La
enseñanza de la lectura como profilaxis:
el
Decreto Orgánico de Instrucción Pública:
entre
la caridad y la instrucción*
Diana Paola
Guzmán Méndez[1]
Universidad
Jorge Tadeo Lozano
Reception: 23/10/2015
Evaluation: 21/04/2016
Approval: 26/05/2016
Research and Innovation article
Resumen
El radicalismo liberal que gobernó los
destinos nacionales entre 1863 y 1886, marcó el inicio de una nueva era para la
educación en Colombia. Laica y gratuita, la enseñanza de la literatura ocupó un
espacio central dentro del plan liberal. Educación, higiene y moral formaron
una triada que definió de manera fundamental la concepción de la educación y la
función de las letras como parte evidente del progreso y el desarrollo. Esta
investigación intenta demostrar que la lectura se formuló como una profilaxis,
una limpieza y una medicina preventiva que atravesó el tiempo y se instaló
sobre dos lógicas más cercanas que enfrentadas: la de la caridad propia de la
propuesta católica que se basa en los principios lancasterianos y la lógica de
la instrucción cifrada en Pestalozzi relacionada con la idea de una cuerpo
nacional en vías del progreso. Los materiales de lectura que analizamos para
este trabajo, demuestran que leer era una práctica moral antes que de educación
y conocimiento.
Palabras clave: Decreto, profilaxis, lectura, cuerpo, caridad,
instrucción.
Abstract
The
liberal radicalism that governed national destinies between 1863 and 1886
marked the beginning of a new era for lay, free education in Colombia. The
teaching of literature occupied a central space in the liberal plan. Education,
hygiene and morality formed the triad that fundamentally defined the conception
of education and the function of literature and reading as elements of
progress. This study attempts to demonstrate that reading was formulated as a
prophylaxis, a method of hygiene and preventive medicine that traversed time
and was installed on two contradictory forms of logic: the sense of charity
belonging to the catholic ideology, based on Lancastrian principles, and the
logic of instruction based on Pestalozzi, related to the idea of a national body
on the path of progress. The reading materials analyzed in this study
demonstrate that reading was a moral practice before being an educational and
knowledge-related one.
Key Words:
Decree, prophylaxis, reading, body, charity, instruction
L’enseignement de la
lecture comme prophylaxie: le Décret Organique d’Instruction Publique: entre la
charité et l’instruction
Résumé
Le radicalisme libéral qui a gouverné la
nation entre 1863 et 1886, a marqué le début d’un nouvel âge pour une éducation
laïque et gratuite en Colombie. L’enseignement de la littérature a occupé un
espace central dans le plan libéral. Éducation, hygiène et morale ont formé une
trilogie qui a résumé la conception de l’éducation et la fonction des lettres
comme un élément du progrès. Notre recherche se propose de montrer que la
lecture a été conçue comme une prophylaxie et comme une médecine préventive qui
ont traversé le temps et se sont installés sur deux logiques plutôt proches que
contradictoires: celle de la charité, consubstantielle au projet catholique
fondé sur les principes lancastériens, et la logique de l’instruction fondée
sur Pestalozzi et liée à l’idée du corps national dans les voies du progrès.
Les matériaux de lecture que nous analysons pour ce travail, démontrent que lire
était une pratique relative à la morale plutôt qu’à l’éducation et la
connaissance.
Mots-clés: Décret, prophylaxie, lecture, corps,
charité, instruction.
1.
Introduction
The teaching of reading has been a strategic point in
the social and political projects of the different periods of national history;
in fact, the concern for the formation of the reader, arises from the
dichotomous dynamics between the Church and state which has characterized the
history of the country. While it is not our central interest to enunciate this
relationship in detail, it is an ideal setting for describing the
representation of a reader who was configured as a point of contention between
the clergy and the government. The Organic Decree of Public Instruction,
promulgated in 1870, is perhaps the most interesting example of the fight for
supremacy of the two powers over education. This decree organized elementary
schools and established the three stages of action: instruction, inspection and
administration.
In the text of the decree,
the state is not only recognized as the central instrument of common welfare,
but also takes as its own responsibility the institutions of health and
education. This is how health and education occupy the same normativity and
become synonymous. Consequently, the purpose of educating for health and being
healthy in order to educate oneself, is a conceptual line whose objective is
none other than to institutionalize a systematized and exteriorized discursive
order through certain practices[2].
According to Fairclough,
this process of the standardization and institutionalization of the discourses
should contemplate the construction of ideational meanings, that is, the
genetic process in which the ideas and relationships that compose them[3] arise. For this reason, the idea of a renewed
state is the result of a series of processes that are evidenced in a transverse
and permanent way in the use of the categories within the official and
scientific discourses; for example, the state presents itself as a protector
and guarantor of the national laws in Article 19 of the constitution of 1886;
in this same year, through Law 30, the hygiene boards are set up to ensure the
health and the physical and moral cleanliness of the population.
The government showed its
constant concern for more preventive than curative health and began its push to
eradicate diseases that affected the intranational regions. However, the
discourse on health involved other tones and other intentions, the promulgation
of cleanliness and correct corporal practices, was also oriented towards mental
and moral hygiene, the legacy of the catholic tradition that has characterized
the historical dynamics of Colombia.
The work of these boards
was to monitor and inspect public morality, safety and public health. The
enunciation of the law is a reflection of the inseparable triad between
morality, health and safety that has been present throughout the national
history. However, in the 19th century, this union seems to be
approved and institutionalized by the constitution itself. In fact, years
before the Magna Carta of 1886, the newspaper publications already proposed a
union between health and the fulfillment of catholic precepts such as charity.
On September 24 1864, the first issuance of La Caridad. Lecturas del Hogar (The
Charity. Home readings) was
published. In its prospectus, it is clearly stated that
[…] we write for all the generous hearts,
begging them to come and succor the helpless and sick childhood which lacks of
the gentle warmth of a mother’s breast; to the elderly overwhelmed by diseases;
to those poor women stabbed by pain, who see agonized the clothes that cover
their soul trespassed by cold, starving without dress, bed and with sickness[4].
In
fact, it is necessary to emphasize that the catholic newspaper publications
that abounded in the second half of the 19th century, turned their
eyes on women and children as perfect subjects of the prevention and formation
of an enduring catholic collective, not in vain the first section dedicated to
children sees the light in 1849 and forms part of the same newspaper[5].
If we return to Fairclough to understand the relationship between
education and hygiene that is expressed decisively during the Liberal Republic,
it is necessary to understand the bases that consolidated these links. As is well known, the relationship between
sickness and poverty, sickness and racial decay, is long standing. According to
Jason McGraw, the period subsequent to the War of a Thousand Days (1899-1902)
determined a eugenic debate that placed as part of the problems of the nation,
the geographical and phenotypic origin of the inhabitants of some regions of
the country; therefore, thinking race was essential in order to prepare the
ground for progress that appeared imminent[6]. However,
the influence of the European hygienist movement in the middle of the 19th
century marked in the country a presumption that was even taken into account in
the Constitution of 1886[7].
An element that is clear in the legal order of
hygiene is the consolidation of the triad formed by hygiene, morals and
education. A point that is going to be common in the temporal becoming is that
hygiene is not only an exterior practice, but is an educating function: being
clean on the outside should mean being clean on the inside. In this sense, the
idea of prevention that comes to Colombia with the principles of Henry P.
Stearns, through the Lancastrian schools, makes public instruction into a
bastion that ensures hygienic practices and, besides, it transmits them through
teaching.
With the arrival of principles of Pestalozzi to Colombian education, the
idea of an integral education in which body, mind and soul are one unit, was enthroned,
the need to clear the mind so that at the same time body and soul should be
unhurt, required very specific educational dynamics. In fact, the principle of
the integral being expressed by Pestalozzi, is registered and legitimized in
1870 through the Organic Decree of Public Instruction, in which the influence
of Pestalozzi is explained in article 30: “Teaching in schools will not be
limited to instruction, but will include the harmonious development of all the
faculties of the soul, senses and body forces[8].” This
characterization of integral education brings up an element that, within the
Lancastrian model, had been excluded: bodies will become objects of educational
intervention[9].
The decree of 1870 that
governed the destinies of education until 1932, when the Liberal republic made
changes and transformations on the educational law through the decree of 1487,
was based on the principles of objective teaching proclaimed by Pestalozzi; for
this reason, in this decree there is a permanent presence of education about
bodies, given that, according to Pestalozzi, a child’s learning began with
their external and sensory relationship with the world and ended with the
formation of a clean and moral interior[10]. Even
for Pestalozzi, the chain that structures the integral subject, which was
formed by morality, the doing and the knowing, presents a specific order: the
observation of the world is formed as a vehicle for the relationship of a child
with the world and its corporeality, which means that the moral is felt. In
this way, the child does with the moral and learns with the moral; the body is
an instrument to construct a clean inner being and not exclusively to be the
subject of restrictive policies.
This article refers to the triad between education, morals and health
that was established by the Organic Decree of Public Instruction promulgated in
the Radical Olympus (1863-1886) and also influenced educational policies of the
Liberal Republic. The teaching of reading seen through the official publication
of the secretary of public instruction, La
Escuela Normal (The Normal School), plus
the citolegia
practical reading method (a method of teaching reading without spelling) and
the reading manuals approved by the state in the liberal radicalism of the 19th
century, constitute the “corpus” of analysis of this work. Likewise, the
relationship between reading and the body that is evidenced through the
pedagogy of Pestalozzi, proposes not only a conception of the nation as a body,
but of reading as prophylaxis.
2. Teaching to read, learning to read: words as prophylaxis
From the
perspective of the integral being proposed by Pestalozzi, the backbone of the
1870 decree, all courses and learning fields are, necessarily, corporal
practices. The teaching of reading, is, without a doubt, one of the stages most
visited and named by these principles. In 1897 Lectura Infantil para la Enseñanza
Primaria by Eva Barco, was published, with an ecclesiastical
license. The book includes a small text by the priest and educator Pablo Manuel
Bernal, who praises Barco’s work and related it with Pestalozzian
principles: “Her work is one of the most adjusted to the pedagogical principles
implanted by Pestalozzi (…) especially this new idea with fruitful results
regarding consonant forming in rudimentary reading[11].”
As mentioned
by Néstor Roberto Cardoso, the appearance of the
school text and its propagation through government policies, generates a very
close relationship between the book and the reader; it also establishes the
discursive orders that represent, in a systematized way, the social roles that
the reader-child has to fulfill in a Christian
society[12]. The fact
that Eva Barco, in the introduction of her book, proposes a mechanism of
learning that involves the senses of sight and hearing, turns this activity
into a body dynamic:
Thus, when
the institute wants to develop a letter or a syllable, it will present to the
child’s view the drawing of an object whose name it contains. At the beginning,
the sound of the letter or syllable that wants to be developed will be
presented. As proposed by the teacher Pestalozzi, this will help the child to
relate the world with what they read and how they feel[13].
But, before Eva
Barco implanted the objective teaching principles of Pestalozzi, Rufino José Cuervo had thought of
an imaginary alphabet created through numbers and images; that is, each letter
had a number and an image that characterized it; for example, B had the number
2 and an image of a whale, E the number 13 and an elephant; this project of
1880 was never published but it circulated in a restricted way. In 1891, La Citolegia. Método de Lectura Práctica sin Deletrear (a practical reading method to read without
spelling) arrived in Colombia. Since its introduction, it is made clear that
the so-called citolegia
is a method of reading that uses alphabets, pictures and visual aids. This
means that the Colombians who learned to read with citolegias, learned to read with
the whole body. In this edition of 1891 and in the one published in 1950 by the
Bedout bookstore, the advantages of this method are
read:
She
also has the advantage of following with strictly logical precision the
analytical method of beginning with the easiest and gradually following to the
most difficult; so that if the teacher knows how to make good use of the
pictures, the intellectual faculties of
his disciples will insensibly develop, and by the end of the eighth class they
will know how to read and will understand what they read[14].
The citolegia written by Martín Restrepo Mejía and published in
1917 by the typography of Castellanos and Ruiz will do its part. Citolegias have a
common characteristic, they bring the exercises that the teacher must do in
class, so that the student can do them at home. Both in 1891 and 1917 or 1950,
these materials contain, in an annexed table, exercises similar to those the
instructor performs in school. This condition makes the citolegias very interesting
materials, on the one hand, exercises show an order in the use of senses: to
see, listen, relate; on the other, in Restrepo Mejía’s citolegia, reading exercises are interspersed with images of
children reading or exercising, and it even proposes active pauses for
calisthenics.
Another common element of
the citolegias
is the relation between moral and reading material. Although in the case of Eva
Bravo, it emphasizes the fact that the book has an ecclesiastical license, in
the citolegias
moral precepts look like examples that are given for children to learn the
first letters[15]: “Wenceslao
Wilches, is a very disengaged child. Sometimes,
instead of going to school, he goes around the streets. But his parents make
him go with a policeman, and he goes through the shame of being taken to school
as a criminal[16].”
It is necessary to clarify
that is not possible to determine how the students read or were taught to read
exclusively by means of the texts that served as a first resource; for example,
to Karin Littau, reading, in both learning and
teaching, is shaped by the context that surrounds it and determines people’s
lives[17]. Thus, the example cited
above can only be understood through legal principles that converted “vagrancy”
into a crime. In this way, it is clear that the school played a cleaning and
collective security role and that the 1870 decree was the route for this to
happen.
In fact, the same Organic
decree of Public Instruction,
is structured in such a way that each procedure and each law,
constitutes a space of cleaning, security and organization.
As Maurice Agulhon points out, the processes
of linkage between teaching and society have to be determined through
sociability circuits that complement, at the same time, the physiognomies of institutions; in this case,
education must be seen as an institutionalization and regulation of teaching
practices whose physiognomy must be ordered from its legislation[18].
Thus, the
physiognomy of the teaching of reading must be evidenced by two principles that
Agulhon considers central: the creation of learning
and reading spaces such as libraries or classrooms, along with the appearance of dynamics that
account for the subjects who are immersed in the sociability circuit. The decree of 1870 contains both conditions.
This document not only determines the school division, but also the functions
of instructors, principals and inspectors; also, the second section, article
10, stipulates the creation of a printed body that serves as a bridge between
the state, instructors and students: “The chairmanship will publish up to twice
a week, on the days that it determines, a newspaper that will be titled La Escuela Normal, the editor being the
Secretary of the Chairmanship[19]."
La Escuela Normal (1871-1880) was the official publication of the Secretariat of
Public Instruction, there came to light the full Organic decree, in addition to
all legal documents, letters and class lessons that were to be used in the
national classrooms. This magazine fulfills
the function of determining a specific group of readers, who, in addition, must
follow the rules and principles that are explicit in its pages. On the other hand, in 1872, a round of censuses about children that
attended schools that were organized by their regions, sex and age, began to be
published; as a result, the agents that make up this circuit of sociability are
instructed in accordance with this classification[20].
In Norbert Elias's terms, these stages of classification, regulation,
and quantification are reflected in the state control of practices, emotions,
and bodies[21].
For example, on May 4, of 1872, La
Escuela Normal announced with great fanfare, the appearance and adoption of
the Theoretical and Practical Treatise on
Gymnastics (1870), adopted as an official text in the public school
system, specifically those of Santander and Boyacá, written by M Luis Leonel.
In the presentation made about the book La Escuela Normal it is pointed out that gymnastics as a daily activity
in schools has the purpose "of giving strength to the moral and physical,
to contribute to the general good; public prosperity has its source in that of each of its members[22].” In addition, this treatise will permanently mark the union between
body, mind and morals, but the interesting thing about this text is that knowledge is also
linked to knowing the why “(…) mental application is a powerful remedy both for diseases of the body and
for those of the spirit[23].”
The treatise
includes not only physical exercises, but uplifting and moralizing readings,
also a guide to sitting properly and having good manners. This guide was illustrated with 50 figures that combine body positions
with manners, it even has a long set of instructions to read "hygienically and
correctly[24]:” Another text that begins to be published in La Escuela Normal is Intellectual,
moral and physical education by Herbert
Spencer. In the articles that appear in the magazine there is a special one
dedicated to the relationship between hygiene and learning, evidently, the core of this
relationship is the overlap between hygiene and morality. The body reads what it must learn and applies it to
its care, this setting of a regulation presents the reading as a kind of
prophylaxis, with a mechanism of cleaning and protection.
Forty-two years later, in the children’s magazine La Niñez (Childhood), the same text by
Spencer appears again, only that in the reflection with which the delivery opens and that is
dedicated to children, there is a comparison of the child who reads with a
healthy being and the child who does not read with an unhealthy subject:
The child who reads is
similar to the strong warrior who is suitably dressed to enter battle, he is
strong, bright. But the lazy child will be unable to attend to his affairs,
weak and stooped, he will not have many subjects to talk about[25].
The relationship between reading and physical strength obviously follows the link that authors like
Spencer or Pestalozzi had in Colombian intellectual and political life. It is
not surprising that Spencer's text is published in a state body such as La Escuela Normal[26].
Another frequent
collaborator of La Escuela
Normal.was
the presbyter Martín Lleras who published, along with
Hotschick El
primer libro de lectura
(The first book of reading) in 1872. The full text also appears in the journal Pedagogía, de los deberes particulares de los institutores y cómo deben
cumplirlos. In this text, Lleras analyzes
the different classes of pedagogy, strongly criticizing the Lancastrian and
pondering Pestalozzi. However, for Lleras, the best
method is "the so-called eurytic where the child
learns at his mercy through his body and his senses[27]." In issue 103 published on December 21 of 1972, Lleras makes known his method of reading and writing which focuses its attention not only on the
modes of learning, but on the ways in which the instructor should mark the time
for healthy reading (which should not exceed 80 minutes) and the degree of
inclination of the letters. In this same issue, Lleras
also proposes the ideal measures and model of desks to be adopted by public schools[28].
These desks,
according to Lleras, have to be individual, generate and reaffirm the
Pestalozzian reading model, focused on the individual and the silent
practice that the student should carry out under the close supervision of his
teacher. According to Littau, individual reading opens the door to an
individualism that conceives a reader capable of interpreting, from his
experience, what he reads[29].
It is worth remembering that the journal was delivered to the libraries
of the schools and stated their consultation and mandatory use by the teachers
and students.
In Martín Restrepo Mejía's
Citolegía
(1917), mentioned above, this model was still preserved. For this reason, the
exercises that the teacher carried out in class were reproduced at the bottom
of the page for the child to continue at home. This suggests that books could
be taken home and that the student could have initiated an intimate and
constant relationship with their reading material.
Another factor that permanently stands out in Martin Lleras,
is the fact that the education of the child is not limited to the school space,
but the family
is the most important stage and the most strategic partner in the formation of a clean and moral
citizen. For Lleras, leisure meant vice, therefore, the taking of
reading to the house resulted in the child or youth being engaged in "good
offices to learn and strengthen their health and knowledge, away from the vices
that leisure attracts by itself”. The binomial of the hygienist (sanitary /
unhealthy) model of prevention promulgated by Henry P. Stearns, Spencer, and
Pestalozzi, went through the Organic Decree of Public Instruction, reproducing
the conception of reading as a healthy and preventive practice.
But this model of sanitation embodied the need to mark and determine
more radically the roles between the instructed and the instructor. It is enough to see an extensive text that
occupies about 6 issues of La Escuela
Normal, the work published in installments as from the 3 of August 1872 in
issue 83 and titled "La Instrucción Popular" (Popular instruction). It
determines that education has to be equal and that it is the work of scholars
"coming from cities and civilized centers to help the poor to see the
world of knowledge[30]." Education, represented in reading, again
appears as an element that prevents revolutions and popular uprisings; in fact,
the text states that if France had paid more attention to the instruction of
her people, she would have avoided terrible bloodshed, as "the furious mob
is not made up of enlightened men but of people without culture[31]."
The model of teaching as an activity of the State, guaranteed that this
process proposed by liberal radicalism will be concretized and developed in a
satisfactory way. According to Gilberto Loaiza Cano,
the instructionalist model, far from signifying the
democratization of education, further defined the social gaps that
characterized national society. In fact, for Loaiza
Cano, the subject that deserved the greatest attention of the Decree of 1870 is
not the student but the teacher, who stands as the intervened body and was
prepared to embody the liberal ideal[32].
3. Ideal bodies:
between the logic of charity and instruction
On August 30,
1872, La Escuela Normal published an
invitation for the young ladies who wanted to be instructors in the girl’s
school that would open in the state of Cundinamarca. Among the requirements
were: to be 17 years
old, to certify purity of customs and not to have any physical defect that
restrained from the office of teaching[33]. In fact, La
Escuela Normal is full of lessons and texts dedicated to the office of
teaching, to the ideals and conditions that teachers must meet. The interesting
thing about these publications is that from issue 53 and issue 54 there is a
text called Carta de un maestro de escuela (Letter from a school teacher) signed by Romualdo B. Guarín, principal of
the male school of Villeta. This letter summarizes,
in broad lines, the ideals to be met by teachers.
The most important virtue is the purity of customs, the morality
evidenced in everyday practices; in fact, a cause of dismissal is "bad
habits and immoralities." In addition,
[…] should take care of your
presentation, be clean inside and out, dress well and exercise daily. The office of teaching requires that the
physique be unscathed, the teacher must have a good height and a modest
appearance. The teacher must avoid excesses, what is seen on the outside is
what is seen on the inside, he will be the mirror to be followed by his young
students[34].
As
is reaffirmed by Loaiza Cano, the school teacher
ended up being the sum of all the virtues that the liberal radicalism intended
to disseminate. However, these qualities should have been visible, and not
remain in the sphere of subjectivity: morality came from the bodies of the teachers.
This discourse on selection where clean and healthy teachers were requested, also
evidenced the presence of the hygienization of
teaching. The teachers had to be healthy, for their main mission was to prevent
the illness of ignorance and barbarism.
In
¨Pensamientos sobre educación” (Thoughts on education), a complete text
that was published in instalments in La
Escuela Normal, it is made clear, the kindness at heart that the teacher
should have, which is, undoubtedly, their main virtue. But this condition is
seen through their cleanliness and good health: “(…) as explained by Dr. Spencer, the teacher must be as clean and good as their
heart and virtue[35].”
And
this “art of conserving health” becomes a quality of the teachers that must be
spread as a vaccine throughout the national territory[36]. If the teachers are the model
bodies, the inspectors will be the ones to guarantee this model, and the students,
the receptors that reproduce it. The unity between the teacher and the
inspector will be that which supports the control over the bodies and their
practices. One of the main functions of the inspector was to “guarantee the
health conditions, virtues and offices of the teachers[37].”
The
triad between education, hygiene and morality, to which we referred earlier,
appears again when mentioning the functions of the teachers and the inspectors.
As evidenced by Olivia López Sánchez in the projects of modernization of the
state, which characterized the liberal governments in America, the virtue
passes on from being moral to being physical: he who has good health is
virtuous and is capable of transmitting it[38].
The
teaching of reading, as one of the fundamental functions of the teachers, was
not exempt from this condition. Although we have seen that the methods adopted
by the Decree were presented in relation to the prevention policies, the office
of the teachers as instructors of the first letters were also affected by this
situation. It is known that in 1872 a German pedagogical mission arrived in the
national territory. This event is registered by La Escuela Normal, in its 106th issue. The mission was formed by 9
German professors who went to the states of Antioquia, Bolívar, Cauca,
Magdalena, Panamá, Cundinamarca, Tolima, Boyacá, and Santander.
According
to the piece of news published in the journal, the main mission of these
teachers was that of founding, in each one of the states, a normal and an
elementary school, with the Prussian model. This model was aimed at
[…]
training citizens and intelligent, healthy and responsible workers in order to
serve the general progress. They will train the students and teachers in the
basic subjects and in the health of prevention, for the teachers will also have
to work with other government officials[39].
But
the article not only mentions the conditions of permanence and the functions
that these teachers would carry out, it also enumerated the teaching materials
they bring along with them and that belong to the French-German firm Casa de Hachette & Compañía[40]. This firm brought along “materials
that constitute the most recent in the sciences and all the texts that refer to
the manufactures and the formation of workers in order to achieve progress[41].” It is evident that the function of
an education with these principles is focused on the formation of labor that benefits liberal modernization. Notwithstanding,
not all the materials were distributed in the same way: the pianos, for
example, were taken to the schools located in Cundinamarca and Santander,
whereas the political maps, the books on agronomy and other supplies regarding
practical work were taken to the schools in Boyacá and Cauca; it is there where
“the books that teach basic tasks should be[42].”
The
material that was equally distributed were the textbooks, starting from the
4000 copies of the one written by Martín Lleras and Hotschick, the same number of copies for the grammar of
César Guzmán, but the citolegia charts with syllables
had 16000 copies distributed all around the national territory. The liberal
government laid their trust in the German mission and the materials of the casa Hachette. On their shoulders rested
the objective of formulating a model of progress and health in the schools of
the territory. Moreover, with the German mission came an initiative that
reaffirms the analogy between the hygienist model of Henry P. Stearns and
Spencer, and the pedagogical model of Pestalozzi: mobile libraries.
These
spaces for the multiplication of knowledge are “the natural complement to the
provision of textbooks, and they are created due to the request of the nation.”
In this sense, the liberal dynamics demanded more efficiency and efficacy in
the processes of teaching. The mobile libraries are an example of this
knowledge that moved, like a health brigade, from town to town immunizing
people against ignorance and healing the illness of barbarism. The libraries
that move are described as supervised, clean and regulated spaces: (…) they
should have a lot of light, enough chairs, water for people to wash their hands
and avoid making things dirty; the books must be taken care of and remain as
clean as the readers who want them[43].”
Books,
teachers and readers must remain clean so the libraries continue to be healthy
places. In fact, in the rules established in the Decree, in Article 14, it
reads that it is necessary that these spaces are adequate and clean because
their objective is that of fostering the passion for reading, and encouraging
people in all social classes to work[44].” The mobile libraries “encourage”,
heal and create permanent habits. But it is worth mentioning that this
“medicine” had to be administered in moderate and small doses.
As
proof of that, the Secretariat puts to the test several reading methods that
were not used because of being inefficient. That is the case of the Método típico de enseñanza primaria para la lectura y la escritura (typical
method to teach reading and writing in primary school) written by Ramón Mercado
in 1872. The experts Dámaso Zapata, Santiago Pérez,
Martín Lleras, Jil Colunje and the German, Gotthold
Weis considered that Mercado’s proposal was not effective for two reasons:
first, for considering it to be too fast (according to Mercado, the children
would learn to read and write correctly in 45 days) and second, for considering
it to be mechanical. As expressed by Santiago Pérez:
Fast
methods are not of my liking. They make me think of the case of health, for
example, when trying to cure an illness, the fastest method is not always the
best. But the art of reading is a remedy to be applied slowly and not
mechanically[45].
These
diagnoses that can be found throughout Escuela
Normal, not only do they make reference to the reading methods presented to
be chosen by the Secretariat of Instruction, but they also focused on the ways
in which teachers were supposed to impart their reading lessons. What is
interesting is that in the reflexions made by Martín Lleras,
the body of the instructor is always mentioned. For example, in “Pedagojia”, Lleras proposes that the teacher takes care of his voice,
that he receives orientation on how to modulate it correctly and fulfil the
rules of elocution: “(…) for the teacher to be able
to produce the right elocution and read out loud, he has to be careful what he
eats, he must not drink cold or hot drinks, or smoke, and he must make oral
rinses with salt as recommended by the manual of hygiene[46].”
The
leading voice during out loud-reading must be a model of health and harmony.
According to Lleras, the reading directed by the
teacher is the model for the reading that the students will later on do in
their houses and without guidance: that is, individual reading. As we have said
previously, autonomous reading, without guidance, constitutes an important step
in the training of the subject, a sort of emancipation, a clearly moderate one,
of the reader. Going back to Lleras, it is clear that
said exercise of autonomy is nothing less than the result of a corporal model
that arises from the idea of guided, modulated and organized reading conducted
by the teacher. His voice, his pauses (all marked by Lleras
in his text) and eloquence would serve as a model, as the embodiment and
incarnation of what is healthy[47]:
Punctuation symbols, such as the period, should take a
short pause, the parenthesis a kind of longer depression. The voice should go
one tone lower, so the student will better understand what he is reading and
will remember the voice of the teacher when he is not there[48].
The
teacher would be the body of the nation and reading the most hygienic,
prophylactic and preventive practice. Teaching how to read with moderation, as
proposed by Lleras, with a low tone, with pauses,
corresponds to a model of education that more than cultivating individualities
focused on structures of tamed citizens, labor that
could contribute to the progress of the nation.
The
Organic Decree of Public Instruction is, in itself, a map of what is healthy
(education directed by the state) and what is unhealthy (the old-fashioned
education of the Church). It was necessary that those private practices of
cleaning, the care for the body and reading, that Catholic newspapers like La Caridad. Lecturas para el hogar considered to be private
and to be done in the “intimacy of the household, under the caring voice of the
father or the priest[49],” became public acts, regulated,
supervised and protected by the state.
Reading
was not only a moralizing and positive act that “when well-guided can make the
soul greater and bring us closer to God,[50]” but also an action that is done
with the body, with the voice and with all the senses. It is interesting to note
the opposition of rural priests to public schools. In fact, in La Escuela Normal there appear several
letters from Instruction Inspectors who refer to specific cases. Most of them
come from Boyacá and read that
[…]
the strong opposition of the cult ministers to schools leads priests to punish
those who attend school and deny them the sacraments. From the pulpit, it is
said that the schools of the government spread disease and that they want to
remove God from the homeland[51].
There
are multiple communications like this one where the Church opposes the ways of
education of the state, as they consider it immoral and an unhealthy stage that
propagates disease. But the responses of the Secretariat to these
ecclesiastical claims also consider religious education as old-fashioned and an
“obstacle to progress and the growth of healthy minds[52].”
The
dispute is once again focused on the binomial of what is healthy and what is
not, but also, both sides try to keep control over the subjects through the
regulation of their education. It is evident that education, in the terms of
Ann Marie Chartier, can be disease or health, a tool
that maintains the legality of the ideological traditions. In spaces of really
acute conflicts, those powers that are presented as symbolic, must be made
incarnate into significant ones that can be regulated directly[53].
As
explained by Ricardo Arias, the period of liberal radicalism was characterized,
as it is publicly known, by an anti-clericalism that started by attacking the
territories that the Church had declared theirs: education was, undoubtedly,
the point of contention in the conflict between the clergy and the government[54]. Thus, going back to Chartier, the teaching of reading can be the remedy or the
disease that is made incarnate in the healthy body of the nation.
4.
Conclusions
The
two teaching models, the Church that followed the Lancastrian parameters or the
state under the guidance of Pestalozzi, are based on logics that appear to be
different, but in fact have more points in common than antagonisms. On the one
hand, the clergy would adopt the logic of charity, education is “a service that
makes the life of the poor less miserable. Teach who does not know, means that
the ignorant can fulfil God’s designs[55].” On the other hand, the state will
be located under the system of instruction, education as a practical tool in
the formation of citizens that are useful for the progress of the nation.
The
logic of charity or the model of instruction have points in common when it
comes to the conception of reading, and even in the representation of the
readers as bodies that receive the medicine for immorality or ignorance. José
Emilio Burucúa proposes that the representation of
the other is, in fact, an explanation of the other. Thus, the controlled
reader, the body saved from the liberal pest, is nothing more than an ideal
definition of the national body that the clergy defended. In the case of the
state, that body that reads is nothing more than a reader set up to serve the
development of the nation[56]. Both representations, focused on a
controlled, guided and nurtured reader preserve the binomial of what is healthy
and unhealthy.
In this way, the body-readers in both
systems mark a relationship between reading practices and social roles guided
by the image of an ideal reader that constitutes the ideal national body. The
notion of a new reader, such as that of children and women (and later on the
workmen) is legitimate to the extent that the powers that control the means of
communication define the categories of representation.
In consequence, the reading practices
proposed are not limited to the exercise of reading itself or to the essential
learning of the first letters, but they are connected, on the one hand, to a
state plan linked to national union and, on the other hand, to the protection
of the legacy and the catholic interests that, in appearance, were losing
ground. In this way, reading is, in fact, an axiological practice and a way of
representation. Not in vain, during the Liberal Republic, heir to the legacy of
1870, the bodies would come out of the words and occupy the image, then the
sound waves (radio Sutantenza). So it seems that the conflict
for education and the teaching of the letters became a problem focused on the
power of representation, of the coded bodies, more than one of substantial
changes in the systems. The logic of charity and that of instruction remained
hidden under the intentions of those they represented.
It is worth mentioning that although
the logic of the instructor and the instructed, of that who was oriented and
the orientator, prevails in projects, such as those
of Sutantenza radio; the visual representation of the
readers that inhabit the pages of the textbooks that were distributed in the
towns; or the illustrations of the Rin-Rin magazine (1936-1938), edited by the
Ministry of Education, offer a visible twist to these logics. The work of Sergio
Trujillo focuses mainly on figures of readers who read under the trees, wearing
light clothes and who appear to be happy because they are reading.
However, in the Rin-Rin magazine and
in the textbooks of the Sutatenza school, the social
roles are visibly marked, learning to read is a way of cleaning one’s ignorance
and serving the Colombian countryside. In fact, in the records of Popular
Catholic Action it can be verified that their main objective was that of
instructing in what was practical and teaching morality; teaching how to read
is a charitable act but, at the same time, an act of development and progress.
For that matter, the school of Sutatenza is the
perfect combination of both logics (charity and instruction): the body of the
countryside is the perfect body to start over, a virgin body, ready to be
oriented[57].
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enero, 1872: 15
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típico”, La Escuela Normal. No. 108,
enero 25, 1873: pp. 28-30.
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1872: p. 398.
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diciembre, 1872: pp 9-12.
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*The present article is part of the research project
in Spanish Caracterización de la enseñanza
de la lectura en Colombia (1870-1950)
(Characterization of the teaching of Reading in Colombia, 1870-1950), inserted
in the line of discourse analysis of the Mind, lenguaje
and society group of the Department of Humanities. It is supported in internal call
by the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano
[1] Doctor in Literature. Professor of the Department of
Humanities and the Master’s Degree in Semiotics from the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano. Email address: dianap.guzmanm@utadeo.edu.co.
[2] When we
refer to the discursive orders we start from the conception of Norman Fairlough. For this author, the discourse is a linguistic
use conceived as a social practice. To this extent, discourse becomes
institutionalized by normalizing itself collectively and regulating processes
of representation, meaning and experience. Thus, the discourse about hygiene is
institutionalized through health and prevention practices and mediates the
representation of the individual and his body through a capital presence of
progress and its development.
[3] Norman Fairlough, Language and power, (New York: Longman,
2001), 101.
[4] José Joaquín Ortiz, “Prospecto”, La
Caridad. Lecturas del hogar, no. 1, (1864): 2.
[5] In one
way or another, the discourse of prevention is linked to an axiological and
moral discourse that has its origin in nineteenth-century Europe. The linking of ideas about hygiene to the paths
of eugenics, finds its basis in the conception of prevention that began in the
19th century in England and France.
[6] Jason
McGraw, “Purificar la nación”, Revista de Estudios Sociales, no. 27
(2007).
[7] For
example, in 1833 a text that seems revealing is published, it is about useful
precepts on the conservation of health, and the attendance of the patients.
These were sent to be printed and taught in the primary schools of children of
both sexes of the province of Bogota by its Governor, Dr. Rufino
Cuervo. These principles mention not only the care
over the body through cleanliness and hygiene, but also the relationship
between education and good practices. In this text appear the first three
points of what will later be the decalogue of hygiene that was published as an
ordinance for schools around 1910.
[8] “Article 30”, Organic
Decree of public instruction, (1870): 3.
[9] Article 35 of the same decree establishes the teaching of “gymnastics
and calisthenics, as an indispensable part of a complete system of
education”. Male schools were required
to have military training. In the schedule that records the decree for schools,
there are three hours per week devoted to hygiene instruction. Curiously they
exceed the hours of religion (which were not obligatory) and are conducted
followed by moral classes.
[10] The Organic Decree of Public Instruction, has been subjected to a number of changes, in 1892 the Zerda plan returned powers to the Church and made emphasis on religious education, however, the division of public instruction remained the same as was proposed by the decree and despite the regenerationist frame work, these changes were not as deep as might be expected. It is until 1932 with decree 1487, signed by the then president Enrique Olaya Herrera, that substantial reforms are made and new pedagogical approaches get involved such as those of Decroly or Montessori.
[11] Pablo Manuel Bernal, “Introducción”, Eva Barco, Lectura infantil para la enseñanza primaria, (imprenta La Luz,
1870): 1.
[12] Néstor
Roberto Cardoso, Los textos escolares en
Colombia: dispositivos ideológicos, (Ibagué: Universidad del Tolima, 2007):
25.
[13] Eva Barco, Lectura infantil para
la enseñanza primaria, VI.
[14] Citolegia: nuevo método de lectura practica sin
deletrear para uso de las escuelas primarias, (Librería Colombiana Camacho
Roldán y Tamayo, 1891): 4.
[15]The quotation of the child who does not go to school and is arrested, is a reflection of the laws against vagrancy in Colombia.
These laws are numerous and remained well into the twentieth century, the most rigorous was the Law of May 3, of 1826 where the vagrants are defined as a social danger and punished with imprisonment and even with exile.
This law remains in educational regulations, even the decree of 1870 considers that education has to be compulsory and states as an imperative that children who are on the street outside of the schedule allowed and do not wear the uniform, will be taken to jail until those responsible appeared. To get more information about the phenomenon of vagrancy see: Natalia Botero Jaramillo, “El problema de los excluidos. Las leyes contra la vagancia en Colombia durante las décadas de 1820 a 1840", Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura, No. 39 (2012): 47.
[16] Martín
Restrepo Mejía, Citolegia citográfica
por la cual se enseña rápidamente a leer y a escribir, (Tip.
del Externado, 1917): 57.
[17] Karin Littau, Teorías de la lectura libros, cuerpos y bibliomanía, (Buenos Aires:
Manantial, 2008): 42.
[18] Maurice
Agulhon, El
círculo burgués; seguido de una pequeña autobiografía intelectual, (Buenos
Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2009): 101.
[19] “Article 10”, Organic Decree of Public Instruction, La Escuela Normal, no. 1 (1870): 3.
[20] Another important element that is found as a function of La Escuela Normal is its responsibility as a textbook. On the 28th of September of 1872, issue 90 of the magazine, there is a striking note: on July 26th, it is decreed that all manuals and classroom texts used in schools be published in this newspaper that was be distributed freely in the national territory.
[21] Norbert Elias, Deporte y ocio
en el proceso de la civilización, (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica,
1995): 98.
[22] “Presentación del tratado teórico i práctico
de jimansia y calestenia”, La Escuela Normal, no. 70, (1872): 398.
[23] Presentación del tratado, La
Escuela Normal, no. 70, (1872): 398.
[24] Presentación del tratado, La
Escuela Normal, no. 70, (1872): 399.
[25] Herbert Spencer “De la educación intelectual moral y física”, La Niñez: semanario infantil Ilustrado, núm.
2 (1914): 17.
[26] One of the first translated childcare manuals in the country reproduces much of Spencer's thinking. This is Manual de puericultura. Consejos á las madres para la crianza de sus hijos (Child Care Manual. Advice to mothers for the raising of their children) by Dr. G. Variot and published by the steam typography of Mogollón. Mentions of Spencer are considerable, one of the most important is the one made by Dr. Jorge Bejarano, a recognized physician and hygienist and also, the first minister of hygiene (1946-1947).
The still young Bejarano wrote a series of columns on health, hygiene and prevention that were published during the decade of the 1920s in the Bogota newspaper El Gráfico. In these communications and also in the lectures given by Bejarano in the Bogota theater, the presence of Spencer appears permanently, the main defender of the duos of morality and cleanliness; education and health.
[27] Martín Lleras, “Pedagogía, de los deberes particulares de los
institutores y cómo deben cumplirlos”, La
Escuela Normal, no. 101, (1872): 450.
[28] Martín Lleras, “Método de lectura y escritura”, La Escuela Normal, no. 103 (1872): 455.
[29] Karin Littau, Teorías de la lectura, p.42
[30] “La
instrucción popular”, La Escuela Normal (1872):
150.
[31] “La instrucción popular”, La Escuela Normal,
no. 83, (1872): 151.
[32] Gilberto Loaiza Cano, “El maestro de escuela o el ideal liberal de
ciudadano en la reforma educativa de 1870”,
Historia Crítica, nº 34, (2007): 64.
[33] “Invitación”, La Escuela Normal,
nº 87, (1872): 222.
[34] Romualdo B. Guarían, “Carta de un maestro de escuela”, La Escuela Normal, no 54, (1872): 15
[35] “Pensamientos sobre educación”, La
Escuela Normal, no. 54: 15
[36] “Pensamientos sobre educación”, La Escuela
Normal, no. 54: 16
[37]
“Pensamientos sobre educación”, La Escuela Normal, no. 54: 16
[38] Olivia López Sánchez, “La higiene popular dirigida a las mujeres-madres:
estrategias de la cruzada médico-higienista en la sociedad mexicana del
porfiriato”, in Al otro lado del cuerpo.
Estudios biopolíticos en América Latina, Hilderman Cardona and Zandra
Pedraza (Medellín: Universidad de
Medellín, Departament of Social and Human Sciences, 2014): 164.
[39] “Los profesores alemanes”, La
Escuela Normal, no. 106, (1873): 11
[40] According to the report, the Secretariat of
Instruction invests 800 pesos for each school, the inventory includes: lab
materials, 5 pianos and their scores, parabolic mirrors and a number of
technological gadgets.
[41] “Los
profesores alemanes”, La Escuela Normal, no. 106, (1873): 12
[42] “Los
profesores alemanes”, La Escuela Normal, no. 106, (1873): 15
[43] “Los
profesores alemanes”, La Escuela Normal, no. 106, (1873): 16
[44]“Article 14”, Decree 1870: 8.
[45] Pérez Santiago, “Método típico”, La
Escuela Normal, no. 108, (1873): 29
[46] Lleras Martín, “Pedagojia. De la lectura en
las clases superiores”, La Escuela
Normal, no. 106, (1873):37
[47] In fact, within the compulsory subjects that the
young students who wanted to become teachers had, there were: eloquence,
principles of hygiene, and physical instruction.
[48] Lleras
Martín, “Pedagojia. De la lectura en las clases
superiores”, La Escuela Normal, (1873):37
[49]
“Consejos para el pueblo”, La Caridad.
Lecturas de hogar, no. 8: (1864):117
[50]
“Consejos para el pueblo”, La Caridad. Lecturas de hogar, (1864):117
[51] Director of Public Instruction
for the State
of Boyacá “Informe”, La Escuela Normal, no.
104: (1872): 409.
[52] “Respuesta”, La Escuela Normal, no. 104, (1872): 411.
[53] Ann
Marie Chartier, Discursos sobre la lectura (1880-1980), (Barcelona,
Gedisa, 2005): 150
[54]
Ricardo Arias, El episcopado colombiano:
intransigencia y laicidad 1850-2000, (Bogotá:
Ediciones Uniandes, Instituto Colombiano de
Antropología e historia, 2003): 75
[55]
“Consejos para el pueblo”, La Caridad. Lecturas de hogar, (1864):118
[56] José
Emilio Burucua, “La mentalidad de las élites sobre la
violencia en Colombia (1936-1949), Análisis
político, no. 29, (1996): 100.
[57] Acción
Cultural Popular, Encuentro de delegados
episcopales para la obra diocesana de escuelas radiofónicas, (Manuscrito,
1968).