Historical School: Genesis and Evolution of Education
Genesis and Evolution of the Historical School
The institution is an educational and social construct, resulting from the relationships between various social agents and groups throughout history.
Educational systems, as state networks, have not always existed. Before, schools or means of learning had very limited coverage.
The characteristics of state networks emerged in response to the needs of differential socialization arising with the liberal-democratic and industrial revolutions. Therefore, origins and development are uneven, starting in various societies depending on their industrialization and their institutions and policies.
Durkheim viewed education as a functional necessity for society, explicitly assuming the functions formerly represented by religion, building conscience in the policy of society.
Education is the means by which society constantly renews the conditions of its existence.
Max Weber established three models of power legitimization: charismatic, traditional, and rational. From these, there are three modes of domination in society with corresponding specific education:
- Charismatic
- Bureaucratic
- Humanistic
The aim of every educational system is to instill in students the lifestyle of the dominant groups.
- Charismatic education: Training consists of initiates (ecclesiastical seminars).
- Humanistic education: Training and distinguished heritage of the gentleman, imparted or influenced by various imitations of chivalrous rituals.
- Bureaucratic education: The ideal of the specialized functionary, professional employee, or rationalizations undertaken by society.
Specialization requires the introduction of tests or specialist assessments that examine the limitations of job positions. Symbolic offerings in markets where women are not naturally exchanged (charisma), or assets, but those derived from rational education: the accredited diplomas or qualifications obtained in exams.
For Weber, the emergence of educational systems is a struggle between status groups for control of specialized training.
For Foucault, educational systems emerge from the governmental needs of the social body.
In the seventeenth century, new modes of education developed with masters, and for the moralization of the masses, domesticating the populace through schools, whose mission is to tame, civilize, and make reasonable childhood through disciplinary practices and control techniques.
The Spanish Educational System
In medieval times and during the centuries that followed, schools were founded, sponsored, and monopolized by religious orders who sought to preserve their principles as a moral and mold their students. The liberal Constitution of 1812, which proclaimed the obligation of all municipalities to educate children, public and free primary education, and free expression, chair, and choice of institution, was quickly aborted, although the Moyano Law 45 years later led to the early part of those who once gave ample privileges for the Church to continue teaching.
The development of capitalism was accompanied by laws of compulsory schooling that only acquired meaning with respect to the expansion of the Welfare State.
The public, secular, and republican school becomes a social property of that new social regime alongside other social security institutions and the recognition of rights and subsidies for working classes and, even, for non-owner employees.
The project of a secular and free public education began with the Second Republic in Spain but was frustrated both by the Church and by the belligerence imposed by military uprisings during the following four decades of dictatorship, Compulsory Denominationalism, suppressing academic freedom, co-education, and languages other than Spanish. Such a change would affect the educational system in the last years of the dictatorial regime, approving the General Law of Education and the LOGSE, resuming the general principles of liberal modernity.