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Revista Brasileira de História da Educação

versão impressa ISSN 1519-5902versão On-line ISSN 2238-0094

Rev. Bras. Hist. Educ vol.21  Maringá  2021  Epub 18-Dez-2020

https://doi.org/10.4025/rbhe.v21.2021.e150 

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The ‘Public Education” Theme in Lorenzo Luzuriaga’s writing of theHistory of Education

Roni Cleber Dias de Menezes1  * 
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8661-1328

1Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brasil.


Abstract:

This article addresses the presence of the ‘public education’ theme in the pedagogical work of the Spanish educator Lorenzo Luzuriaga, seeking to understand the traces of his writing of the history of education that are made known in the titles that compose the ‘Biblioteca del Maestro’, a collection organized by himself at Editorial Losada, Buenos Aires. Such traces are taken fundamentally from the analysis of the book Historia de la educación publica, published in 1946, and through an exploration of Luzuriaga’s intellectual journey. The procedures adopted intend to provide possible answers to the representations assumed by a notion that his New School orientation held dear, that of state prerogative in the organization of education, taking as observation angle one of the most representative works as to his way of writing the history of education. The results of the investigation point to the insertion of the theme into the perspective of internationalism that was gaining strength with the end of World War II and with the creation of institutions of global reach, such as the United Nations.

Keywords: school manuals; writing of the history of education; history of education intellectuals

Resumo:

O artigo trata do comparecimento da temática ‘educação pública’ na obra pedagógica do educador espanhol Lorenzo Luzuriaga, buscando uma compreensão acerca dos traços de sua escrita da história da educação que são dados a ver nos seus títulos que integram a Biblioteca del Maestro, coleção organizada por ele mesmo na Editorial Losada de Buenos Aires. Tais traços são pensados fundamentalmente a partir da análise do livro Historia de la educación pública, publicado em 1946, e também por intermédio da perscrutação da trajetória intelectual de Luzuriaga. Os procedimentos adotados intentam fornecer possíveis respostas às representações assumidas por uma noção cara ao seu professado escolanovismo, o da prerrogativa estatal na organização da educação, tomando-se por ângulo de observação uma das obras representativas do seu modo de escrita da história da educação. Os resultados da investigação apontam para o enquadramento da temática na perspectiva do internacionalismo que ganhava força com o final da Segunda Guerra Mundial e a criação de instituições de alcance global, como a Organização das Nações Unidas.

Palavras-chave: manuais escolares; escrita da história da educação; história dos intelectuais da educação

Resumen:

El artículo aborda la participación del tema ‘educación pública’ en el trabajo pedagógico del educador español Lorenzo Luzuriaga, buscando una comprensión de los rasgos de sus escritos sobre la historia de la educación que se dan a conocer en sus títulos que forman parte de la Biblioteca del Maestro, colección organizada por él mismo en Editorial Losada de Buenos Aires. Tales rasgos se consideran fundamentalmente a partir del análisis del libro Historia de la educación pública, publicado en 1946, y también a través de la investigación de la trayectoria intelectual de Luzuriaga. Los procedimientos adoptados intentan proporcionar posibles respuestas a las representaciones asumidas por una noción querida por su profesaadhesión a la Escuela Nueva, la prerrogativa del estado en la organización de la educación, tomando como ángulo de observación uno de los trabajos representativos de su forma de escribir la historia de la educación. Los resultados de la investigación apuntan a enmarcar el tema desde la perspectiva del internacionalismo que estaba ganando fuerza con el final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y la creación de instituciones globales, como las Naciones Unidas.

Palabras clave: manuales escolares; escritura de la historia de la educación; historia de los intelectuales educativos

Introduction

Lorenzo Luzuriaga26, internationally known as a prominent educator and educational thinker in the Hispanic world of the 20th century, has been studied in Brazil, within the history of education field 27, especially due to the writing model that marked some titles published during his Argentinian phase, between the 1940s and the 1960s28, part of which was translated into Portuguese, reaching intense circulation in our academic spheres, remarkably in pedagogy and teacher training courses (Gatti Júnior, 2011). This article intends to analyze one of these titles, Historia de la educación pública, published by Editorial Losada29, from Buenos Aires, in 1946, in a volume that composes the ‘Biblioteca del Maestro’, a collection organized by Luzuriaga himself at the publisher created by his fellow countryman Gonzalo Losada.30

As Luzuriaga points out in said book, public education, more than a general ideal or unambiguous configuration of transmission of knowledge and human formation over the times, took on features specific to the ‘spirit’ of each historical period, even with relatively idiosyncratic responses from each people or ‘national culture’ as a result of how they appropriated pedagogical and educational models. In the reflection proposed on the pages that follow, the attempt is to perform an internalistic analysis of the work, with special attention to the possible links of its content to the political and intellectual web concerning the initial period of the author’s exile (1936) until his death (1959). Equal relevance is given by the dimension taken in the work by the national scale of observation, in a context in which, with the recent end of World War II, nationalisms were giving way to more universalistic views of culture.

The dimension of public education in the pedagogy and actions of the intellectual Luzuriaga

Source: Paz Rodrigues (2018).

Figure 1 Lorenzo Luzuriaga y Medina (1889-1959). 

Luzuriaga was part of a whole generation of Spanish citizens who saw themselves forced to leave their country because of the civil war, the España peregrina, as the group of exiles that opposed and/or were persecuted by Franco’s regime came to be known. The conflict abruptly interrupts the political activity and intellectual labor of the Manchego31 educator, having a direct impact on his work. The character, largely experimental and pragmatic, of Luzuriaga’s action, writing and production, which marked his journey in Spain since he took the pedagogical stage with his role at the ‘Institución Libre de Enseñanza’ (ILE) 32, at the ‘Escuela Superior del Magisterio’33, at the ‘Museo Pedagógico Nacional’34, and with the creation of Revista de Pedagogia35, would have made room, according to Barreiro Rodríguez (1989), to an inflection around more pronouncedly theoretical issues - excessive, said author judged -, which, even though it is possible to recognize elements of continuity in the undertakings to which he applies himself on Argentinian lands, would have demarcated two different stages in his route36 (Barreiro Rodríguez, 1989).

Luzuriaga leaves Spain with the outbreak of the civil war, in the fall of 1936, taking with him his wife, Maria Luisa Navarro, and their children, with the exception of the oldest, Jorge Luzuriaga, who stayed in Spain fighting alongside the Republicans (Seijas, 2001). At first, he goes to London, then moves to Glasgow, Scotland. He continues teaching Spanish classes, acts as a ‘lector’ at the University of Glasgow and gives lectures in different locations in Great Britain (Menezes, 2014).

His stay in Great Britain lasts three years. In 1939, he is invited to work at the National University of Tucumán, Argentina, where he arrives in March 1939, as reported by the local press.

Coming from Buenos Aires, Professor Lorenzo Luzuriaga arrived in our city yesterday at noon, hired by the National University of Tucumán to take the Pedagogy Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Letters. Professor Lorenzo Luzuriaga, who comes directly from the University of Glasgow, England, was a professor of pedagogy at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Madrid and founding director of Revista de Pedagogía, which was published from 1922 to 1936 and is considered as one of the most important periodicals in our language (Journal clipping from Lorenzo Luzuriaga’s archive apud Barreiro Rodríguez, 1989, p. 39, our translation).37

Barreiro Rodríguez (1999) considers, from a certain perspective, that the Argentinian phase of Luzuriaga’s intellectual and political experience lacked the spirit of transformation and involvement with reality that would have characterized his journey prior to exile, as he points out in order to shed light on the intellectual’s importance for pedagogical renewal in Spain in the first third of the 20th century.

For this reason, Luzuriaga, who was already leaving a consolidated work in Spain, will have his doubts and vacillations in exile. There could hardly be a line of research continuity - especially in the field of social sciences, so at the heart of our own life - after experiencing such harsh events. A defeat like that [he mentions here the outcome of the Civil War] transforms any personal life project - as Ortega [the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset] would say. For this reason, Luzuriaga’s educational production in exile apparently continues in the same progression as in Spain - or even accelerates -, but it will in fact be a substantially different production. It will lack contact with practical reality, so well-known and peculiar. It will lack natural nutrients. It will lack soul. It will lack life. (Barreiro Rodríguez, 1999, p. 34, our translation)38.

Still according to the same author, “[...] the coordinates by which the world of education moved would already be different with the end of the Second World War” (Barreiro Rodríguez, 1989, p. 36), and, although the pillars of Luzuriaga’s pedagogical thinking remained in the post-1945 period, the frame of motivations was already different, and so were many of the demands and aspirations for educational development found in Argentina.

Perhaps it was this new atmosphere that contributed to Luzuriaga living ‘with great enthusiasm’ his early years at the University of Tucumán, due to what he experienced there, notably at the Faculty of Letters, where Lorenzo Luzuriaga was based right upon his admission (Mendez, 2014). There, he initially occupied the Pedagogy and Education-Applied Psychology chairs, and only later, in 1941, through competitive examination, he took the History of Education chair. Despite the promising scenario, the 1943 military coup restricted the autonomy of Argentinian national universities, contributing decisively to Luzuriaga leaving his post in Tucumán and going to Buenos Aires, where he resumed his work as an editor. From 1944 until the end of the first following decade he remained outside the university, dedicating himself to editorial work, both at Losada and in the ventures to which he devoted himself, such as for Realidad - Revista de Ideas39, with collaborations for the press, and as a Sunday collaborator for La Nación, publishing in his ‘Sección Literaria’ (Barreiro Rodríguez, 1989). In addition to Realidad and his contributions to La Nación, he collaborated with some educational journals, such as La Prensa and Sur (Dabusti de Muñoz, 1999-2000).

Trips abroad were also part of the phase that follows his resignation from the chair at the National University of Tucumán. Such trips include Chile, where he participates in the Summer School at the University of Chile, in Santiago, invited by the writer and educator Amanda Labarca, and Venezuela, where he gives lectures and teaches at the Central University of Venezuela, in Caracas, in addition to taking some trips to Europe (Seijas, 2001). Until, in the beginning of 1956, right after the military coup that overthrew the government of Juan Domingo Perón, “[...] he took, by competitive examination, the Didactics and History of Education chairs at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires” (Mendez, 2014, p. 241).

Despite the variety of companies for which he worked in South America, what most distinguished and absorbed Luzuriaga in the two decades he lived in the New World was the work devoted to the roles of writer, translator and editor at Editorial Losada. His production at the publishing house Gonzalo Losada was quite fruitful, transcending the country’s borders through the circulation of works in neighboring republics. In addition to being a member of both the Editorial Committee and the Board, Luzuriaga was responsible for organizing all publications concerning the pedagogical field at Editorial Losada, publishing not only his own writings - a total of 12 authorial titles -, but also those by important education names in Spanish, besides carrying out a vigorous compilation work (the anthologies of Johann F. Herbart and Johann H. Pestalozzi) and translation of originals (from English and German) by major names in pedagogical thinking, such as Dewey, Kilpatrick, Nohl, Rohracher and Dilthey. The collections of which he took charge include: ‘Biblioteca Pedagógica, Biblioteca del Maestro, Escuela Activa, Cuadernos de Trabajo, La Nueva Educación and Antologías’ (Dabusti de Muñoz, 1999-2000).

Source: Losada (2020).

Figure 2 Editorial Losada’s logo (1894-1981). 

Source: Kieffer (2004).

Figure 3 Gonzalo Losada Benítez. 

Strictly with regard to the pedagogical themes that Luzuriaga chose at Losada, it is possible to observe that, though the work is vast, the New School theme continued to interest the author in the foreground, either as a central object or the background that guided some titles. What is clearer, however, is the greater variety by which he addresses domains cherished by the educational sciences, such as the contemporary trends of pedagogy and of educational studies, educational reforms and, in the case of his works related to the history of education, the theoretical deepening of educational science in order to extract the intelligibilities that guided the thinking and actions in the field of education and pedagogy and what they indicate to his contemporaries regarding the possibilities and needs of the present.

With special attention to this operation, the investigation now turns to the presence of the ‘public education’ theme, with highlight to the treatment that it received in Luzuriaga’s writing of the history of education, and with an interest in examining how such presence and the tensions between national and supranational references expressed themselves in the title Historia de la educación pública.

The historicization of the ‘public education’ theme

Source: Luzuriaga (1946)

Figure 4  Cover of the 1st ed. of Historia de la educación publica (Vol. 17). Biblioteca del Maestro

Source: Luzuriaga (1950b).

Figure 5  Cover of the 2nd ed. of Historia de la educación publica (Vol. 17). Biblioteca Del Maestro

Historia de la educación pública was originally published in 194640 by Editorial Losada, composing the 17th volume of the ‘Biblioteca del Maestro’. Three other editions were found: in 1950, 1954 and 1964, all by the same publisher. From the second edition onwards, the numbering of the pages changes - and, consequently, the size of the book becomes smaller - due to the greater concentration of characters per page. However, there is no change in the parts and sections or in the content. In the translation that it received into Portuguese, carried out by the Brazilian publisher Companhia Editora Nacional, from São Paulo, only one edition was identified, in 1959.41

Historia de la educación pública shows the same pattern of narrative development, from a chronological linearity, a pattern found in other publications by Luzuriaga, besides an accent of history of education manuals, at least as of the passage of the 19th to the 20th century. Another similarity as to other titles by the author is the absence of illustrations. As a result of the thematic specificity - public education, understood in the book almost entirely by its realization in the school form -, the chronological cornerstone is set with the public-education initiatives that unfold during the European Renaissance. Distinctly, for instance, from Historia de la educación y de la pedagogía, in which the educational and pedagogical phenomenon is examined from its manifestations in what became known as ‘Eastern Antiquity’, encompassing the ‘Near East’ to China, in the 17th volume of the ‘Biblioteca del Maestro’, the ‘historical adventure’ of public education is circumscribed to the European continent and to a single country in the Americas, the United States.

Two caveats are worthwhile here: first, the Europe that is being considered also includes Russia42, but only within the period that Luzuriaga calls ‘Democratic public education’, that is, in the time lapse between the Bolshevik victory in 1917 and the beginning of World War II, thus exclusively covering the communist experience. It is worth noting that, from 1922 onwards, Russia is one of the 14 republics that made up the USSR; second, in the case of the New World, Luzuriaga did not include, as he did with Historia de la educación y de la pedagogía, the example of the republics originating from the decomposition of the Spanish empire in the Americas, which certainly raises doubts about its non-inclusion in the ‘adventure of public education, notably because some of those republics, like Argentina itself, where he lived, presented a considerable development of ‘public education’ in the 1940s.

Luzuriaga structured the work into five parts, adding a brief ‘Conclusion’ to the end.

Source: Luzuriaga (1946).

Quadro 1 Summary of the chapters and items in the book Historia de la educación pública (1946, 1st ed.). 

In Introducción, totaling four pages, the author justifies the initial and final limits of the chronology and provides some generic features of what would compose the organicity of each of the stages, in accordance with the nature of the pedagogical and educational culture related to each one of them. Allied to this operation, Luzuriaga justifies the usefulness and even the originality of the book by criticizing the lack of efforts from educational historiography towards producing syntheses that cross the boundaries of national histories, failing to observe, according to the author, in 1946, works that allowed for a joint view of the problem beyond the specificities of the Nation-state frame.

La educación pública religiosa, totaling 18 pages, is conformed to the milestones of the rise in school education offering by societies that suffered the effects of the Protestant and Catholic reforms, from the beginning of the 16th century until the passage from the 17th to the 18th centuries. Even though the school action is performed here almost entirely by religious subjects and institutions, what justifies the ‘public’ quality of this education is the secular aspect that it acquires. It is undoubtedly about the educational rupture that engenders with the dissolution of many institutions of the Middle Ages and the humanist substrate that permeates the educational action of Protestants and Catholics of the most varied types, extending through the 17th century, a period in which Luzuriaga follows what educational historiography celebrated as ‘the birth of Didactics’, by highlighting the work and pedagogical action of Ratke and Comênio and the appropriations of the teaching methods that they created by the States and public authorities. The spatial spectrum of the analysis covers the whole of continental Europe, the British islands, reaching even the original 13 English colonies in North America, embryo of the United States.

La educación pública estatal, totaling 17 pages, basically covers the 18th century, a centuria in which the process of education secularization started in the 16th century continues, now with the presence of a new actor: the central State. Public education here is found in the progressive subordination of secularized education to the State. It is the era of enlightened despots: Frederick II, in Prussia; Maria Theresa and Joseph II, in Austria; Catherine, in Russia; Charles III, in Spain, all monarchs mentioned in Luzuriaga’s work, a chart to which we could add Gustaf II of Sweden and, in the Portuguese case, although he was not a king, the Marquis of Pombal, main minister of the reign of D. Joseph I and an icon of enlightened despotism in Portugal. In the pedagogical realm, the stage is dominated by rationalism, by the belief in the capacity for human improvement by means of education, which would be more attuned to the elements of nature than exclusively to the intents of the Providence.

The state character of public education, although Luzuriaga, for his didactic purposes, conformed it to the first three quarters of the 18th century, could easily be extended into the 19th century, given not only the flexibility of historical temporalities, but, above all, the inequality of the educational histories of societies organized in States. Obviously, the meaning here of the term “state” gains more defined contours in the opposition to the typology that succeeds it, that is, ‘national’, a dimension that takes root in and is mainly sought by the States that assert themselves or that appear over the next century. As is well known, the history of education in Europe, in the Americas and in other parts of the globe affected by the process of westernization, marks the destination of a prominent place - in some cases, much more in the discursive than in the practical plane - conferred on education, largely due to the constitution of elementary-education webs or networks, with a significant increase in the supply of primary instruction, an instrument deemed indispensable by a large portion of public authorities and the economic, social and cultural elites for the achievement of a certain status of civilization and degree of material and intellectual development of the ‘nations’, not dissociated, it is worth stressing, from the purposes of controlling and disciplining bodies and populations. In addition to the preponderant role of the philosophes for the constitution of a more precise idea of ​​state public education, as well as the prominent role they had for acting directly and indirectly with royalty in the process of shaping an education promoted by the State, no longer subordinate to the churches, in the period comprised by public state education, Emilio is published, a fundamental work for the history of education and pedagogy, which introduces the individualist orientation in education. Rousseau’s philosophy of education would dominate, according to Luzuriaga, the spirit of this stage. Luzuriaga in this section addresses public state education only in continental Europe, without mentioning England.

La educación nacional, totaling 59 pages, the most extensive section in the volume, temporally covers the late 17th and the entire 19th century. There is a clear chain of transmission between the education that is hegemonized in the 1800s, carried out by the national States, with the legacy left by the French Revolution, and the concepts of homeland and citizenship carved there, synthesized in the passage: “The Convention, however, laid the foundations of national education, which would come to materialize in the 19th century “(Luzuriaga, 1946, p. 85, our translation)43. Moreover, the term ‘national’ coupled with public education refers exactly to the substitution of forming subjects by forming citizens. This formulation occupies the entire presentation relating to ‘national public education’ in the 18th century, totaling 16 pages, since Luzuriaga almost exclusively turns himself to the education reform projects undertaken by the men of the Revolution in its three phases, reserving less than four pages for the British and US experiences. The ‘national public education’ in the 19th century would not have a monolithic form, but a split one, whose expressions would correspond to two moments of the historical development in the centuria: the one that emerges until 1848 - milestone of the radical liberal revolutions that raged across Europe - would account for the attempt to develop and confirm “[...] the principles of the national education started with the French Revolution” (Luzuriaga, 1946, p. 95, our translation)44; while the one that followed, until the end of the 1800s, would refer to the attempt of Nation-states to establish their national education systems. From that point on, Luzuriaga begins to segment the analysis by country, favoring France, Germany, England, Spain and the United States. As a recognition of the uneven rhythms in education development, aware of the different paths taken by the countries above with a view to consolidating their national education systems and the institutional models adopted for this purpose, Luzuriaga highlights in his assessment the recognition that the ‘democratic public education ‘, a symbol of the organization of education systems in the 20th century, can be found early with the implementation of the mass school in the United States, and also with the advance in said country of modern pedagogy, notably of the Pestalozzian ideology, which is translated into an educational structure that indeed achieved the massification of elementary education and made early childhood, secondary and, to a certain extent, even higher education possible for less restricted groups of the population. In this sense, the United States, in the author’s view, became precursors of democratic education, even before the 20th century was inaugurated.

La educación pública democrática, totaling 49 pages, represents for Luzuriaga the culmination of the historical development of public school, being the most outstanding feature of its contemporaneity. Identically to the solution adopted for ‘national public education’ in the 19th century, Luzuriaga addresses the manifestation of the ‘democratic public school’ within the frames of the territoriality represented by the Nation-state, selecting, for a more detailed observation, the cases of Germany, France, England, the United States, Russia and Spain. Broadly speaking, in this phase, on the one hand, mass education and the education systems that began to be organized in the second half of the 19th century consolidate in several western countries; and, on the other hand, there is the historical maturation of the fundamental principles by which such systems and, therefore, the school units that compose them, should be structured; said principles are brandished in Luzuriaga’s works since, at least, the 1920s in Spain, by postulating a public, secular, unique and active school. If the school had started to become public in the 16th century, with the inflections made possible by religious reforms and by the inflow of humanist thinking; if it moves towards secularism in the 18th century, with the diffusion of Enlightenment ideals and the strengthening of centralized States; in the 19th century, the conceptions of integration of education levels advance, as a result of struggles and the refusal from an important part of the cultural and political elites in relation to the duality of education, which would make one believe not only in the need, but also in the feasibility, for Luzuriaga, of the creation/implementation of the unique school; and, finally, already in the 20th century, in several of the societies covered by the book examined here, as a consequence of the advances in modern pedagogy that were already being felt since the final decades of the 19th century45 and that were updated throughout the first decades of the following centuria as a result of the New School movement, thus adding to school the last adjective of the famous aphorism coined by the Spanish pedagogue: active46.

Further considerations

The historicization of the ‘public education’ theme, carried out by Luzuriaga in 1946 with the publishing of Historia de la educación pública, broadly follows an evolutionary path that characterizes his other titles related to the history of education, many of which were still to be published. Luzuriaga pursues, in the light of the Diltheyan inspiration he shared, the general schemes of each era by which education, in its public aspect, that is, detached from domestic initiatives and singularized by the manifestation of the form of modern school, presented itself. If it is a fact that the stages - ‘religious public education’, ‘state public education’, ‘national public education’ and ‘democratic public education’ - into which the book is structured present divisions by century, the insertion of subdivisions as of the 19th century onwards, subdivisions that corresponded to the reality ‘observed’ in the countries selected by Luzuriaga for analysis, defined the pedagogical and educational development of each stage, and, according to said definition, the realities of the ‘public education adventure’ in each one of these countries were presented to the reader in accordance with the greater or lesser ‘mirroring’ before the ‘general spirit’. Furthermore, such subdivisions burst in the text only at the stage corresponding to the ‘national public education’ and in the 19th century, a time when the states were consolidating a trend that had started in the previous century, as to the transition of the protagonism in the organization of school education provision from churches, congregations and religious cells to central state powers. The organization of the different sections that make up the book, therefore, present a long arc of time - corresponding to the 16th and 17th centuries, until the third quarter of the 18th century - in which the adventures of public education are seen against the backdrop of a large political-religious block, translated by European Christianity, including Catholic and Protestant societies; and another period of about 170 years in which, despite the apparent paradox, the ‘general spirit’ of ‘public education’ acquires a concrete shape in the experiences of constitution and consolidation of national States.

However, that present in which Luzuriaga produced his book, still enclosed in the boundaries of ‘democratic public education’, points out for the author the emergence of a new metric with which to classify the historical adventure of ‘public education’ from then on. Said metric was not aligned with the primordial scale adopted for the study of the national and democratic stages of the same ‘public education’, that is, the measuring of its historical itinerary within the borders of the Nation-state. Most likely as a result of the transformations brought by the Second World War47 and by the scenario being revealed with the end of the conflict, the need for a broader scale of observation, which was soon becoming, in Luzuriaga’s intents, an instrument to promote a universal ideal of democracy, one of opposition to nationalisms, able, therefore, to overlap the particularisms that recalcitrantly opposed the general spirit of the 20th century, is highlighted at the end of the 1946 book. The prism remains that of evolution, typical of the intelligibility lent by the author to the phenomena studied in the titles of the history of education field that he published - and will publish - at Editorial Losada; however, a certain notion of enhancement of human reason, which is emphasized in much of the content brought up in those same books on history of education is replaced by an alleged defense of repair, to be carried out in the work of the forefathers. Such interpretation is suggested by the following excerpt:

However, at the same time, we also have to complete and, partly, rectify the work of our forefathers. Said work was based on a national, or rather, nationalist conception of education. This brought, among other things, the disastrous consequence of the world suffering two horrifying wars in less than twenty-five years (Luzuriaga, 1946, p. 234, our translation) 48.

The international collaboration postulated by Luzuriaga in the conclusions of his work, in addition to seeking to prevent in the future “[...] the bloody facts of the past” (Luzuriaga, 1946, p. 234, our translation) 49, is also believed to have tried to favor the disposition that was being practiced by himself and his mentors at the ILE and at the Pedagogical Museum since the end of the 1800s, seeking, through interlocution and the international circulation of people, ideas, knowledge, materials and pedagogical models, the promotion of universal democratic principles, which, as the name says, were no longer exclusive to isolated groups or countries. That collaboration would have aimed to erect, pari passu, a more favorable condition, by which male and female educators, men and women of science, could continue with their projects, studies and analyses, always updated in relation to the most fruitful experiences and, moreover, in a certain way, better protected by the strengthening of a ‘body spirit’, in the case of educational specialists, at the international level.

As a corollary of this international collaboration, Luzuriaga alludes to the cooperation work initiated at the United Nations (UN), within the scope of the ‘Educational, scientific and cultural organization’ (UNESCO), both, he recalls, created when the author was writing the book explored here. Luzuriaga, it seems, not only yearned for the establishment of a world organization of the size of UNESCO, but also followed with interest the procedures that led to its establishment, as attested by his columns in the newspaper La Nación in late 1945 and early 1946 (Luzuriaga, 1946, p. 236). The particularisms and nationalisms would find in UNESCO, in Luzuriaga’s assessment, a barrier to their flourishing. So typical of his anthropological optimism, albeit shaken by the very serious war conflicts of the 20th century of which he was a living witness, Luzuriaga adamantly preached in favor of individual freedoms, of the progress of science and of allowing them to be accessed, of culture and education, and of respect to democratic institutions:

For the first time in history, there will be a global institution of education, culture and science that may have an extraordinary influence on the life of the future. Its success will undoubtedly depend essentially on the political agreements to be adopted by the countries that now come together to determine the fate of the world. However, in the long run, its peace and security will depend, more than on political circumstances, on the spiritual atmosphere that happens to form in the peoples (Luzuriaga, 1946, p. 236, our translation) 50.

This would inaugurate a new stage of ‘public education’, which, in line with the philosophy of the Diltheyan history that he pointed out in his history of education works, would replace the stage of ‘democratic public education’: thus, the time of supranational, universal public education had come.

REFERENCES

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Barreiro Rodríguez, H. (1999). Lorenzo Luzuriaga: una biografía truncada (1889-1959). In J. A. Díaz (Coord.), Castellanos sin mancha: exiliados castellano-manchegostras la Guerra Civil (p. 31-42). Madrid, ES: Celeste Ediciones. [ Links ]

Dabusti de Muñoz, T. M. (1999-2000). Trayectoria de Lorenzo Luzuriaga en Losada, una editorial em el exilio. Revista de Historia Contemporanea, (9-10), 396-408. [ Links ]

Dallabrida, N. (2015). Uma vida dedicada à escola pública: trajetória socioprofissional de Lorenzo Luzuriaga (1914-1959). Revista Educação Pública, 24(57), 661-675. [ Links ]

Ferrer, C. C., & Gutiérrez, M. R. (2013). Nota editorial. In C. C. Ferrer & M. R. Gutiérrez (Ed.), Diez ensayos sobre realidad, revista de ideas (Buenos Aires,1947-1949) (p. 9-10). Granada, ES: Universidad de Granada. [ Links ]

Ferrer Maura, S. (1975). Una institución docente española. La Escuela de Estudios Superiores de Magisterio (1909-1932). Revista de Educación , 240(4), 41-50. [ Links ]

Gatti Júnior, D. (2011). Intelectuais e circulação internacional de ideias na construção da disciplina História da Educação no Brasil (1955-2008). In M. M. C. Carvalho & D. Gatti Júnior (Orgs.), O ensino de história da educação (p. 47-93). Vitória, ES: EDUFES. [ Links ]

Kieffer, E. G. (2004). Gonzalo Losada, el editor que difundió el libro argentino em el mundo. Buenos Aires, AR: Editorial Dunken. [ Links ]

Larraz, F. (2009). Política y cultura. Biblioteca Contemporánea y ColecciónAustral, dos modelos de difusión cultural. Orbis Tertius, 14(15). [ Links ]

Losada. (2020). Disponível em: http://www.editoriallosada.com/Links ]

Luzuriaga, L. (1946). Historia de la educación publica. Buenos Aires, AR: Editorial Losada. [ Links ]

Luzuriaga, L. (1950a). Historia de la educación publica (2a ed.). Buenos Aires, AR: Editorial Losada . [ Links ]

Luzuriaga, L. (1951). Historia de la educación y de la pedagogia. Buenos Aires, AR: Editorial Losada . [ Links ]

Luzuriaga, L. (1950a). Pedagogía. Buenos Aires, AR: Editorial Losada . [ Links ]

Luzuriaga, L. (1942). La pedagogía contemporânea. Buenos Aires, AR: Editorial Losada . [ Links ]

Luzuriaga, L. (1954). Pedagogía social y política. Buenos Aires, AR: Editorial Losada . [ Links ]

Mendez, J. (2014). Entre Europa e América: a escrita da história da educação na Argentina por Lorenzo Luzuriaga. Revista Brasileira de História da Educação, 14(36), 235-256. [ Links ]

Menezes, R. C. D. (2014). Circuito e fronteiras da escrita da história da educação na Ibero-América: experiência de escrita de Lorenzo Luzuriaga na Espanha e na Argentina e sua apropriação no Brasil. Revista Brasileira de História da Educação , 14(36), 245-267. [ Links ]

Mérida, E., & Gamarro, N. (1992). La Revista de Pedagogía: 1922-1936. Revista Española de Pedagogía, 192, 257-270. [ Links ]

Paz Rodrigues, J. (2018). Lorenzo Luzuriaga, defensor da escola nova pública. Recuperado de: https://pgl.gal/lorenzo-luzuriaga-defensor-da-escola-nova-publica/https://pgl.gal/lorenzo-luzuriaga-defensor-da-escola-nova-publica/Links ]

Roballo, R. O. B. (2012). Manuais de história da educação da Coleção Atualidades Pedagógicas (1933-1977): verba volant, scriptamanant (Tese de Doutorado). Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba. [ Links ]

Seijas, C. L. (2001). Lorenzo Luzuriaga em la Argentina. InActas del 1º Congreso Internacional “L'exili cultural de 1939, seixanta anys després” (Vol. 1, p. 603-619). Valencia, ES. [ Links ]

Warde, M. J. (1998). Lorenzo Luzuriaga entre nós. In C. P. Souza & D. B. Catani (Orgs.), Práticas educativas, culturas escolares, profissão docente (p. 71-82). São Paulo, SP: Escrituras. [ Links ]

26Narciso Eladio Lorenzo Luzuriaga y Medina was born on 29/10/1889 in Valdepeñas, province of Ciudad Real, an autonomous community in Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. He died on December 24, 1959, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

27Among the studies in the field of history of education in Brazil interested in this cutout of Luzuriaga’s bibliographic production, we can list: Warde (1998); Gatti Júnior (2011); Roballo (2012); Menezes (2014) and Dallabrida (2015).

28A brief list of these titles includes: La pedagogía contemporánea (Luzuriaga, 1942), Historia de la educación pública (Luzuriaga, 1946), Pedagogía (Luzuriaga, 1950a), Historia de la educación y de la pedagogía (Luzuriaga, 1951) and Pedagogía social y política (Luzuriaga, 1954).

29Still operating, Editorial Losada was founded in Buenos Aires in August 1938 by Gonzalo José Bernardo Juan Losada Benítez, currently called Gonzalo Losada, a Spaniard living in Argentina since the previous decade. The publishing house has its birth linked to the consequences of the Spanish Civil War becoming worse, as it derived from an intense effort by Gonzalo Losada to continue with his editorial activity in Buenos Aires, after the dissensions, with Editorial Espasa Calpe, from Madrid. Gonzalo Losada arrives in Argentina in 1928 to head the publisher’s branch in the country. On the eve of the outbreak of the conflict in Spain, the material supply of publications and resources coming from Madrid is interrupted, leading Losada to transform the branch he was heading into a corporation: Espasa Calpe Argentina S.A. Two years later, when the sympathies of Editorial Espasa Calpe for Francoism became public, and it started to demand that its branches spread across the American continent published their books mandatorily in Spain, Gonzalo Losada, together with several other writers, publicists and Spanish men of letters, such as Guillermo de Torre, Amado Alonso Garcia, Luiz Jiménez de Asúa, Francisco Romero, but also a Dominican, Pedro Henríquez Ureña, and an Italian, Attilio Rossi, founds Editorial Losada. As soon as it was established, Editorial Losada converted into a ‘publisher of exiles’, becoming a socialization center for republican exiles and anti-Franco Spanish and Argentinian intellectuals. For more information, see Larraz (2009).

30Gonzalo Losada was born in Madri in 1894. Although his name was linked to exile, he was not an exile. In 1974, speaking to the newspaper La Nación, Losada recalled part of the journey that led him to found Editorial Losada: “I settled down in this country in 1928 and became a citizen in 1940: my godparents were Ricardo Rojas and Arturo Capdevilla [...] After failing as an employee at a telegraph company, at an insurance company and even at a bank, my contact with Nicolás María Urgoiti, founder of newspapers and publishers, decided my future as an editor. I discovered America as a representative of a Spanish publisher - Espasa Calpe -, which wanted my work to be reduced to a simple distribution job. My vocation, however, was greater than that, and I decided to edit the Austral pocket collection [...] “ “In Buenos Aires back then, we had the first serious editorial experience, eminently Argentinian and, by extension, Americanistic... Many were those who, for thirty-six years, followed me on the intellectual crusade” (Gonzalo Losada’s testimony to the newspaper La Nación [Buenos Aires], 28/07/1974 apud Dabusti de Muñoz, 1999-2000, p. 399-400, our translation). “Me instalé en este país en 1928 y me hice ciudadano en 1940: mis padrinos fueron Ricardo Rojas y Arturo Capdevilla [...] Después de fracasar como empleado en una compañía de telégrafos, una de seguros e un banco, m contacto con Nicolás María Urgoiti, fundador de diarios e editoriales, decidió mi futuro destino de editor. Descubrí América como representante de una editorial española - Espasa Calpe - que pretendía que me limitara a un simple trabajo de distribución. Mi vocación pudo más y decidí editar la colección de bolsillo Austral [...]” “En el Buenos Aires de entonces, hicimos la primera experiencia editorial seria, eminentemente argentina y, por extensión, americanista... Son muchos los que, durante treinta y seis años me acompañaran en la cruzada intelectual [...]”.

31Demonym referring to the region of La Mancha, in the southern Spanish plateau, belonging to the autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha.

32The ILE was created in Madrid, in 1876, and associated with Spain’s cultural, pedagogical and intellectual renewal movement. In a way, it represented, in the eyes of some Spanish historians, one of the links and inflection points, in the country, of values from modern Europe. As for the ILE, “Luzuriaga experienced a double belonging, as a student and a teacher, an identification that left lasting marks on his itinerary in the field of education and pedagogy” (Menezes, 2014, p. 253).

33The ‘Escuela Superior del Magisterio’ was a Spanish state and public institutional center created in Madrid for training male and female teachers from the country’s normal schools, and lasted from 1909 to 1932. It followed some of the ILE’s pedagogical principles, aiming, in accordance with this link, to become a place to train a progressive, desired teacher who is inclined to represent one of the visible pedagogical faces of the Second Spanish Republic (Ferrer Maura, 1975).

34The museum was created by Royal Decree of May 6, 1882, through the inspiration and work of the ILE’s founders. Since then “[...] it became an important center for educational investigation, training, technical assistance, with a significant social projection in Spain at the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the following one. In addition to concentrating an important library housing a wide range of national and international titles, the museum also counted on a laboratory for pedagogical anthropology, offered courses on general pedagogy and experimental sciences, organized cycles of pedagogical conferences, published monographs and studies on the field, and had an editorial channel, the Boletín Pedagógico, which was sent free of charge to all public teachers, reaching a circulation of 30,000 copies. All these initiatives made the institution a reference establishment in the movement for the modernization of teaching” (Menezes, 2014, p. 253-254).

35Revista de Pedagogía was created by Luzuriaga himself and his wife, María Luisa Navarro, having the Spanish pedagogue as its director from 1922 until July 1936. The journal had an undeniable impact on the Spanish educational vanguard of the 1920s, and was, to a large extent, the mouthpiece in Spain for the educational renewal movement, disseminating, in the Iberian Peninsula, the most up-to-date material on international pedagogy in the first decades of the 20th century, from Jean-Ovide Decroly, through Adolphe Ferrière, to Luzuriaga himself (Barreiro Rodríguez, 1999). Revista de Pedagogía represented an effort to reach primary teachers in the provinces, promoting the self-representation of a journal open to Europe, capable of offering its readers the burning topics being discussed abroad. Perhaps, the biggest contribution of Revista de Pedagogía was to understand - and present to its readers - the national dimension linked to the international one, taking an interest in new things, but with a well-defined program of its own, whose objective was to influence and change the Spanish reality (Mérida & Gamarro, 1992). The journal is taken over again by Luzuriaga years later, in 1939, shortly after he arrived in Tucumán, being re-edited by Editorial Losada. There is news of the publishing of six new issues and the re-editing of the pre-Civil War catalog (Seijas, 2001).

36Lorenzo Luzuriaga was a student at ‘Escola Normal Central de Madrid’ from 1904 to 1908, receiving a normal-school teacher degree. Later, he was admitted to the ILE, where he was a student and a teacher between 1908 and 1912, year when he became a primary-education inspector. He completed his studies at ‘Escola Superior de Magistério’, Department of Letters, also in 1912. In 1913, the Chamber of Studies and Scientific Investigation granted Luzuriaga a scholarship for him to study in Germany, at the University of Jena, where he stayed for two years. From 1915 to 1933, he worked at the Pedagogical Museum as Director of Services and Publications under the direction of his former professor Manuel Bartolomé Cossío (professor of Art History at the University of Barcelona and professor of Pedagogy). After working in the public sphere, Luzuriaga resumes his activities as a professor teaching the ‘School Organization’ discipline in the newly created Department of Pedagogy, at the University of Madrid, from 1933 to 1936 (Barreiro Rodríguez, 1989). It can be said that Francisco Giner de los Rios (ILE’s founder) and Cossío himself, a disciple of the former, had greater influence on Luzuriaga, especially during his training years over the 1910s and in the early 1920s. The Krausist inspiration that had nuanced the thinking of both had a profound influence on Luzuriaga. According to Barreiro Rodríguez (1989, p. 9, our translation), “[...] from Giner, he [Luzuriaga] inherits tolerance, critical spirit, scientific rigor and love for the work of education, and, from Cossío, he will receive a model for this concrete pedagogical action; a model that, in its turn, is formed during several decisive years”. “[...] de Giner [Luzuriaga] hereda la tolerancia, el espirito crítico, el rigor científico y el amor por la obra de la educación, de Cossío recibirá un modelo para esa acción pedagógica concreta; modelo a cuyo lado se forma durante varios años decisivos”.

37“Procedente de Buenos Aires, arribó ayer a mediodía a nuestra ciudad el professor Lorenzo Luzuriaga, quien viene contratado por la Universidad Nacional de Tucumán para hacerse cargo de la cátedra de Pedagogía del Departamento de Filosofía y Letras. El profesor Lorenzo Luzuriaga, que viene directamente de la Universidad de Glasgow, Inglaterra, fue profesor de pedagogía de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Madrid y director-fundador de la Revista de Pedagogía, que se publicó desde 1922 a 1936, considerada como una de las publicaciones periódicas más importantes en nuestra lengua”.

38“Por eso, Luzuriaga, que ya dejaba una obra cuajada en España, tendrá sus dudas y vacilaciones en el exilio. Difícilmente podía haber una línea de continuidad investigadora - sobre todo en el ámbito de las ciencias sociales, tan en el corazón de nuestra propia vida - después de haber vivido unos acontecimientos tan duros. Una derrota como aquella [menciona aqui o desfecho da Guerra Civil] transforma cualquier proyecto personal de vida - como diría Ortega [o filósofo espanhol José Ortega y Gasset]. Por esa razón, la producción pedagógica de Luzuriaga en el exilio continúa, aparentemente, en idéntica progresión que en España - o incluso se acelera -, pero será en realidad una producción sustancialmente distinta. Le faltará el contacto con la realidad práctica conocida y propia. Le faltarán los nutrientes naturales. Le faltará alma. Le faltará vida”.

39Realidad - Revista de Ideas circulated between January 1947 and December 1949, totaling 18 issues. It started from an idea of the Argentinian writer Eduardo Mallea, being fostered by the Argentinian philosopher Francisco Romero - who will appear as the nominal director of the periodical - and by two exiled Spaniards: the writer and sociologist Francisco Ayala, and Lorenzo Luzuriaga. The issues followed a bimonthly frequency, but were grouped in two tomes per year (Ferrer & Gutiérrez, 2013).

40In order to carry out this work, the first edition, from 1946, was used, which had 247 pages.

41The Brazilian edition, with translation and notes by Luiz Damasco Penna and João Batista Damasco Penna, was published in 1959 and refers to the second edition in Spanish (1950). It composed the ‘Série Atualidades Pedagógicas’ (volume 71) by Companhia Editora Nacional. The content of the book was distributed throughout 159 pages, in a 18.5 X 11.5 cm format. It contains a Nota para la edición brasileña, written by Luzuriaga himself in August 1958. In said note, the author maintains his historicist spirit by which, based on Dilthey (Historia de la pedagogía), he associates the different ideales de la educación with the historical complexions de la visión del mundo y de la vida de cada época. It ends by ratifying the prominent place to be occupied by the history of education in studies within the field known as educational sciences.

42It is important to remember that only about ¼ of the Russian territory is on the European continent, a factor counterbalanced, however - and this is valid both for the first half of the 20th century and for the present day -, by the fact that the vast majority of the population resides on the west side of the Ural Mountains and of the Caucasus Mountains.

43“La Convención dejó sin embargo asentadas las bases de la educación nacional, que habían de realizarse en el siglo XIX”. The Convention or National Convention (1792-1795) comprised the second phase of the French Revolution, starting after the end of the Constitutional Monarchy (1789-1792), being then succeeded by the Directory period (1795-1799).

44“[...] los principios de la educación nacional iniciada con la Revolución francesa”.

45For us to remain in an example in which Luzuriaga himself actively participated, the ‘Institución Libre de Enseñanza’, in Madrid, is understood as a response from those which were deemed Spain’s ‘living forces’ to stem the country’s cultural decline, accusing the educational problem as the Gordian knot to be undone, in order to bring the country closer to the pedagogical, educational and intellectual renewal movement that was raging in other European nations and in the United States.

46“The Active School exemplifies the struggle of the 20th century (education through action) against the ideas of the 19th century that it intends to bring down (education through instruction). The Active School is, therefore, a renovating movement of a strictly pedagogical, technical, didactic, internal and deep nature” (Barreiro Rodríguez, 1989, p. 22, our translation). “La Escuela Activa ejemplifica la lucha del siglo xx (la educación por la acción) frente a las ideas del xix que se pretende arrumbar (la educación por la instrucción). La Escuela Activa es, por tanto, un movimiento renovador de carácter estrictamente pedagógico, técnico, didáctico, interno y en profundidad”.

47It is believed that the plot in which the First World War unfolded is taken into account by Luzuriaga, especially when it comes to the manifestation of nationalisms.

48“Pero al mismo tiempo tenemos también que completar y en parte rectificar la obra de nuestros antepasados. Ésta se hallaba basada en una concepción nacional, o mejor, nacionalista de la educación. Ello ha tenido, entre otras, la desastrosa consecuencia de sufrir el mundo dos guerras espantosas en menos de veinticinco años”.

49“[...] los hechos sangrientos del pasado”.

50“Por primera vez en la historia se va a contar con una institución mundial de educación, cultura y ciencia que puede tener una influencia extraordinaria en la vida del futuro. Su éxito sin duda dependerá esencialmente de los acuerdos políticos que adopten los países que ahora se reúnen para determinar la suerte del mundo. Pero a la larga, la paz y seguridad de éste dependerán, más que de las circunstancias políticas, de la atmósfera espiritual que se forme en los pueblos”.

54Received: 03.25.2020 Approved: 07.14.2020 Published: 12.18.2020 (Portuguese version) Published: 01.31.2021 (English version)

How to cite this article: Menezes. R. C. D. A temática da ‘educação pública’ na escrita da história da educação de Lorenzo Luzuriaga. (2021). Revista Brasileira de História da Educação, 21. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4025/rbhe.v21.2021.e150 This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY 4) License.

Received: March 25, 2020; Accepted: July 14, 2020; Published: December 18, 2020

Roni Cleber Dias de Menezes is professor at the Faculty of Education and in the Graduate Education Program of the University of São Paulo. Master and PhD in Education from the University of São Paulo, with postdoc from the Rio de Janeiro State University [Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro] (UERJ). Works mainly in the History of Education field, with an emphasis on the following themes: history of intellectuals, cultural circulation and comparative history of education. E-mail: roni@usp.br https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8661-1328

Responsible associate editor: Ana Clara Bortoleto Nery (UNESP) Email: neryanaclara@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6316-3243

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