Training to be a regional normal teacher in Argentina (Formarse como maestro normal regional en Argentina) (1933-1969)

BRUMAT, MARÍA ROSA

San Luis Potosí, México.

Congreso; INTERNATIONAL STANDING CONFERENCE FOR THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION (ISCHE 33): "State, education and society. New perspectives on an old debate".; 2011

El Colegio de San Luis, CIESAS, Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí (México)

In this essay we explain the progress achieved in an ongoing doctoral investigation where we analyze a proposal regarding the training of normal teachers in the region of Córdoba, Argentina, from 1933 to 1969. The Law 1420 of General Common Education (Ley de Educación Común 1420) (year 1884) organized the elementary education system by dictating compulsory, free, secular, common, and gradual education for children between the ages 6 and 14, at a time when a National State was being established. Elementary education played a central role in the organization of the Argentinian educational system, as it was a mechanism that aimed to training workforce and citizens as part of the national state process of consolidation, which facilitates education to the majority of the population. State policies helped promote ideals that would contribute to the consolidation of a national identity, and within this context education became the most important mechanism for the nation’s training. This clearly shows the central role elementary education played in the history of the Argentinian national educational system and the concern for the training of teachers in this level of education. The task of training teachers at the elementary level was in charge of Normal Schools, and they were considered the key component for the institutionalization of the training of teachers and the normalism (normalismo [specific type of teacher training originated in Argentina at the beginning of the 20th Century.]) in Argentina. The expansion of Normal Schools took place between 1870 and 1895 through the establishment of a Normal School in the capital of each province. However, the homogenization in the teachers´ training system was a bit different: there was also the establishment of Rural Normal Schools and Popular Normal Schools, which apparently constituted a separated practice in the teacher training field. These institutions would be in charge of training teachers who would work at schools in the countryside, given the refusal and resistance of normal teachers from the cities to move to rural areas. In this essay we will analyze the proposal regarding the training of regional normal teachers in a Regional Normal School, as an alternative to the normalism centralized in urban Normal Schools. We would like to focus on the period between 1933 and 1969, during the training process of those teachers as normal regional teachers, taking into consideration some aspects of analysis, such as the origin of the individuals being trained, the curricula, the teaching practices as resident teachers and the job done in rural schools once they qualify as teachers.