Evolution of Education: From Past to Present
School Development in Europe
- Claim for public education: compulsory and free.
The history of the school goes from Plato to Comenius or Pestalozzi, but finds more specific expression in Condorcet and Fichte.
For Luzuriaga, the three essential characteristics of unified education are: nationalization, socialization, and individualization.
- German teachers were pioneers in the movement to extend democratized unified education to primary school and the university.
- In France, it was also intended that the separation between primary, secondary, and higher education had no reason to be. The solution was the single school that integrated everyone into a public school, compulsory and free.
- The movement in England towards the extension of secondary education for all was driven by the Labor Party to help level the existing social differences and improve the living standards of the working class.
In Spain, the single European school was made known through professional journals “Modern School” and “Bulletin of Inspection of First Teaching.” The educational experience to carry out the facility was the Free Education School. From the proclamation of the Republic in Spain, almost all political parties included the start of the single school in their programs.
Langevin-Wallon Plan (Plan for Education Reform: France)
- At the end of the Second World War, one of the initiatives that surged based on education to allow social equality, individual development, and peace was the Plan for Education Reform in France, made by Langevin and Wallon based on four fundamental principles: justice, dignity of social work, the full development of children and adolescents, and educational and vocational guidance.
- The education plan was intended to avoid secular and class differences in teaching and hierarchies through free and compulsory education for all levels.
Comprehensive Education
- In England, in the 1950s, comprehensive education emerged and then spread throughout Europe. It poses an integrated, democratic, unique, versatile, and comprehensive education.
- In Spain, it was introduced in the late 1980s with the LOGSE, with social reform passed in 1990.
Education as an Investment
- Schultz, initiator of the theory of human capital.
During the second half of the 20th century, the thesis that education supposed an investment in economic development was accepted. It was proposed to invest in education in Third World countries to overcome underdevelopment.
- The economic crisis of 1973 concerned public service investments.
Neoliberalism and Education
- Friedman is the most prominent representative of neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism proposes a more effective education system based on merit and individual effort.
- Agencies propose building dedicated to state control and evaluation of the quality of education. In practice, it has not been shown that privatization improved the quality of education.
- Neoliberalism puts productivity and efficiency variables above other social, political, and human variables.
- The economic crisis of 1973 made its objective to reduce public expenditure on education to improve the management of resources, lowering the cost per student, increasing the number of students per class, fostering competition among teachers, and reducing their salaries.
Postmodernity and Education
Postmodernity is the consequence of technological society and an alternative to modernity.
In the field of education, the anti-philosophy of postmodernity is defined by the prevalence of technology, permanent innovation, the importance of knowing the future of the company, and the application of the systems approach.
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)
Italian pedagogue and one of the Marxist thinkers. He abandoned his studies to dedicate himself to politics. He was first a militant of the Socialist Party and later of the Communist Party, of which he was one of its founders. He ended up in jail in 1926. In it, despite difficult conditions and the lack of media, he wrote his reflections. His interest in pedagogy has a personal home (concern for the education of their children) and other social concerns (his knowledge of the social crisis, politics, and education of the time).
Gramsci agrees that culture is grounded on the equality of men. For him, all men are intellectuals, but not all men can exercise this role in society.
He opposes both education based on liberalism and authoritarianism, defending an intermediate position between rigid discipline and that based on spontaneity. In the thought of Gramsci, the state must have a key role in educating through a unique training school, non-class, with equal opportunities, and allowing students to train as people and learn to think, study, and handle. This school is designed as active and creative, while the teacher’s role is key, as authority and discipline are required for access to personal autonomy.
Vasile Sujomlinski (1918-1970)
He is considered, together with Makarenko, the great teacher of Soviet communism of the 20th century. After finishing his studies as a teacher, he participated in the Second World War, where he was wounded by shrapnel, while his wife was tortured and murdered by the Nazis, a fact that marked him deeply. “Two feelings have encouraged me and encourage me: love and hate. Love for children and hate for fascism.”
The originality of his work is represented in the implementation of the Marxist teaching staff. He did not develop a book that summarizes all of his thoughts. His ideas are scattered throughout 30 books and 500 items. Based on the new school, paidocentrism, and idealism. For Sujomlinski, all education should be based on the happiness of children and the joy in their games, in their imagination, and their wishes. This author, through the staff, intended community development and not backwardness. In his School for Joy, he proposed the development of all the potential of each individual student through joy, happiness, and freedom. He was concerned because a sad child was not in terms of learning. Children learned by playing in a climate of work and activity he called a “stress field” or climate necessary for work, together with the reasons, allowing the children to study, research, and consult on their own initiative without ordering or discipline. For this author, the community is just a way to develop the communist man and woman.
The reproduction works of French sociologists Bourdieu and Passeron, Capitalist and School in France, by sociologists Baudelot and Establet, and the theories of Althusser, have in common the implementation of the categories and the methodology for Marxist analysis of the school system. The summary of this school of thought, which had many fans, is the tendency of the school to play the existing unfair situation. Students are forced to repeat the fate of their own social class, social conditions with entering the school students perpetuate inequality, although the school attempts to explain those inequalities bearing in mind the natural endowment of individuals.
The most interesting of the educational theory of Polish educator Bogdan Suchodolski is preparing for a future world youth, a new civilization in which there are no exploiters and exploited, based on respect for human beings, creators, critics, and in which possible active social participation and development of a cultural life. The teaching of the past is ineffective because it educates youth in liability and values. The proposal also includes Suchodolski work conceived as self. To advance in progress, he proposes to join the lessons of general and business, the social and the individual in all stages of the life of man. The new civilization aspires to incorporate the development of all the powers of man, so art as intellectual and moral in a field of social cooperation.