Presentation

The French education historiography has conducted intriguing research studies on personalized and community pedagogy, proposed by the French Jesuit educator Pierre Faure. In 1998, Anne-Maria Audic published Pierre Faure s.j. 1904-1988: vers une pédagogie personnalisée et communautaire, a book that addresses Father Faure’s socio-pedagogical thinking. The Faurian pedagogy emerged being built in the educational interventions of this ecumenical Jesuit priest, particularly in the second half of the 20^th century.

In 2008, a voluminous set of texts by Pierre Faure was published under the title Précurseurs et témoins d’un enseignement personnalisé et communautaire, in which he analyzes the innovative contributions to pedagogy made by ancient authors, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Henri Pestalozzi, as well as 19^th century educators, like Maria Montessori, Ovide Decroly, and Célestin Freinet.

The following year, Jean Marie Diem published Pédagogie personnalisée, which explores the Faurian pedagogical legacy, but advances in the analysis of contemporary educational experiences. These three works were published within the Collection Sciences de l’Éducation, created by Éditions Don Bosco, directed by Guy Avanzini, and they provide a consistent view of Pierre Faure’s pedagogical proposal, built from the 1940s until the author’s death.

However, these works deal en passant with the international circulation of personalized and community pedagogy, which has been significant because it reached European and American countries, as well as some countries in North Africa and the Middle East. This pedagogical proposal was shaped in France right after World War II and, from the 1950s on, it began to have a global dissemination through pedagogical visits made by Pierre Faure to several countries and through internships for educators from several countries at the Center for Pedagogical Studies in Paris to know in loco Catholic educational innovations, as well as through Father Faure’s works. From this perspective, the present dossier aims to shed light on the circulation of personalized and community pedagogy in the Ibero-American space, which had various historical moments. In this process, Brazil was the pioneer because, since the early 1950s, the country was visited by Pierre Faure for lectures and courses on his pedagogical proposal and, to do that, he relied on the partnership of the Catholic Education Association (CEA), headed by a Jesuit priest, as well as the partnership of catholic schools. In Spain, personalized and community pedagogy was disseminated from the 1960s on by Catholic groups, particularly Vincentians, and, through cultural mediators, it reached Hispanic-American countries, particularly Colombia, Chile, and Mexico. Portugal entered this circuit through the hands of some of its educators who did internships with Pierre Faure in Paris or in Spanish educational institutions that already adopted personalized and community pedagogy. Therefore, there is a wealth of circuits in the Ibero-American space that is very exciting for education historiography.

Thus, the present dossier contains six articles that address the circulation of personalized and community pedagogy in Latin American countries and in the Iberian Peninsula. Yet, the first text, by the French historian Laurent Gutierrez, focuses on the Faurian pedagogy’s in the immediate post-war atmosphere, exploring its adoption in Higher Pedagogy Institute of the Paris Catholic Institute (PCI). Thus, from 1947 onwards, when Pierre Faure carried out his disruptive educational experience at the Madrid Street’s Day School in Paris, he became visible at the PCI due to his classes on active methods, assessing innovative pedagogical proposals from a Catholic viewpoint such as the Montessori Method and the Dalton Plan, as well as Freinet’s Pedagogy. Pierre Faure’s pedagogical interventions at the PCI and his educational essays constituted, to a large extent, a counterpoint to the republican and secular initiatives in the public education system in France, with an emphasis on the creation of the International Center for Pedagogical Studies (ICPE) and the institution of the classes nouvelles, in 1945, as well as the creation of the Langevin-Wallon Plan (1944-1947), whose commission had the strong presence of Marxist educators. Therefore, Laurent Gutierrez’s reflection is timely and necessary to open this dossier.

The articles by Daniele Hungaro da Silva and Mauro Castilho Gonçalves address the dissemination and use of personalized and community pedagogy in Brazil. In “Pierre Faure's technical-pedagogical visits to Brazil for teacher training”, the first author presents a study on the first teacher training courses that the French Jesuit priest taught in Brazil, in the mid-1950s, which became known as pedagogical week. Organized by the CEA in Brazil, headquartered at Colégio Sacre Coeur in Rio de Janeiro City and held in mid-1955, the first pedagogical week animated by Pierre Faure distinguished itself as a pioneer in the Catholic educational network and for taking place in the then capital of the Republic. The second pedagogical week was held at Colégio Notre Dame de Sion, in São Paulo City, in the middle of the following year, when Pierre Faure’s pedagogical ideas became even better known in Brazil. Not by chance alone, in the early 1959, he came back to São Paulo’s capital city to train teachers from three Catholic schools run by French-speaking religious congregations that were to deploy experimental secondary classes that year. It is about this type of innovative trial by an educational institution in São Paulo City aimed at elites and headed by priests from Canada’s Holy Cross and of French descent that the text entitled “Santa Cruz School as a Laboratory, a perspective of Yvon Lafrance (1959-1962)”, by Mauro Castilho Gonçalves, addresses. These research studies depict Pierre Faure’s teacher training for primary education, carried out during the pedagogical weeks, and for secondary education, in 1959, which were to unfold in the following years.

The entry of personalized and community pedagogy into the Iberian Peninsula occurred even under the Salazar and Franco regimes. In Portugal, this operation took place at Colégio São Miguel, located in Fátima and founded in 1962, because its first principal, Father Joaquim Rodrigues Ventura, carried out pedagogical studies in Paris advised by Pierre Faure. This unique history is analyzed in the text signed by Joaquim Pintassilgo, José Eduardo Franco, and Rita Balsa Pinho, which places Portugal in the dissemination chain of Faurian pedagogy.

The article by historians Sara Ramos Zamora and Teresa Rabazas Romero addresses the dissemination of this pedagogical proposal in Spain, from the 1960s on, focusing on Madrid. On the one hand, they analyze the publications by Victor García, full professor of experimental pedagogy at the Complutense University of Madrid, which have become a major strategy for the dissemination of personalized and community pedagogy in Spain. On the other hand, they analyze the uses of Faurian pedagogy, from the 1960s on, in two educational institutions run by the Teresiana Institution, namely: Instituto Véritas, aimed at elites, and Grupo Escolar Padre Poveda - a public school attended by the working class. It is through the hands of the Spanish educator Maria Nieves Pereira, who had studied with Pierre Faure in Paris and earned a Ph.D. degree from the University of Murcia, that personalized and community pedagogy was disseminated in Ibero-American countries from the 1970s on.

From this perspective, the article by Norberto Dallabrida and Norma Cecilia Bross Leal think through the circulation of personalized and community pedagogy in Mexico and, especially, the first course that Father Pierre Faure taught for teachers in the city of Guadalajara, in mid-1975, which became known as the first summer course.

The studies on personalized and community pedagogy circulating in the Ibero-American space that constitute this dossier are expressive for the education historiography because they address the intricacies and dissemination circuits of the main Catholic New School matrix in the second post-war period. The circulation of this pedagogical proposal included several strategies, such as the publication of Pierre Faure’s articles and books, the internship of Iberian and Latin American educators in Paris and, particularly, Pierre Faure’s pedagogical visits to various countries in order to hold conferences and animate teacher training courses. In Latin America, the circulation of personalized and community pedagogy had different historical moments because in Brazil it took place mainly in the 1950s and 1960s, while in Hispanic-American countries this flow started in the 1970s and took root consistently. In Portugal and Spain, Faurian pedagogy was disseminated by Catholic circuits from the 1960s on, when these countries still lived under authoritarian regimes. Finally, the present dossier seeks to focus on the main pedagogical matrix of Catholic New Education in the second half of the 20^th century, as well as to help thinking through the multiform circulation processes of pedagogical models.