Between dictatorships and democracies: permanence and reforms in the policies of the National Directorate of Physical Education, Sports, and Recreation (Argentina, 1976-1993)

DANIELA MANSI; EDUARDO GALAK

Budapest

Congreso; 44th International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE); 2023

ISCHE

It is proposed to analyze the public policies developed by the National Directorate of Physical Education, Sports, and Recreation between 1976 and 1993. From the study of the “Informative Bulletins” (published until 1977), the “News Sheets” (77-79), official decrees of the Directorate, and ministerial resolutions on education, we particularize the look at the permanence and ruptures of the state projects that were motorized on teacher training. Although physical education and its professional training have been a matter of concern since the consolidation of the nation-state and its institutionalization within the Argentine educational system (Aisenstein and Scharagrodsky, 2006; Aisenstein, 2006; Galak, 2012), with the creation of the National Directorate of Physical Education. In 1966, new concerns were raised, and public policies were implemented that posed a threat to a teacher's well-being. Public policies account for the set of actions and omissions that manifest a certain modality of state intervention concerning an issue, a lack, or a social problem (Oszlak and O'Donnell, 1981). On March 24, 1976, the last civic-military coup took place in Argentina, plunging the country into dark times of deep institutional authoritarianism, consolidating authoritarian discourses that had implications for educational processes, such as changes in curricular designs, surveillance in teacher training institutions, and interventions in universities. The policies emanated from the National Directorate during this period were found to focus on the federalization of physical education teacher training, that is, prioritizing that spaces for the socialization of school disciplinary knowledge be developed in all Argentine provinces, breaking with the traditional centralization of the teacher training institutes of Buenos Aires. The policies promoted by the National Directorate made it possible to massify the professionalization in physical education and build new discursive frameworks regarding being a teacher throughout the national territory.Following the inauguration of Raúl Alfonsín as president in 1983, a period began in which public policies in general, and education in particular, drew a line with the recent past to achieve social transformation (Fernández Pais, 2019), ensuring that electoral democratization also reaches other official levels, such as schooling processes. He advocated for the dialogue-based restoration of public institutions that had been threatened by previous dictatorial governments.In the public policies promoted by the National Directorate, more permanence than rupture is observed: new teacher training courses and financing were consolidated. The 1990s in Argentina were times of attack on public education and teacher training: educational policies during the government of Carlos Saúl Menem were explicitly inscribed in neoliberal policies, corresponding to the residual and intentional effects of the civic dictatorship. Proof of this is that the National Directorate was dissolved in 1993. It is hypothesized that the dissolution of this Directorate was part of the climate of the neoliberal era of withdrawal of the welfare state in favor of privatizing economic circuits, ending with a federalizing policy.