El Diccionario de Pedagogía by Sánchez Sarto and Editorial Labor

We find the Barcelona edition of an exceptional Pedagogy Dictionary in this generic academic and editor context. It should be noted that since the end of the 19th century the city of Barcelona was experiencing a strong climate of general modernisation and a growing social concern for educational development, with unique and innovative expressions in this regard,⁶ whether we talk about some innovative teaching centres or refer to the Escola de Mestres Joan Bardina or Escoles d'Estiu⁶ that were organised from the Mancomunitat de Catalunya for this training. This strong climate was also accompanied by social contradictions and conflicts and a vast mobilization of various professional and cultural sectors. In this framework we can refer to the Editorial Labor of Barcelona, for its contributions in the field of education sciences and to the Pedagogy Dictionary edited at this publisher under the careful and critical direction of Luis Sánchez Sarto.

As Conrad Vilanou⁶ and José Martínez de Sousa⁶ have written, Labor was founded in Barcelona in 1915 by the young German Georg Wilhelm Pfleger Hoffmann in collaboration with Dr. Josep Fornés i Vila, dedicating themselves to the preferential publishing of scientific and technical books (medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, engineering, trade). The editor, who frequently travelled to the Leipzig Book Fair, would contract the rights for Spanish edition of a part of the Pedagogy works that he saw edited in German there, channelling that edition, through the "Library of cultural initiation” collections, divided into twelve sections, promoted and organised by Manuel Sánchez Sarto - which came to publish more than four hundred titles, and the "Contemporary Pedagogy” collection. "This was how as Conrad Vilamou says, the knowledge of very important⁶ German authors in the educational field was spread among us, and by extension to Latin America, although it also integrated Spanish authors (among others José Mallart, Domingo Barnes or Xohán V. Viqueira), which culminated with the Spanish version of the Pedagogy Dictionary, this time, directed by Professor Luis Sánchez Sarto, a formidable text that tuned in with the educational project of the Spanish republican generation", thus achieving that between 1925 and 1937, a high quality doctrinal corpus was published, in which the five possible following sections can be distinguished:

The Dictionary is composed of two large-format volumes (26.5x18), with more than 3250 columns of information (something more than 1600 pp.) to accommodate a total of 980 document entries (conceptual, nominative, topographical), very often supported with valuable references of an international scope, which in this way convert the Dictionary, due to its systematic zeal, into a suitable instrument that serves to present and manage educational culture, unparalleled in Spanish culture until the penultimate moments of the 20th century.

Its editing meant, Herrero et alii⁶ indicate, an enormous effort of updating knowledge related to education at a moment in history where the momentum of pedagogical renewal was one of the progressive signs of identity of the Second Spanish Republic’s governments (19311936, 1939), as well as an effective effort to open up to the most modern European scientific and philosophical currents.

The edition includes a detailed alphabetical index of subjects and authors, an analytical index (with breakdown and remission of concepts), diverse diagrams (particularly those that allow the management of almost 60 national education systems that are included to be seen) and a set of 100 photographic prints, which usually accompany its illustrations in the thematic issues addressed, as we will state further on.

111 teachers and researchers participated in its preparation, who are in an initial list of names, accompanied by their professional performance and place of performance. For this reason, we can detect the participation of 40 Germans and Austrians, 43 Spanish, 18 Americans (Latin Americans in particular) and 10 authors from other sources. Among those of Spanish authorship we should cite Margarita Comas, Ricardo Crespo (of the New Daimon School, of Barcelona), Alexandre Galí, Anselmo González, Santiago Hernández Ruíz, José Llongueras, Adolfo Maillo, Emili Mira, Ana Rubiés, Ruíz Amado, Concepción Saiz Amor, Leonor Serrano, Domingo Tirado Benedi and Antonio Vallejo Nájera, that is to say, professionals of notable recognition in the 1930s, especially in the Hispanic educational field.⁶ Other well renowned contributors are: Alfredo Aguayo, Faria de Vasconcelhos, Lourenço Filho, Alois Fischer, Afranio Peixoto or Anisio Teixeira. In this regard it is noted in the foreword that: "The depth of content is guaranteed by the vast, brilliant core of domestic and foreign contributors who have been involved in its drafting."⁶

In this regard, scholars have spoken of the German origin of this Dictionary at various moments. So, Conrad Vilanou said: "Originally published in German;" on the other hand, Julio Mateos points out:

Among its almost one thousand entries is an exhaustive list of Germanic authors, as well as concepts, experiences, organisational models or institutions of the same origin. It is no coincidence that the Dictionary was first published in German, as Labor has a large number of contributors in Germany and another in Spain with qualified translators specialised in different pedagogical subjects. In the thick Spanish edition, public education in Germany was dealt with at the time, and the general trend of the work was rather conservative.⁶

Also Lorenzo Luzuriaga, who strangely does not participate among the 111 contributors of the Dictionary, the Pedagogy Dictionary that he directs from Buenos Aires and in the Losada publishers’ one of 1960, he maintains that the Dictionary by Labor was based on the Lexikon der Pädagogik edited by Roloff.⁶ Carried by the concern to know what really might have been in the previous ones, we investigated the issue through various channels. Taking advantage of the presence in Santiago de Compostela of the bibliographical legacy of the Galician inspectors Manuel Díaz Rozas/Cristina Pol, which contains among other books the various German Dictionaries of Pedagogy, to which we referred earlier, we have been able to resolve some questions: in fact, this Dictionary by Labor has as its antecedent a German dictionary, that of Spieler, J. (1930-1932). Lexicon der Pädagogik der Gegenwart (2 vols.), not Roloff's as has been written, but it should be noted that only 40 authors out of the 196 present in the Spieler Dictionary remain in Labor’s Dictionary, which speaks of the very remarkable authorial renewal present in it: 60 different contributors, including now some of Ibero-American origin.

Two very notable dimensions present in the Dictionary’s text are those referring to the voice-authors included, - about whom notable information, framing and bibliography are given-, and to the countries, about which information is provided on their respective educational systems and developments; with a total of 40% of the textual entries in the Dictionary. There are 156 authors examined in the first volume and 180 in the second, i.e. a total of 336, 85% of the total being European: 102 Germans, 43 Spaniards, 42 French, 29 Italians, 22 English, 12 Swedes, 10 Belgians, 6 Portuguese, 4 Czechs and Bohemians, 2 Dutch, 2 Austrians, 2 Russians, 2 Hungarians, 2 Greeks (Plato and Aristotle), 1 Croatian, 1 Polish and 1 Swedish. Among the American authors are 10 North Americans, 10 Chileans, 7 Cubans, 6 Argentines, 6 Mexicans, 6 Brazilians, 2 Paraguayans and 1 Bolivian.⁶ None from other continents, with the sole exception of India (R. Tagore).

If we talk about the countries we note the following: there are 61 entries, of which just over half (N=31) are equally allocated for countries in both Western and Eastern Europe; 21 of them are destined for the Americas (in addition to Canada and the USA, 19 IberoAmerican countries), 2 for Africa (one together and the other for Egypt), 6 for Asia (China, India, Japan, Afghanistan, Palestine and Turkey), in addition to one for Latin America as a whole, one for Australia and one, with extensive treatment, dedicated to Catalonia.

We should note that the entries that have a historical contextualization (mainly the voiceauthors) obey to a greater extent to contemporaneity: in 43% of cases they are between the 19th and 20th centuries; in 34% of cases they belong to the 19th century, and in 16% of cases they are in the Baroque and Enlightenment period. Only 16 entries are located before the 16th century.

It is necessary to bring attention to the presence among its pages of 104 slides (bundle and back of 52 sheets) containing more than 700 photographs (B/W) that try to bring readers closer to an exceptional archive of iconic notes on the world of education, which as such could form a 'pedagogical discourse', which is worth observing and valuing as such: a discourse that manifests itself propitious to the most beloved ideals for the international movement of the New School, while presenting educational realities with a broader spectrum, given their link to the textual repertoire of the Dictionary.

A (re)presentation of the New Education?

We could say so positively. In this regard, in the same Dictionary, New Education is defined as that which brings together the following notes:

Indeed, we can note that the Dictionary shows, without a doubt, a greater love for a naturalist, positivist, realistic and pragmatic pedagogy; a pedagogy based on pedagogical activism as a reaction to formalism and intellectualism. In addition, structuralism is affirmed as a model in terms of the psychology of learning and not in terms of associationism. On the other hand, we can also observe a clear departure from the Neo-Thomistic philosophical orientations (with a sought-after interrelation between religious faith and human reason) and metaphysical ones, which, on the other hand, will be present in the Pedagogy Dictionary directed by Victor García Hoz in the same publishing house of Labor in 1964:⁶ Here we detect a clear metaphysical-theistic conception of educational phenomena, in such a way that beyond a naturalistic, pragmatic or sociological purpose to education, there is a moral purpose and mission based on a Catholic religious teleology.

Labor’s Dictionary of 1936, in turn, presents reflections from philosophical pedagogy; these are fundamentally ascribed to a pedagogical orientation of values⁶(under the influences of Kerchensteiner and Spranger, with their axiological and ethical-ideal claim to culture), and to the idealistic, Neo-Kantian⁶ and Marburger perspective traced by Natorp,⁶ doing so by distancing themselves from the idealist/neo-idealist spiritualism positions, claimed in Italy by Gentile and later assumed in Spain as a support for national-catholic pedagogy. In this regard, Vilanou has written:

As an alternative to the normative character of Herbartian pedagogy, Schleiermacher opted for a hermeneutic pedagogy that favours the interpretation process between theoretical discourse and educational practice, and this orientation was recovered during the Weimar Republic, with the professorships in Pedagogy being extended throughout Germany....giving way to a Germanic version of the New School, which tried to link education to culture, emphasizing the formative dimension of the educational process [with reference to the bildung, our own], thus also demanding an aesthetic-moral education. Between 1924 and 1933, the movement of pedagogical reform (Reformpadagogik) expanded, especially in dialogue with the neohumanist pedagogical tradition, which emphasized moral culture. Perhaps it was this orientation that opted for a culturalist pedagogy that most influenced the Spanish reformers.⁶

There is a decantation in favour of the Active School in the Dictionary , "which takes as its starting point the psychology of the child and prepares for life by extracting school matters from life itself (column no. 1173)", respecting the child's personality, introducing community work and vivifying the school by means of exercises in practical life, as Montessori advised. In terms of Luzuriaga: “activity as the basis of education, based on psychological, social and pedagogical reasons",⁶ so that the school "must mobilize the activity of the child; it must be a laboratory rather than an auditorium", Claparède said.

By the way, the Dictionary shows its distancing in the entries "Philosophy and Pedagogy" and "Purpose and Ideal of Education" that it was "witnessing a resurrection of the metaphysical system of German speculative idealism, which tried to create a metaphysical education system, guided by the Neo-Kantian theory of knowledge, being an expression of it, for example, Krieck's theoretical elaboration, which also rejected Herbart's individualistic normative pedagogy, but considered the whole of cultural reality and social forms under the prism of a metaphysical educational idea.

This being so, we are dealing with a well thought-out cultural and pedagogical artifact that condenses numerous socio-historical keys. It is situated well beyond a given and correct commercial bookseller/editor product. It is part of a 'publishing programme' supported by specific sectors of opinion and academic-pedagogical orientation. And this leads us to turn our gaze towards the little-analysed figure of Luis Sánchez Sarto and his family of Republican intellectuals. It is necessary to place Sánchez Sarto in one or more networks of interinfluences and in a field of conflicts and cultural creations to better understand and interpret the meaning of this artefact.⁶

The iconic discourse of the Pedagogy Dictionary (1936): Analytical description and interpretative considerations of the content of the illustrations according to the grouping categories.

Finally, we come to the moment of the analysis of the iconic discourse of the more than 700 photographic illustrations present in Sanchez Sarto's Dictionary. In this respect, we have constructed a possible categorisation that we show here.

Within the History of Education category, most of the illustrations are composed of photographs or other types of representation (pictorial, engraved) of the faces of authors representing the History of Western Education, with a strong presence of German authors. In the cases cited in Table 1 above in parentheses (Rousseau...Montessori), illustrations of some of the living spaces or centres created by the authors mentioned above or presentations of the teaching materials they created are also included.

The number of illustrations that we have grouped under the States category is high. In particular, they refer us to photographs of school buildings (from nursery schools to university faculties or pedagogical institutes), but also to classrooms, vocational training centres and to a lesser extent to images of school camps, library and laboratory rooms, manual work rooms, health care and psychological observation rooms, open-air schools, groups of pupils carrying out a certain body and physical activity, an educational cinema or hygienic facilities, so we could reduce the number of photographs included here and the relative weight of the category, although it has been thought that this could be the most 'transparent' and informative grouping, given that it allows us a transnational reading of the constructive conventions of the twenties-thirties of the past twentieth century, very marked, both by the hygienic recommendations and by the organisational criterion of class graduation, although this criterion appears visually nuanced due to the inflection of the active methodology with their favourable orientations towards individualisation and school-extra-curricular activities in variable groups of students.

In the "popular and women's education" category, the ten images referring to the Pedagogical Missions of the time of the Second Spanish Republic and the thirteen referring to the education of children and adolescents have been grouped together, with explicit references to "domestic work" and "domestic economy", and the dominant gender ideology, currently rejected, is noted here.

When referring to "school buildings and classrooms" we have grouped the four plates with 21 photographs that strictly speaking appear in the Dictionary in this way, although from what we have just said, they could be many more. With a marked preference for centres and facilities with explicit marks such as "renovating, models or experimental". Among others, there are references to the Scuola Rinnovata in Milan, the Berlin Forest School, the English Thomasson Memorial School, Bedales, Odenwald, the Instituto de Educaçâo in Rio de Janeiro, the Instituto de observación La Sageta in Barcelona, the Escola Industrial in Terrasa, the Instituto-Escuela and the Montessori School in Barcelona, the Giner de los Ríos, Pablo Iglesias and Cervantes groups in Madrid, the Calpe, Milá i Fontanals, Mutua Escolar Blanquerna and Pere Vila schools in Barcelona, the escola-bosc and the escola del mar in Barcelona, or the special education (abnormal) school in Madrid, among others. The diversity of spaces is evident: playgrounds, workshop rooms, drawing rooms, music rooms, laboratories, library rooms, canteens, work rooms...

With regard to "school furniture and materials", we would like to draw your attention to the presentations of Montessori furniture and teaching materials, various types of desks, Decroly and Descoeudres materials, among others.

The iconic representation of aspects related to medical health, anatomical-physiological development and medical disorders and problems is remarkable. We can detect the great influence of the Belgian Demoor or the Spaniard Tolosa Latour, by referring to two names of scholars for biology applied to education, to show their relevance, at a time when the eugenic concern for infant feeding and against medical infections was very strong among the reformist social sectors in the Western world, specifically in the field of teaching; in this respect, hard photographic images are not avoided with respect to some disabilities and situations of childhood illness. We must also bear in mind that in the grouping for "Physical education..." and "Therapeutic pedagogy..." categories we also find images that maintain a ‘continuity’ with those present in this category referring to "Health, development and disorders", in addition to approaching mental disability and the deficiencies of deafness and blindness.

In the "school modalities" category we have grouped together the two infant schools (kindergarten scenes), those that refer to secondary schools, those that refer to teacher training colleges and those that also refer to university centres, as well as images of buildings or classrooms and other rooms with different educational purposes, which include, for example, a practical lesson in natural history.

In the "statements of pedagogical activism" category there are many photographs that convey a message: learning by doing deweyano. There are very few photographs in which there are graduated classes with students seated at their desks and all seated in the same direction towards the teacher's desk; on the other hand, there are numerous others in which diverse groups of boys and girls appear either in drawing rooms and other manual works or artistic creations, in theatre exhibitions, expressing themselves physically and rhythmically... or in their creations through school exhibitions.

This could be added to the next well-represented grouping category that we have entitled "physical education and circum-school institutions": an anti-formalist and antiintellectualist call for physical education and body development as key dimensions of "integral education" (colonies, baths, open air...).

In addition, not only are some of the expressions of vocational training (agricultural and industrial) present, but also references to vocational guidance, which, very much in the spirit of the times, is reflected in the “psycho-pedagogical device” sheet, that is to say, the instruments that had generated the various investigations of experimental psychology in the Wundtian perspective, the 'brass psychology' to which Binet critically referred.

Finally, it should be pointed out that no fewer photographs can bring us closer to different expressions of the specific didactics, perhaps the most marked being those referring to the physical and natural sciences.

A panoramic consideration of this group endowed with an appreciable systematicity, if we are able to detach ourselves from the weight of the monumentality of the images referring to the great school buildings, it is possible that it will allow us to 'compose' pragmatically, that is, interpretively by us, a repertoire-archive-discourse on the New Education, in a similar sense to what was probably a desideratum of the publishers: to show scenes, that could make up an insight of what a vivified education should mean.

Many of the illustrations and photographs could be of a different type, more representative of the empirical reality of the school in the 1930s, and in other hands the illustrations would be others. It is true that in this case there would be a communicative textimage break. However, in this plausible look that the publishers propose to us, it is possible to appreciate the traces of an underlying discourse, a certain codification, a certain rhetoric of images⁶ and an explicit intention of social visibility, between reality and desire, of a New Education: it is possible to perceive some aroma and a certain imaginary of this New Education.