Philosophical Polemics, School Reform, and Nation-Building in Uruguay, 1868-1915

This work proposes a fresh approach to the study of the process of nation building in Uruguay, integrating both a regional—the greater Río de la Plata area—and a transatlantic perspective. The book addresses the role attributed to education and educational institutions in the consolidation of the nation-state; the creative assimilation of philosophical and pedagogical currents from Europe, the United States, and Latin America; the circulation of intellectuals and ideas from Santiago de Chile to Porto Alegre; and the connections between, as well as similarities and differences among, debates and school reforms in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. The chosen chronological framework—which includes two crucial moments in the building of the Uruguayan state—allows an analysis of the changes and continuities in a context of great transformations at a regional and global level.Jens R. Hentschke develops his argumentation through a dialogue with a vast and ongoing historiography on the area under study, and he substantiates his interpretation with a wide range of primary sources, especially archival documentation, official publications, magazines, textbooks, and books and brochures by education reformers and philosopher-educators from Argentinean, Brazilian, Chilean, and Uruguayan repositories, among others. The organization of the book into three parts offers a balance between the presentation of “antecedents” drawn from Chilean and Argentine experiences up to the mid-nineteenth century; the development of the Reforma Vareliana—including the constitution of the Sociedad de Amigos de la Educación Popular (1868); the school reform promoted by José Pedro Varela (1877), the consolidation of which was carried forward by his brother Jacobo Varela; and the International Pedagogical Congress in Buenos Aires (1882)—and the transformations promoted by the movement led by José Batlle y Ordóñez (president of the republic in 1903–7 and 1911–15) on the new model for the state and the role of education. Unlike previous studies, which were exclusively concentrated in Uruguay, the chapters of this text focus on political interactions in the Río de la Plata area, significant national and transnational polemics, and the regional movement of positions and people. This enables a better understanding of the aspects that were characteristic of Uruguay in the region.The review of the discussions and arguments from the period purports the contemporary relevance of the addressed issues, such as the role of education as part of the project of building a democratic and republican state, the scope of freedom of education (debates on mandatory education, secularism, and unique curricula, among others), the participation of women as educators, the integration of the rural population and immigrants, the budget necessary for education, and the tensions between state and society. By studying the philosophical, pedagogical, and political currents circulating in the Río de la Plata in the period—positivisms, spiritualisms, rationalisms, idealisms, liberalisms, Krausisms, and republicanisms, among others—the author contemplates the appropriation, interpretation, and reformulation of ideas and experiences. He proves that, despite the strong polemics or the greater influence of one current or the other in a given period, mixtures, interactions, or coexistence between ideas prevailed rather than clear-cut boundaries. For instance, Hentschke concludes that the transition in ideas at the beginning of the twentieth century was “marked by the coexistence and interaction of different generations and their philosophical-pedagogical doctrines, one in decline and the other gradually gaining hegemony” (pp. 294–95). By examining universities, teacher-training institutes, pedagogical societies, and both direct and indirect contacts between the intellectuals of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, the author shows how the greater Río de la Plata, and particularly Uruguay, comprised “a significant crossroads for both North-Atlantic and autochthonous ideas” (p. 371).Besides addressing the positions held in the upper echelons or governing bodies of education, Hentschke analyzes the translation of doctrinal shifts and their underlying concepts into everyday school practice, demonstrating the persistence of positivist ideas in teacher's training and school texts, even during the Batlle y Ordóñez administration. While most of the educational reforms at the beginning of the twentieth century are presented by Hentschke as “continuities in change from the Varelas to Batlle,” the controversial decision by the Varelas to carry forward the school reform under a dictatorship is analyzed as the core element of Batlle y Ordóñez's philosophical and political distances from the Varelistas (p. 381). Reforms developed under dictatorial regimes, according to Batlle y Ordóñez, could, at most, convert the “plebs” into obedient “people.” The objective of the Batllistas should be, on the contrary, to construct an “associational, but guided, democracy . . . in which ‘the people’ were to become ‘citizens’ moulded to the State's ideal,” the constitution of a welfare state democracy, and the ratification of the nation's independence (p. 386).Clearly written, profusely documented, and strongly argued, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of regional history, philosophy, and education in the Southern Cone, cultural nation-building processes, and transatlantic cultural exchanges

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