the possibilities for modernization in the new republics gave way to the conviction that progress was inevitable. A necessary prerequisite, however, was the incorporation of the popular indigenous masses. this paper explores how these objectives came together in indigenista thinking in the Andean republics, in the late 19th and early 20th century