Editorial Carme García Yeste & Gregor Siles 1 The Role ...

Table of ContentsEditorial Carme García Yeste & Gregor Siles 1ArticlesThe Role of Experiential Learning in Holocaust Education Miriam BenPeretz & Madene Shachar 5Las Teorías de la Desescolarización; Cuarenta Años dePerspectiva Histórica Jon Igelmo Zaldivar 28Democratic Adult Education in United States Itxaso Tellado58Writing Educational Spaces in Twentieth Century ReformistIndian Discourse Barnita Bagchi 78ReviewsHipatia de Alejandría. Un Equipo Plural de Científicas Desvelala Verdad sobre la Primera Mujer de Ciencia Marc Sampé 101Free Women (Mujeres Libres). Voices and Memories for aLibertarian Future Emilia Aiello 104

Volume 1, Number 1

Instructions for authors, subscriptions and further details:http://hse.hipatiapress.com

EditorialCarme García Yeste1& Gregor Siles2

1) Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain2) Universitat de Barcelona, SpainDate of publication: February 23rd, 2012

To cite this article: García, C. & Siles, G. (2012). Editorial. Social andEducation History, 1(1), 14. doi:10.4471/hse.2012.00To link this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.4471/hse.2012.00

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HSE Social and Education History Vol. 1 No. 1February 2012 pp. 14

2012 Hipatia PressISSN 20143567DOI: 10.4471/hse.2012.00

EditorialCarme García Gregor SilesUniversitat Rovira i Virgili Universitat de Barcelona

Tenemos la gran satisfacción de presentar el primer número de la revistaHistoria Social y de la Educación HSE (Social and Education History),una revista electrónica y con acceso abierto, que nace con la voluntad depublicar artículos relevantes, vinculando de una manera muy estrecha elestudio de las sociedades con el de los procesos educativos. HSE recogerá ensayos e investigaciones, que traten sobre los procesosde socialización, la transmisión cultural, la transformación yconcienciación social, las instituciones educativas y el pensamientosocial y pedagógico, de cualquier período histórico. Así como, la mismapedagogía de la historia. Este carácter integral del estudio de la historia,la convierten en una publicación única, dentro del abanico de excelentesrevistas científicas que ya existen, tanto de historia en general como dehistoria de la educación. En la historia de la educación ha predominado el estudio de losprocesos de alfabetización y aprendizaje surgidos con la modernidad,centrados primordialmente en las instituciones educativas. En menormedida, se han estudiado aquellos procesos de aprendizaje que se dan demanera intrínseca en todas las sociedades, a partir de la experiencia devida compartida, dejándose estos para el ámbito de la historia social. Asícomo por ejemplo el estudio de la comunidad, de un contexto educativo.Desde HSE queremos unir estos dos ámbitos. El historiador ingles E. P. Thomson (1989), en su obra The Making ofthe English Working Class, nos aproximó a la experiencia compartida deunos hombres y mujeres, que se socializaban entre lo viejo y lo nuevo,de un mundo que se transformaba con la revolución industrial,

2 Carme García Yeste & Gregor Siles Editorial

surgiendo así una nueva conciencia individual y colectiva. Aparecíannuevas formas de vida, nuevos aprendizajes, E.P. Thomson hacía asíhistoria social y de la educación. Otro ejemplo, es el premio NobelAmartya Sen en su obra The argumentative Indian (2005), donde narrala tradición dialógica milenaria de la India y como se ha idotransmitiendo por los siglos de los siglos. Estos enfoques socioculturales, son algunos de los caminos que queremos descubrir desdeHSE.HSE quiere ser también un reflejo de la actual sociedad globalizada, ydar a conocer investigaciones y experiencias de todos los lugares delmundo, con el propósito de lograr la mayor diversidad posible deautores y países. La revista será de carácter cuatrimestral, siendo sometidos todos losartículos a una doble evaluación anónima. El objetivo de HSE esaparecer indexada en las principales bases de datos de Humanidades yCiencias Sociales, tales como Journal Citation Reports, Arts &Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI), Social Sciences Citation Index(SSCI), Latindex, InRECS, ERIH, ERIC, the Social Science CitationIndex, Current Contents (Thomson ISI), Scopus, Elsevier BibliographicDatabases, ISOC (CINDOC, Consejo Superior de InvestigacionesCientíficas), Social Scisearch, entre otras. En este primer número que presentamos, hemos recogido 4 artículosoriginales de 5 autores de la India, España e Israel, y 2 recensiones. Enel primer artículo, nos adentramos en el aprendizaje de la historia de lamano de Miriam BenPeretz y Madene Shachar (The Role ofExperiential Learning in Holocaust Education) donde nos describen laeducación sobre el Holocausto en Israel. Concretamente, en unprograma que consiste en un viaje con alumnado a los escenarios delHolocausto en Polonia. El segundo artículo, de Jon Igelmo Zaldivar (Las teorías de ladesescolarización; cuarenta años de perspectiva histórica), revisa yreflexiona sobre el pensamiento pedagógico de Iván Illich, PaulGoodman, John Holt y Everett Reimer, autores enmarcados dentro delas teorías de la desescolarización, recogiendo sus aportaciones yproyección en el siglo XXI. En el tercer artículo, Itxaso Tellado (Democratic adult education in

3HSE Social and Education History, 1 (1)

United States) hace un recorrido histórico por la educación democráticade adultos en Estados Unidos. Para hablar después de la legendariaHighlander Folk School y la influencia que tuvo en la lucha por losderechos civiles. El último artículo, de Barnita Bagchi (Writing Educational Spaces inTwentieth Century Reformist Indian Discourse), nos acerca a lasprácticas y teorías entorno a la educación en la India, en el período de19201960, bajo el influjo de autores como Rabindranath Tagore y deM.K. Gandhi entre otros. También en este número, aparecen dos recensiones de dos libros:Hipatia de Alejandría. Un equipo plural de científicas desvela la verdadsobre la primera mujer de ciencia, una profunda reflexión sobre elpersonaje histórico de Hiapatia, y que nos muestra nuevas posibilidadesdentro de la historia de la educación, y Free Women (Mujeres Libres).Voices and Memories for a Libertarian Future, una investigaciónbasada en relatos de vida, que nos aproxima a esta organizaciónlibertaria de mujeres del período 19361939 en España. Por último agradecemos a las personas que trabajan y colaboran conHipatia Press, la puesta en marcha de está iniciativa, que ha sido posiblegracias a un trabajo de una inmensa solidaridad. Hipatia Press, es unaeditorial que siempre ha apostado por la excelencia científica dentro lasciencias sociales y se caracteriza por su compromiso democrático. En elaño 1997, esta misma editorial publicaba A la sombra de esta árbol dePaulo Freire, donde el pedagogo brasileño definía la historia comoposibilidad y la naturaleza de las personas como histórica y social.Desde HSE e Hipatia Press apostamos por esta posibilidad y por estanaturaleza, para ser un referente intelectual en el ámbito de lashumanidades y las ciencias sociales.

ReferenciasFreire, P. (1997). A la sombra de este árbol. Barcelona: El Roure

Ciencia.Sen, A. (2005). The argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian history,

culture and identity. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Thompson, E. P. (1989). La formación de la clase obrera en

Inglaterra. Barcelona: Crítica.

4 Carme García Yeste & Gregor Siles Editorial


The Role of Experiential Learning in Holocaust EducationMiriam BenPeretz & Madene Shachar1

1) Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Israel

Date of publication: February 23rd, 2012

To cite this article: BenPeretz, M., Shachar, M. (2012). The Role ofExperimental Learning in Holocaust Education. Social and EducationHistory, 1 (1), 527. doi: 10.4471/hse.2012.01

To link this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.4471/hse.2012.01

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLEThe terms and conditions of use are related to the Open Journal System and toCreative Commons NonCommercial and NonDerivative License.


The Role of Experiential Learningin Holocaust Education

Miriam BenPeretz & Madene ShacharUniversity of Haifa

Abstract

The paper starts with a brief description and analysis of Holocaust education inIsrael as a case of teaching history. The role of experiential learning isdiscussed, leading to the presentation of the "Journey to Poland", as a centralelement in teaching and learning about the Holocaust. Several evaluationstudies of this journey are noted. Finally, the discussion offers someconclusions concerning the use of experiential learning in the teaching ofhistory, its advantages, limitations and risks.

Keywords: teaching history, local and universal history, experiential learning,cognitive and affective modes of knowledge, Holocaust education, Israel,Journey to Poland


6 M. BenPeretz & M. Shachar Holocaust Education

RationaleThis paper focuses on the following issues:

• Holocaust education as a case of teaching history.•The role of experiential learning in Holocaust education,advantages and risks•Implications for teaching history.There is growing literature about teaching of history, its potential, its

difficulties and its risks (Wineburg, 2001; Resnik, 1999; Zajda &Whitehouse, 2009; Freedman et al, 2008; Barton & Levstik, 2004).Teaching history is considered to be important for the intellectualdevelopment of students, and for their growth of knowledge concerningthe nature of human experience overtime and place on a global, national,and local level. Learning about the past is conceived as leading to abetter understanding of the present and to the commitment to strive for abetter future. One of the biggest challenges in teaching history ismaking sense of the subject matter while implementing pedagogicalapproaches that provide students with the tools they need to comprehendcomplex historical processes.

Zajda & Whitehouse (2009) claim that teaching history is both localand universal. It introduces students to the history of their owncommunity, and yields, as well, insights into universal aspects ofhistorical processes. Furthermore, they state that pedagogical approachescan be either traditional or transformational. The traditional approachpromotes factbased learning, and might advance nationalism andpatriotism. The transformational approach puts emphasis on an historicalunderstanding based on critical thinking and multiple historicalperspectives, "students are encouraged to analyze information and makeindependent and critical evaluations" (p. 954).

Holocaust education in IsraelSeveral researchers have examined Holocaust education in Israel overtime, following educational trends and how they reflect national

memory, as well as political and social circumstances that influencedHolocaust pedagogy (Resnik, 1999, 2003; Porat, 2004; Schatzker,1980; 1982). Similar studies have been conducted in other countries,as well, and according to Schatzker (1980):

“Every nation, every generation, and every social andideological group has its own problems of facing theHolocaust and its own way of integrating it into its life andinto its educational system – since every educational systemhas its own set of aims, ways, and anticipation of resultsregarding the teaching of the Holocaust. (p. 220)

In Israel, Holocaust education reflects how the State of Israel has dealtwith Holocaust memory, its place in JewishIsraeli identity, and itshistorical significance. Therefore, teaching the Holocaust in theJewishIsraeli context might depend on traditional, as well astransformational approaches, serving both local and universal historicalknowledge.

An historical examination of national curricula in schools is one ofthe ways in which Holocaust education has been studied in Israel.Porat (2004) and Resnik (2003), for example, analyzed NationalCurricula, textbooks, teacher guides, and circulars published by theDirector General of the Ministry of Education. The metaanalyses ofthese sources have led to a complex chronology of Holocausteducation, its development and transformation, spanning over sixdecades of the State of Israel’s existence. In essence, this chronologyof Holocaust education can be described along a time line with verydistinct periods that reflect specific Holocaust pedagogy.

Though the Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day Law wasenacted 1953, in the first twenty years of the State of Israel, theMinistry of Education did not give teachers the appropriatepedagogical tools (Schatzker, 1980). A national survey conducted inthe 1960’s by the Yad Vashem Memorial Authority showed that 66%of schools did not observe the Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Dayand only 25.3% of schools had instructional activities related to theHolocaust (Porat, 2004). In 1980, the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) Committee of Education

7HSE Social and Education History 1 (1)


and Culture passed a bill The Holocaust Memory Bill that amends theState Education Law to include that “all students graduating from Israelischools be educated on consciousness of the memory of the Holocaustand Heroism” (Porat, 2004, p. 630). Since the implementation of the Holocaust Memory Bill, there hasbeen a distinct shift in the relevance of Holocaust education in Israel. Inhis analysis of both formal and nonformal secondary education curriculadeveloped between the 1970’s through the 1990’s, Dror (2001) traces theshift from an almost total absence of the Holocaust in the 1950’s and1960’s curricula, to emphasis on heroism, and then to emphasis on thefate of the victims and on issues of antiSemitism. In summarizing his analysis of Holocaust education in Israel, Porat(2004) claims that “…the Holocaust is an event that stands at the core ofwhat it means to be a Jewish Israeli” (p.635). Holocaust education inIsrael has become “…a defining memory, an event that was studied anddiscussed throughout the school year, a piece of history that formed thecore of students’ national identity” (ibid, 2004, p. 635). This is reflectedin Cohen’s (2010a) report on Holocaust education in Israel between20072009. The survey revealed that “the school is the most importantsetting through which students are exposed to the issue of the Shoah[Holocaust]” (Cohen, 2010a, p. 2) in the Jewish public school sector.The majority of students (83%) in the survey claimed that they wereinterested in learning more about the Holocaust and saw themselvesresponsible for perpetuating the memory of the Holocaust. Cohen’ssurvey also shows that along with the Jewish history oriented pedagogy,80% of the students also identify with the universal values of Holocauststudy, namely the negation of violence, racism and the importance ofhuman rights. The centrality and diversity of Holocaust education in Israel continuesto develop though recent research shows that the topic is still notanchored in a multidisciplinary National Curriculum. On the one hand,the Taskforce for International Cooperation on HolocaustEducation, Remembrance and Research report on Holocausteducation in Israel (2005) shows that the subject is now taught not onlyin history lessons, but in various disciplines, such as literature, theologyand the arts. On the other hand, the only mandatory curriculum for

Holocaust studies is in the history curriculum (State ComptrollerReport 2009, 2010).

Challenges of teaching about the HolocaustTeaching about the Holocaust poses a number of challenges thatpertain to both the nature of the historical event as well as itsrepresentation in the curricula. Schatzker (1980) states that theHolocaust is “beyond normal perception and apart from humanexperience yet known in the history of mankind” (p. 221). In teachingabout this traumatic period, teachers need to be careful not to demonizethe perpetrators, making their actions “inhuman” in the sense that theywere not done by human beings, or to oversimplify the historicalevents in order to make them understandable and banal, for example,by using simulations or role playing. In the case of the latter,Schatzker cautions that “any simulation is based upon the assumptionthat there exists a fundamental similarity between the simulator and thesubject of simulation.” (p. 224) and he goes on to claim that “the term‘Holocaust’ cancels the possibility of simulation if the subject isoutside the realm of one’s experience and the universe of discourse,imagination, and reason.” (p. 225). Holocaust researchers have debated whether the Holocaust shouldbe taught as a unique and singular event or one of many similarhistorical events. This discourse has posed a challenge to educators inIsrael who wish to incorporate both Jewish and universal elements intotheir curriculum and must find the balance between teaching Jewishhistory and teaching the more universal and humanistic elements(Schatzker, 1980). Another distinct challenge in Holocaust education is developingcurricula that will reflect the transformation from what Nora (1989)has described as an "environment of memory", which includes, forexample, the personal memories of Holocaust survivors, and is “borneby living societies” (p. 8), to a “historic memory”, which is“intellectual and secular” and implements "sites of memory", namelymemorial sites, commemorations, and museums that replace thespontaneous, living memories of a society.



Lastly, there is a need for what Schatzker (1980) refers to as thebalance between cognitive and affective modes of learning about theHolocaust and their impact on students. The learning process involvesboth psychological processes, as seen in the Memorial Day ceremony, aswell as cognitive processes, such as examining the historical events andtheir implications. Teaching methods need to provide the balancebetween affective effects of Holocaust education and cognitiveoutcomes. One way of promoting affective elements in Holocaust education isthrough experiential learning. In Israel today, Holocaust education isconsidered a multidimensional experience students are taught throughformal and informal venues (Cohen, 2010a). They not only have theformal history lessons, but also attend ceremonies, see performances andpresentations, and visit Holocaust institutions and museums.Furthermore, according to the Cohen survey, the majority of students(91%) find informal learning experiences, such as survivor testimonyand the Journey to Poland, as the most effective ways of learning aboutthe Holocaust. Informal education tends to rely on experiential learning.

Experiential LearningExperiential learning is discussed widely in education literature. Acomprehensive definition is offered by Carver (1996):

…education (the leading of students through a process of learning)that makes conscious application of the students' experiences byintegrating them into the curriculum. Experience involves anycombination of senses (i.e., touch smell, hearing, sight, taste),emotions (e.g., pleasure, excitement, anxiety, fear, hurt, empathy,attachment), physical condition (e.g., temperature, strength, energylevel), and cognition (e.g., constructing knowledge, establishingbeliefs, solving problems) (p. 150151).

Moreover, "experiential education is holistic in the sense that itaddresses students in their entirety—as thinking, feeling, physical,emotional, spiritual, and social beings." (p. 151) Experiential learning is used in manifold situations and for a variety of

goals. Several pedagogic principles are central features of experientiallearning. These are, according to Carver: Authenticity – relevance to the lives of students Active learning – meaning concrete engagement in the process oflearning Drawing on student experience – both those that students bringwith them as well as those provided by the program Providing means for linking experience with futureopportunities of learning The formal process of student reflectionon their participation in activities and/or how this experience mayinfluence potential roles as community members. The notion of experiential learning is not new. Different scholarsand theorists in education have argued for the importance ofexperience in the educational process. Pestalozzi, an educationalphilosopher and scholar from the 18th19th, believed that childrenshould be allowed to follow their nature since they have "inherentcapacities" (Forbes, 2003). According to Pestalozzi:

The most essential point from which I start is this: Senseimpression [Anschauung] of Nature is the only one truefoundation of human instruction, because it is the only truefoundation of human knowledge. All that follows is the result ofthis sense impression [Anschauung], and the process ofabstraction from it. (Pestalozzi, 1907, p. 200).

This view of teaching and learning requires presentation of sensoryelements like pictures or sounds, as the starting point of educationalprocesses. Rogers (1994) did not believe in learning that involves the mindonly: "It is learning that takes place 'from the neck up.' It does notinvolve feelings or personal meanings; it has no relevance for thewhole person. In contrast, there is such a thing as significant,meaningful, experiential learning" (Rogers & Freiberg, 1994, p. 35).For Rogers, significant learning combines intellect and feeling, conceptand experience. Such learning is connected with personalinvolvement, selfinitiation, is meaningful and influences behavior. The most wellknown and influential scholar who wrote on



experiential learning is Dewey. According to Dewey, experience reflectsa meaningful connection between the individual and the world (Dewey,1916). One of the characteristics of experience, in Dewey's eye, is thatnew experience transforms the perception of the past. Thus, experienceenables a person to look critically at previously accepted beliefs in thelight of new experience. This characteristic of experiential learning isessential for learning about the Holocaust. Experiential learning involves emotions. Education processes requiretwo of the leading consequences of emotion: engagement in, andattention to, the subject of the educational process. Moreover, "theimportance of emotion in education is not confined to its role inengagement and attention. The role that emotions play in theconstruction of moral behavior and, by extension, building a citizen isjust as important" (Damasio & Damasio, 2010, p. 67). Experience andemotions are especially significant in learning about traumatic historicalevents.

The role of experiential activities in Holocaust educationIn Israel, Holocaust education evolved in such a way that both cognitiveand affective methods were used. In what Schatzker (1980) calls the“existential approach” to learning about the Holocaust, emphasis is puton evoking “a direct identification with the traumatic experience of thereality of Holocaust, and the Jewish world that was destroyed and lost.”(p. 81). Resnik (see Resnik, 1999; 2003) found that extracurriculareducational activities that serve as “sites of memory”, such as the yearlyHolocaust Remembrance Day Ceremony, visits to commemorativeinstitutions, Holocaust museums, and youth delegations to Poland, wereintegrated and institutionalized into the teaching of the Holocaust inorder to arouse this direct identification with the Holocaust (Resnik,2003). In recent years, research on Holocaust education has placed emphasison the affective impact on students (Romi & Lev, 2007), their Jewishidentity (Lazar, Chaitin, Gross & Bar On, 2004a), their modes ofunderstanding the Holocaust (Lazar, Chaitin, Gross & Bar On, 2004b),

and the relevance of the Holocaust to their attitudes and views (LitvakHirsch & Chaitin, 2010).

The Journey to PolandWe now turn to one of the experiential extracurricular activities thatserve Holocaust education in Israel. The Journey to Poland wasofficially added as an elective extracurricular activity in Holocausteducation in 1988 by the Ministry of Education. Over 150, 000students have participated in this program since its inception, with24,000 students participating per year. According to the Circular ofthe Director General of the Ministry of Education (1999 10(1)), thesejourneys are specifically geared for 11th12th grade students and areintended to “strengthen the sense of belonging…to the Israeli nation,and their connection to its legacy and history.” These journeys aresponsored by either the Ministry of Education (10%) or areindependently organized by schools (90%) but supported by theMinistry of Education. Each delegation of students is accompanied byteachers, who have prepared their students for the journey, a certifiedguide, security personnel, a physician and a Holocaust survivor. The Ministry of Education Circular describes in detail the eightcognitive, affective and social goals and objectives of the "journey".Emphasis is put on the students' ability to understand the rich Jewishculture preWWII, to sense the extent of the destruction of Jewish lifein Poland, and to identify with the fate of the Jewish people. Studentsare expected, as well, to know the main principles of Nazi ideology,and to derive national and universal lessons, including the importanceof a sovereign Jewish state and the values of Zionism, as well as theimportance of guarding democracy, humanistic and moral values.Presentday implications for the participants’ lives include personalcommitment to the existence of Jewish life in Israel, acknowledgingthe complexity of the JewishPolish relationship throughout history,and being personally involved in the renovation, maintenance andpreservation of Jewish sites throughout Poland. The journey to Poland involves four stages: 1) preparation ofstudents and accompanying staff; 2) the journey; 3) guided cognitive



and affective reflection of students and staff; 4) sharing experiences anddeliberations with members of the community. Because of the complexnature of these journeys, the preparation and the journey program arewell detailed in the Director General Circular (1999, 10/1, 7.62).Students who wish to participate in the journey are chosen according tospecific criteria, including age, voluntary choice to participate, interest inthe subject, and, finally, social and emotional suitability. The preparationincludes cognitive, affective and social components. The journey program includes visits to three types of recommendedsites: 1) cities and villages that once had a population of Jewishcommunities; 2) death sites and extermination camps (with AushwitzBirkenau a mandatory stop); and 3) Polish tourist sites. Anotherelement of the journey recommended by the Ministry of Education is ameeting between Israeli and Polish students. The journey includes ceremonies at the camps, socialeducationalactivities every evening, including reflection sessions, and culturalevents. Students are encouraged to take an active part in preparing forthe journey by working in committees that are responsible fordocumentation of the journey, for guiding at specific locations, and fororganization of events. The Ministry of Education encouragesincorporating into the preparation and processing stages of the JourneyHolocaust museums and institutions that have specific pre and postjourney programs for such journeys.

Evaluation of the Journey to PolandA number of recent studies on the impact of the Journey to Poland extracurricular program on participants examine the cognitive, affective andsocial aspects (see: Romi & Lev, 2007; Lazar et al., 2004 a & b; Cohen a+ b, 2010; Glickman, Raz, Friman, Lipshtat, Goldschmidt, & Semach,2011). In the Cohen (2010b) survey, which was cited earlier in this paper, thecognitive and affective shortterm impact of the Journey to Poland wasexamined. Participating students that did not participate in Journey toPoland (n=575) exhibited more knowledge about the Holocaust thanthose students that were not on the journey. When students were asked to

give the reasons for participating in the journey, the most popularreasons (in descending order) were: to see for themselves whathappened; 2) because of a family connection; 3) to gain moreknowledge about the Holocaust; and 4) a feeling Jewish identity. Theleast mentioned reason was national (Israeli) identity. Overall, thesurvey reveals that students see the general educational goals of theJourney to Poland as more important than national goals. Furthermore,89% of the students viewed the Holocaust as "a tragedy for allhumanity" (p. 3) as opposed to 80% of the nonparticipating students. In a comparative study (Romi & Lev, 2007), participants includedyoung adults who had recently experienced the journey to Poland(between 13 years prior to the study), veteran participants (four to fiveyears prior to the study) and non participants in the journey. Thestudy examined cognitive and affective dimensions of the journey, aswell as the participants' attitudes toward Judaism, the Holocaust andZionism. Concerning the cognitive dimension, the findings indicatethat those who had recently participated in the journey had moreknowledge about the Holocaust and that “…the experience providesthem with much more knowledge about the period” on a shorttermbasis (Romi & Lev, 2007, p. 98). No significant differences werefound between veterans and those who had never participated. On theaffective level, findings reveal that those participants who had recentlybeen on the journey expressed stronger feelings about the Holocaust,for example, strength, pride and hope, which replaced feelings of pain,shock and anger that participants had felt before the journey. Nosignificant differences were found between the veterans and those whohad not participated in the journey. As for the impact on theparticipants’ attitudes toward Judaism, the Holocaust and Zionism, nosignificant difference was found between the three groups. Theseattitudes include, for instance, "Jewish Identity", "negation of theDiaspora", "the need to fight antiSemitism" and " a strong bond toIsrael" (ibid, p. 95). The researchers noted that Jewish Israeliadolescents have other experiences, beyond the Journey to Poland, thatcontribute to the formation of their attitudes and personal identity, suchas formal school curricula, compulsory army service, and experiencesin the community. Therefore, they claim, "the journey does not bestow



advantages upon the participants that are not shared by their peers" (p.99). Still, the research findings do suggest that "active participation inan emotionalcognitive experience enables a broader and more authenticacquaintance with the Holocaust" (p. 100). The findings of this studyreveal that the impact of the journey experience overtime. In another study, the impact of Holocaust education on students'modes of understanding was examined (Lazar, Chaitin, Gross & BarOn,2004b). High school students, who had participated in a Journey toPoland as part of a longterm seminar organized by the Israel Ministry ofEducation, were asked to identify what they considered to be importantaspects of learning about the Holocaust. Overall, students respondedthat learning about the Holocaust and its implications was important bothin an Israeli and a universal context. Still, the study shows aninteresting interaction between the local and universal goals of thejourney:

…at least on some level, the Holocaust program and journey toPoland had the effect of increasing the JewishIsraeli adolescent'sconcern about their own people's right, while decreasing theirawareness of concern with human rights, in general (p. 26).

The researchers go on to describe this phenomenon as resulting in apossible collision between two important goals of the program. Forsome of the adolescents, the universalistic aspects became less relevant:

This perceived incompatibility might show that when an individualis very concerned with his or hers (i.e. Jewish) peoples' rights,his/her ability to attend to the suffering and needs of others in otherplaces of the world (Bosnians, Rwanda, etc.) is limited (p. 27).

Feldman's study (2002; 2008) clearly raises questions about the hiddencurriculum of teaching history. Feldman, who carried out anethnographic study of the journey to Poland, participated in a course forjourney guides, guided four groups and accompanied a fifth journey. Hepresents a critical analysis of the experiential nature of the Journey toPoland: "…the voyage is seen primarily as an emotional experience,which cannot be adequately expressed in words,…it is emotion that is to

serve as the basis for comprehension" (Feldman, 2008, p. 60).Feldman's major criticisms concern the structure of the journey as atype of pilgrimage: "the voyage is a civil religious pilgrimage, whichtransforms students into victims, victorious survivors, and finally, olim(immigrants; ascenders) to the Land of Israel and witnesses ofwitnesses" (ibid,p. 60). Feldman also claims that describing thisexperience a "journey" (masa in Hebrew) implies an experience thatinvolves overcoming difficulties in an isolated environment (Feldman,2008, p. 62) and is "both a search for family roots of the nation, as wellas an ordeal to be overcome on the way to adulthood" (ibid, p. 63).The incorporation of ceremonies and national symbols at the varioussites presents participants with an emotional experience that is"triggered externally, primarily through sensory stimuli" (Feldman,2002, p. 90) that circumvent cognitive mechanisms. Furthermore,Feldman claims, the actual itinerary, which has not changed greatlyover the years, is another example of the pilgrimage structure of thejourney. With 90% of the sites being visited by all groups, theybecome sacred sites of collective memory that are visited each year.During this isolated journey Israeli students are physically removedfrom modern Poland while experiencing what Feldman calls the"Holocaust Poland": “…visits to Poland by Ministry of Educationgroups are designed to inscribe upon Israeli youth the sense ofbelonging to an egalitarian collective with welldefined, but constantlythreatened boundaries.” (p. 91) and presents the Diaspora as “…a placeof hostile, strange surroundings, wandering and the inevitable end” (p.95) in which the Israeli delegation is separated from Polishsurroundings. In a recent evaluation of the journey to Poland conducted by theIsraeli National Authority for Measurement and Evaluation inEducation (RAMA in Hebrew), the cognitive and affective impact ofthe journey on students, as well as the journey’s impact on thestudents’ value system is examined based on the Ministry ofEducation’s written goals (Glickman et al, 2011). In a nationwidesample, 2,506 students from 55 public schools (both secular andreligious) that implemented a program for a journey to Poland, and 39schools that did not participate, were surveyed between the years 20072009.



The overall findings of this national survey support the achievementof the journey's goals. For example, 95% of the students whoparticipated in the journey see it as part of a longterm educationalprocess that provides knowledge and a better understanding of theHolocaust. In comparison to other pedagogical strategies, such ashistory lessons, visits to Holocaust museums, memorials and seminars,the journey was considered to be the best knowledge source in both anational and universal context. The experience clarified the uniquenessof the Holocaust and the consequences of murderous antiSemitism. Aswell, 71% claimed that the journey contributed to their understanding ofthe universal outcomes of the Holocaust, such as the nature of blindhatred of the other. The journey, as a significant learning experience, provided thestudents with a sense of emotional identity with the Jewish nation and anunderstanding of the importance of the State of Israel for the Jewishpeople. As well, 87% of the students stated that the journey enabledthem to gain a better sense of empathy for the Jewish past. The RAMAsurvey found that upon return from the journey, there was an increase inthe number of students who felt a sense of empowerment. Incomparison, the students who participated in the survey, but had notparticipated in the Journey to Poland, did not show a change in theirfeelings about the Holocaust. The survey also examined arguments against the Journey to Poland: 1)as a way of passing on the memory of the Holocaust to the younggeneration, as opposed to alternative Israelbased programs; 2) theemphasis on the destruction of European Jewry, as opposed to presentingthe former rich Jewish culture there; and 3) the emotional turmoil thatstudents might experience as a result of the journey. These argumentswere not supported by the students’ responses. One argument againstthe journey that was supported by the survey findings was thediscrimination against particular socioeconomic sectors that could notafford the journey. It was found that most of the student population inschools that participated in the journey was from an established socioeconomic background. Furthermore, students that could not participatein their school’s journey because of financial difficulty were alsoexcluded from the preparation process, including visiting museums,

seminars and hearing survivor testimonies. Following this finding, theMinistry of Education in Israel adopted measures to enable all studentsto participate in the journey.

Discussion and implicationsTeaching about the Holocaust in Israel serves as a case of the teachingof historicaltraumatic events. Several key issues were discerned: theneed to include both cognitive and affective components in thelearning process, the difficulty in keeping a balance between nationaland universal historical elements, and the problem of appropriateinstructional modes. Holocaust education in Israel underwent a process of conceptualtransformation leading to changes in modes of instruction. From aneducation lacuna, through a study of historical facts and figures, theeducational process moved to an emphasis on affective goals, such asidentity formation, developing a sense of national belonging, and acommitment to universal, humanistic values. These goals wereconsidered to be better served by extracurricular experiences, such asvisits to museums, or participation in a journey to Holocaust sites. Concrete and emotional experiences in Holocaust education have ledto significant outcomes, providing students with knowledge about thenature of the Holocaust, and influencing their attitudes. Although theJourney to Poland had a shortterm impact on students, it is stillconsidered an "authentic acquaintance" with the Holocaust (Romi &Lev, 2007). It is interesting to note that evaluation studies of the Journey toPoland have showed that the increase in the sense of national identityamong students who participated in the journey was accompanied by adecrease in universal values. This could be because JewishIsraeliadolescents view the Holocaust as a cultural trauma (Lazar, LitvakHirsch & Chaitin, 2008). According to Alexander (2004), culturaltrauma occurs "when members of a collective feel that they have beensubjected to a horrendous event that leaves an indelible mark upontheir group consciousness, marking their memory for ever andchanging their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways" (p.1). Lazar & LitvakHirsch (2009) claim that a cultural trauma could



become a symbolic boundary when the collective cannot relate to theactions of others, both within and outside the collective, in relation to thecultural trauma. On the other hand, Lazar and LitvakHirsch (2009) state that "whenmembers of the collective feel confident in their cultural heritage, theywelcome the actions of outsiders who aim to relate to the collective'scultural trauma, thus eliminating any symbolic boundaries betweenthemselves and outsiders" (p. 189). The impact of emotionalexperiences might be balanced by introducing other traumatic historicalevents, such as the genocide in Rwanda, into the curriculum,demonstrating universal dangers of genocide. Though the Holocaustwas unique in the attempt to annihilate a whole people throughsystematic installations of extermination, genocide is known, as well, inother societies. Questions about human nature and the urge to kill the "other" have tobecome an inherent part of education in our time. Levy and Sznaider(2002) claim that Holocaust memory takes on a universal characteristicwhen the lesson is that "it can happen to anyone, at anytime, andeveryone is responsible" (p. 101). Holocaust education might yield important insights into teachinghistory. Emotional experiences related to national events are powerfulagents in shaping the identity of young people, but might detract fromtheir commitment to universal values, like the strive for peace and theresistance against racism. Educational programs have to consider theserisks and plan appropriate remedies. Emotional experience might come in the form of visits to historicalsites, like the Journey to Poland, but also in the form of mediarepresentations. Mosborg et al. (2007), in their study of students'knowledge about the Vietnam War found that students tended to basetheir knowledge and attitudes on films, rather than on other sources:"…the home became a venue in which parent and child often shared inthe joint experience of the past by turning on the VCR and togetherwitnessing a celluloid version of it" (p. 3). This powerful impact mightlead to misconceptions and limit the understanding of complex events inthe past. Moreover, attempts to help students to "enter" into the past,and to identify with the thoughts and feelings of people who inhabited

this past, are bound to fail. No simulation, or visit to a museum or anhistorical site, can come close to the actual thoughts and feelings ofHolocaust victims, of slaves in the time of Lincoln, or of soldiers in theRoman Empire. Experience and emotion are a powerful part of education, but haveto be embedded in careful studies of documents and in analysis ofhistorical investigations. The pedagogy of teaching history has tostrive for a transformative impact on students, emphasizing historicalunderstanding that is based on critical thinking and multipleperspectives. Moreover, promoting universal and humanistic attitudes,and a personal commitment to moral values, have to be part of thistransformational process. Teaching about the Holocaust demonstrates the strong effect ofexperiential and emotional learning opportunities in teaching history,accompanied by the danger of bypassing cognitive and criticalmechanisms. Cultural trauma might lead to symbolic boundaries,reducing universal implications of local, national historical events. Theprevention of such outcomes requires longterm educational processesthat balance between local/national and universal historical knowledge. Emotional experiences are powerful in engaging students, andraising their attention to the subjects of educational processes, but theirrole in constructing moral behavior is just as important (Damasio andDamasio, 2010). Dewey (1916) viewed experience as creatingmeaningful connections between the individual and the world. That isthe ultimate goal of teaching history.



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Glickman, H., Raz, T., Friman, T, Lipshtat, Goldschmidt, N. &Semach, M. (2011). Evaluation of youth journeys to Poland in2009: Cognitive, value and emotional influences. Tel Aviv:National Authority for Measurement and Evaluation inEducation. (in Hebrew)Lazar, A., Chaitin, J., Gross, T. & BarOn, D. (2004a). Jewish Israeliteenagers, national identity, and the lessons of the Holocaust.Holocaust and Genocide Studies 18(2), 188204.Lazar, A., Chaitin, J., Gross, T. & BarOn, D. (2004b). A journey tothe Holocaust: Modes of understanding among Israeliadolescents who visited Poland. Educational Review 56(1), 1331.Lazar, A. & LitvakHirsch, T. (2009).Cultural trauma as a potentialsymbolic boundary. International Journal of Politics, Cultureand Society 22, 183190.Lazar, A., LitvakHirsch, T. & Chaitin, J. (2008). Between culture andfamily: JewishIsraeli young adults relation to the Holocaust asa cultural trauma. Traumatology 14(3), 110119.Levy, D. & Sznaider, N. (2002). Memory unbound: The Holocaustand the formation of cosmopolitan memory. European Journalof Social Theory 5(1), 87106.LitvakHirsch, T. L & Chaitin, J. (2010). “The Shoah runs through ourveins”: the relevance of the Holocaust for JewishIsraeli youngadults. IDEA 14(1). Retrieved October 10, 2011 from:http://www.mynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L4115863,00.htmlMaslow, A. (1966). The Psychology of Science, The John DeweySociety Lectureship Series. New York: Harper & Row.Moogli, B. (2003). Victims and victors: Holocaust and militarycommemoration in Israel collective memory. Israel Studies8(3), 6599.Mosborg, S., Porat, D., & Wineburg, S. (2001). What can ForrestGump tell us about students' historical understanding? SocialEducation 65(1). Retrieved November 16th from:http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6541/is_1_65/ai_n28824430/?tag=content;col1Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les lieux de memoire.Representations 26, 725.Pestalozzi, Johan Heinrich. (1907). How Gertrude teaches herchildren: An attempt to help mothers to teach their ownchildren. Translated by Lucy E. Holland and Francis C. Turner.4th ed. London: Swan, Sonnenshein & Co.Porat, D. (2004). From the scandal to the Holocaust in IsraelEducation. Journal of Contemporary History 39, 619636.



Resnik, J. (1999). Particularistic vs. universalistic content in the Israelieducation system. Curriculum Inquiry 29(4), 485511.Resnik, J. (2003). ‘Sites of memory’ of the Holocaust: Shapingnational memory in the education system in Israel. Nations andNationalism 9(2), 297317.Rogers, C., & Freiberg, H. J. (1994). Freedom to learn. Third Ed. NewYork: Merrill.Romi, S. & Lev, M. (2007). Experiential learning of history throughyour journeys to Poland: Israeli youth and the Holocaust.Research in Education 78(1), 88102.Schatzker, C. (1982). The Holocaust in Israeli education. InternationalJournal of Political Education 5, 7582.State Comptroller Annual Report 2009 (2010). Teaching the Holocaustand its implications in the Ministry of Education. Jerusalem:Israel. Retrieved October 18th, 2011from:http://www.mevaker.gov.il/serve/contentTree.asp?bookid=568&id=57&contentid=11112&parentcid=undefined&bctype=11105&sw=1249&hw=632State Education (Amendment No. 3) Law, 57401980, no. 47, Laws ofthe State of Israel. Retrieved October 15, 2011 from:http://www.nevo.co.il/Law_word/law14/LAW0967.pdfTask Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education,Remembrance and Research (2005). Country Report onHolocaust Education and Remembrance in Task Force MemberCountries: Israel. Retrieved September 15th, 2011 from:http://www.holocausttaskforce.org/education/holocausteducationreports/israelholocausteducationreport.htmlWineburg, S. (2001). Historical thinking and other unnatural acts:Charting the future of teaching the past. Philadelphia: TempleUniversity Press.Wineburg, S., Mosborg, S. Porat, D. & Duncan, A. (2007). ForrestGump and the future of teaching the past. Phi Delta Kappan89(3), 168177.Zajda, J. & Whitehouse, A. (2009). Teaching history. In L.J. Saha &A.G. Dworkin (Eds.), International Handbook of Research onTeachers and Teaching 21(11) (953965). Netherlands: Springer.Glickman, H., Raz, T., Friman, T, Lipshtat, Goldschmidt, N. &Semach, M. (2011). Evaluation of youth journeys to Poland in2009: Cognitive, value and emotional influences. Tel Aviv:National Authority for Measurement and Evaluation inEducation. (in Hebrew)

Lazar, A., Chaitin, J., Gross, T. & BarOn, D. (2004a). Jewish Israeliteenagers, national identity, and the lessons of the Holocaust.Holocaust and Genocide Studies 18(2), 188204.Lazar, A., Chaitin, J., Gross, T. & BarOn, D. (2004b). A journey tothe Holocaust: Modes of understanding among Israeliadolescents who visited Poland. Educational Review 56(1), 1331.Lazar, A. & LitvakHirsch, T. (2009).Cultural trauma as a potentialsymbolic boundary. International Journal of Politics, Cultureand Society 22, 183190.Lazar, A., LitvakHirsch, T. & Chaitin, J. (2008). Between culture andfamily: JewishIsraeli young adults relation to the Holocaust asa cultural trauma. Traumatology 14(3), 110119.Levy, D. & Sznaider, N. (2002). Memory unbound: The Holocaustand the formation of cosmopolitan memory. European Journalof Social Theory 5(1), 87106.LitvakHirsch, T. L & Chaitin, J. (2010). “The Shoah runs through ourveins”: the relevance of the Holocaust for JewishIsraeli youngadults. IDEA 14(1). Retrieved October 10, 2011 from:http://www.mynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L4115863,00.htmlMaslow, A. (1966). The Psychology of Science, The John DeweySociety Lectureship Series. New York: Harper & Row.Moogli, B. (2003). Victims and victors: Holocaust and militarycommemoration in Israel collective memory. Israel Studies8(3), 6599.Mosborg, S., Porat, D., & Wineburg, S. (2001). What can ForrestGump tell us about students' historical understanding? SocialEducation 65(1). Retrieved November 16th from:http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6541/is_1_65/ai_n28824430/?tag=content;col1Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les lieux de memoire.Representations 26, 725.Pestalozzi, Johan Heinrich. (1907). How Gertrude teaches herchildren: An attempt to help mothers to teach their ownchildren. Translated by Lucy E. Holland and Francis C. Turner.4th ed. London: Swan, Sonnenshein & Co.Porat, D. (2004). From the scandal to the Holocaust in IsraelEducation. Journal of Contemporary History 39, 619636.Resnik, J. (1999). Particularistic vs. universalistic content in the Israelieducation system. Curriculum Inquiry 29(4), 485511.Resnik, J. (2003). ‘Sites of memory’ of the Holocaust: Shapingnational memory in the education system in Israel. Nations andNationalism 9(2), 297317.



Rogers, C., & Freiberg, H. J. (1994). Freedom to learn. Third Ed. NewYork: Merrill.Romi, S. & Lev, M. (2007). Experiential learning of history throughyour journeys to Poland: Israeli youth and the Holocaust.Research in Education 78(1), 88102.Schatzker, C. (1982). The Holocaust in Israeli education. InternationalJournal of Political Education 5, 7582.State Comptroller Annual Report 2009 (2010). Teaching the Holocaustand its implications in the Ministry of Education. Jerusalem:Israel. Retrieved October 18th, 2011 from:http://www.mevaker.gov.il/serve/contentTree.asp?bookid=568&id=57&contentid=11112&parentcid=undefined&bctype=11105&sw=1249&hw=632State Education (Amendment No. 3) Law, 57401980, no. 47, Laws ofthe State of Israel. Retrieved October 15, 2011 from:http://www.nevo.co.il/Law_word/law14/LAW0967.pdfTask Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education,Remembrance and Research (2005). Country Report onHolocaust Education and Remembrance in Task Force MemberCountries: Israel. Retrieved September 15th, 2011 from:http://www.holocausttaskforce.org/education/holocausteducationreports/israelholocausteducationreport.htmlWineburg, S. (2001). Historical thinking and other unnatural acts:Charting the future of teaching the past. Philadelphia: TempleUniversity Press.Wineburg, S., Mosborg, S. Porat, D. & Duncan, A. (2007). ForrestGump and the future of teaching the past. Phi Delta Kappan89(3), 168177.Zajda, J. & Whitehouse, A. (2009). Teaching history. In L.J. Saha &A.G. Dworkin (Eds.), International Handbook of Research onTeachers and Teaching 21(11) (953965). Netherlands:Springer.

Miriam BenPeretz is Professor Emeritus at the Faculty ofEducation at the University of Haifa. In 1997, she was awarded theLifetime Achievement Award by the American EducationalResearch Association (Curriculum Division) for her contribution tocurriculum studies. In 2006 she was awarded the Israel prize forresearch in education. In 2009 she became a member of theNational Academy of Education (NAEd).Madene Shachar is the Israeli coordinator of theMuseum'sIinternational Book Sharing Project and director of theEnglish Speakers Desk of the International Department. She hasbeen an educator for over 28 years both in Israel and the USA,working as a guide, curriculum developer and researcher at theGhetto Fighters' Museum and Yad Layeled Children's MemorialMuseum.Contact Address: Faculty of Education, University of Haifa. Emailaddress: [email protected].



Las Teorías de la Desescolarización; Cuarenta Años de PerspectivaHistóricaJon Igelmo Zaldivar1

1) Universidad de Deusto, SpainDate of publication: February 23rd, 2012

To cite this article: Igelmo, J. (2012). Las teorías de la desescolarización; cuarentaaños de perspectiva histórica. Social and Education History, 1(1), 2857.doi: 10.4471/hse.2012.02

To link this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.4471/hse.2012.02




Jon Igelmo ZaldivarUniversidad de Deusto

AbstractForty years ago a collection of works published by a generation of authorsmarked a turning point for the critic on the educational institutions in theTwenty Century. Amongst these thinkers it is important to mention the namesof Ivan Illich, Paul Goodman, John Holt and Everett Reimer. Since theiremergence, the books written by all these authors were studied under the title ofDeschooling movement. Nevertheless, during the last four decades thesignificance of this generation has had a different relevance. In this article itwill be presented a historical approach about the way in which Deschoolingtheories have been interpreted by the international pedagogy community duringthe last forty years, with the aim of understanding the possibilities of rethinkingthese theories within the context of the firs decade of the Twenty First Century.

Keywords: Familyschool connections, parental involvement, socioeconomicdisparities, Early Childhood Longitudinal Study.


The Deschooling Theories; FortyYears of Historical Perspective


Jon Igelmo ZaldivarUniversidad de Deusto

ResumenHace más de cuarenta años que una generación de autores publicaron unconjunto de trabajos que marcaron un hito para la crítica a las institucioneseducativas en el siglo XX. Entre los pensadores que contribuyeron a esta críticaradical de la educación y sus instituciones destacaron Iván Illich, PaulGoodman, John Holt y Everett Reimer. Desde su aparición, para la comunidadinternacional de la pedagogía los textos firmados por estos autores fueronestudiados bajo el enunciado de la desescolarización. Si bien, durante lasúltimas cuatro décadas el peso que esta generación ha tenido en la pedagogía hasido desigual. En este artículo se presenta una reflexión de carácter históricosobre el modo en que las teorías de la desescolarización han sido recibidas porla pedagogía en los últimos cuarenta años. El objetivo es atisbar lasposibilidades que ofrece su reformulación en el nuevo contexto de la primeradécada del siglo XXI.Palabras clave: Desescolarización, Iván Illich, Paul Goodman, John Holt,Everett Reimer.


Las Teorías de la Desescolarización;Cuarenta Años de PerspectivaHistórica

30 Jon Igelmo The Deschooling Theories

1. IntroducciónSe entiende por corrientes teóricas de la desescolarización1 al conjuntode reflexiones y propuestas pedagógicas presentadas por un grupo deautores que al inicio de los años setenta lanzaron críticas contundentescontra las instituciones escolares con el fin de acabar con su predominioen las sociedades occidentales y frenar su expansión en el resto delmundo. La característica definitoria de esta corriente fue que, lejos dever en las instituciones educativas las instancias que podrían ayudar aconducir el cambio social o la regeneración cultural, detectó en sudesempeño el obstáculo clave para frenar todo cambio social y culturalsignificativo. A pesar de que con demasiada frecuencia diferentesnombres han sido vinculados a este movimiento pedagógico, es posibledestacar cuatro autores principales que compartieron esteposicionamiento respecto a la escuela al inicio de los años setenta, y querepresentan los lineamientos teóricos propios de la críticadesescolarizadora: Iván Illich, Everett Reimer, Paul Goodman y JohnHolt.

Aunque las críticas a las instituciones educativas han existido desdeque se pusieran los cimientos de la primera escuela estructurada segúnla tradición moderna –con sus principios, ideales, objetivos y fines–, ladesescolarización como corriente crítica de pensamiento pedagógicoposee un conjunto de características que permiten precisar su acotaciónhistórica y teórica. Así, desde una perspectiva histórica, es precisocomenzar señalando que el propio término de la desescolarización es unneologismo que aparece por primera vez en el libro escrito por IllichDeschooling Society; libro que fue desacertadamente traducido alcastellano como La sociedad desescolarizada –si bien, la idea de usaresta palabra para dar título al trabajo de Illich fue, al parecer, de CassCanfield, presidente de la casa editorial Harper de Nueva Yorkresponsable de la primera edición del texto en 1971 (Illich, 2008, p.558)–. En segundo lugar, la generación de autores que trabajaron en estacorriente de pensamiento tuvieron la ciudad de Cuernavaca, y enconcreto el Centro Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC) dirigidopor Valentina Borremans y coordinado por el propio Illich entre 1963 y1976, como espacio de referencia para la discusión, la reflexión y el


intercambio de ideas. Finalmente, un tercer elemento clave para definirla desescolarización es que como corriente pedagógica pretendióarticular una respuesta radical a un contexto determinado como lo fue elde principios de los años setenta. Contexto marcado por un conjunto deacontecimientos históricos entre los que destacan la clausura delConcilio del Vaticano II, el movimiento de la contracultura en losEstados Unidos, las revueltas estudiantiles de 1968, la Guerra deVietnam, los avances tecnológicos consecuencia de la carrera espacialprotagonizada por las dos grandes potencias mundiales, la UniónSoviética y los Estados Unidos, y la Guerra del Yom Kipur y laconsecuente crisis energética de 1973.

Por su parte, a nivel teórico, los pensadores de la desescolarizacióncompartieron un posicionamiento crítico que les llevó a estudiar lasinstituciones educativas como los espacios más nocivos, absurdos,insidiosos, contradictorios y decadentes de cuantos el ser humanomoderno había levantado en los últimos siglos. Desde una perspectivade estudio fenomenológica no escatimaron en calificativos para definirla labor de destrucción cultural que las escuelas como institucioneseducativas desempeñaban. Asimismo, consideraron que más allá de sucontribución al empobrecimiento de la cultura en occidente, el peligroestaba en que amenazaban con expandir su influencia por el mundoentero a la sombra de los grandes planes de desarrollo promovido porlas potencias económicas del momento y su retaguardia de instanciasinternacionales afines a la causa, esto es: Banco Mundial, Iglesiacatólica, Fondo Monetario Internacional, UNESCO o la Alianza para elProgreso. Asimismo, para estos autores, la sociedad meritocrática quepropiciaban, la ignorancia moderna que estimulaban, la incapacidadpsicológica para resolver los propios problemas más allá de las recetasinstitucionales que fomentaban entre los individuos o la tendencia apensar que el conocimiento y el aprendizaje podía ser medido,planificado y evaluado bajo estándares uniformes que promovían,hacían de las escuelas un objeto de crítica primordial para todo cambiopolítico, económico, social y cultural a nivel mundial.

Con todo, transcurridos cuarenta años de la articulación teórica de lacorriente pedagógica de la desescolarización; o lo que es lo mismo, de laaparición en la historia de la educación del concepto de la

desescolarización en el libro Deschooling Society, en este trabajo sepresenta un ejercicio histórico donde no sólo se ubica el contexto en elque las teorías de la desescolarización alcanzaron su apogeo, sino que,además, se da seguimiento al modo en que estos pensadores de lasinstituciones escolares han sido integrados por la comunidadinternacional de la pedagogía en las décadas posteriores, así como elimpacto que sus principales trabajos poseen en algunas prácticaspedagógicas en el siglo XXI. De igual manera, se hace mención a lacontinuidad que esta generación de autores dio a su crítica en lasdécadas posteriores a la publicación de sus más afamados trabajos. Puesresulta que algo poco conocido por quienes se han interesado por estacorriente de la pedagogía del siglo XX es que, mientras que pensadorescomo Goodman y Reimer apenas publicaron más trabajos posteriores asus afamados libros de los años sesenta y setenta, Holt continuóelaborando nuevos argumentos críticos contra las institucionesescolares que son la base actualmente de movimientos como elhomeschooling o unschooling, o que Illich, en sus trabajos publicadosen los años ochenta y noventa, marcó una distancia significativa con ladesescolarización y la crítica a las escuelas.2. Cuernavaca: epicentro geográfico de la desescolarización en los

años setenta.No es posible articular una mínima aproximación a las teorías de ladesescolarización sin hacer mención a la ciudad de Cuernavaca. Y esque fue en esta localidad mexicana, ubicada a poco más de 50kilómetros de la Ciudad de México, donde inició sus actividades elCentro Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC); centro depensamiento clave para el pensamiento crítico de las institucionesmodernas de la segunda mitad del siglo XX (Igelmo Zaldívar, 2009).Así, en 1963, bajo la dirección de Valentina Borremans y lacoordinación académica de Illich, se constituyó un espacio sui géneriscuyo objetivo era documentar las transformaciones que en el campo dela cultura, la política, la religión, la tecnología o la educación estabanaconteciendo en los años sesenta en la región de América Latina2.

Ya en 1966, tras una reestructuración de las actividades que se


estaban llevando a cabo en Cuernavaca, el CIDOC trasladó susinstalaciones a un antiguo caserón ubicado en una colina a las afuerasde la ciudad. Este cambio de instalaciones propició la desvinculacióndel centro respecto a la formación de misioneros católicos que habíaservido de base para la financiación económica del proyecto, lo quehizo posible que las actividades que a partir de entonces sedesarrollaron estuvieran dedicadas a la discusión y estudio del impactoque las nuevas políticas desarrollistas y modernizadoras estabanocasionando en distintas regiones del mundo y en especial enLatinoamérica. Además, a finales de este mismo año Illich entró enconflicto con las autoridades del Vaticano (CIDOC, 1969), lo queresultó clave para que la temática de estudio del centro se alejaradefinitivamente de cuestiones religiosas y buscara en institucionesmodernas como las escuelas, los medios de transportes y los hospitalessu espectro apofático para la crítica (Hoinacki, 2003, p. 383).

Con todo, al inicio de los años setenta el CIDOC se había convertidoen un espacio de referencia internacional donde llegaban a estudiar,investigar y dialogar intelectuales y políticos de vanguardia de todo elmundo (Sicilia y Robert, 2001). El estudio crítico de las institucionesmodernas era el punto de partida en los análisis y reflexiones que seproyectaron desde Cuernavaca. Amplios sectores de los movimientossociales contestatarios de América Latina participaron de susactividades y desde el centro se abrían puentes hacia intelectuales delos sectores contrahegemónicos y contraculturales emergentes queestaban convirtiendo la región latinoamericana en uno de loslaboratorios políticos más sobresalientes del panorama internacional.En el CIDOC se llegaron a pensar en auténticas alternativas aldesarrollo y al progreso institucional. Se plantearon y debatieronopciones radicales en la medida que se creía inevitable la inversión delas tendencias dominantes (Sbert, 2009, p. 8384). La lista deintelectuales que participaron en sus actividades fue destacada: ErichFromm, André Gorz, Peter Berger, Michael Maccoby, John Womack,Enrique Dussel, JeanPierre Dupuy, Susan Sontang, Gabriel Zaid oRamón Xirau. El CIDOC era un lugar para el encuentro de personasque querían aprender. No había curriculum, ni grados, ni certificados ocréditos. Para quienes aprendían y enseñaban no se imponía ningún


requisito académico; estudiantes y maestros llegaban a esta comunidadde pensamiento de todas las partes del mundo. Los diálogos en lasdiferentes sesiones de trabajo transcurrían en inglés, español, francés,alemán y portugués. El español hablado, además, era enseñado comouna herramienta. Para quienes aún se mostraban sedientos de nuevasideas tras las grandes movilizaciones de los años sesenta, el CIDOCterminó por mostrarse como un oasis, a veces mitificado desde ciertossectores frustrados de la izquierda, que se resistía a ser absorbido porsu propia idiosincrasia y carácter por intereses políticos einstitucionales. Mientras, para otros, el centro de Cuernavaca nosignificaba otra cosa que un espacio de encuentro de exóticospensadores norteamericanos. Desde esta perspectiva el CIDOC era unaespecie de universidad privada donde se discutían los problemas queafectaban al Tercer Mundo; una isla de pensamiento donde un grupoelitista de intelectuales frivolizaban con una selección de temáticastransgresoras (Hannoun, 1976, p. 211).

En 1967, en las instalaciones del CIDOC y por iniciativa de EverettReimer, comenzó a organizarse un seminario periódico que pretendíaabordar cuestiones referentes a las instituciones educativas. Enconcreto la atención se centró en la problemática que se derivaba de lacreciente expansión de la escolarización obligatoria dentro delparadigma desarrollista imperante; el nombre elegido para esteseminario fue Alternatives in Education (Reimer, 1969). En los dosprimeros años quienes participaron de las sesiones fueron un reducidogrupo de intelectuales. Ya a partir de 1970 los seminarios impartidosen Cuernavaca alcanzaron una fama notable entre quienes estabanplanteando críticas contundentes contra los sistemas educativosescolares en diferentes partes del mundo. La principal prueba delinterés que despertó esta línea de crítica abierta en relación a lasinstituciones educativas en Cuernavaca fue el hecho de que toda unageneración de representantes de la pedagogía crítica radicalnorteamericana participó activamente de las actividades del CIDOC.Precisamente cuando en Estados Unidos se estaba constituyendo unfrente de crítica en relacion con el desempeño de las institucioneseducativas, los más importantes representantes de estas corrientespedagógicas, es el caso de Paul Goodman y John Holt, se sumaron aldebate abierto en Cuernavaca e hicieron acto de presencia en el


seminario del CIDOC Alternatives in Education. Los libros publicadospor Goodman en la década se los años sesenta titulados Growing upabsurd (1960) y Compulsory Miseducation (1966), abrieron la puertaa un debate que alcanzaría su apogeo al inicio de los setenta con lapublicación en 1971 de La escuela ha muerto de Reimer, La sociedaddesescolarizada de Illich y, un años después, de Libertad y algo más¿hacia la desescolarización de la sociedad? de Holt.

No obstante, trascurridos diez años desde su apertura, el CIDOCcerró sus instalaciones mediante un plan bien medido por el equipodirectivo del centro. De hecho, ya en 1973 la decisión de cerrar elcentro estaba tomada. Por parte de quienes coordinaban sus actividadesy sus más estrechos colaboradores se había llegado a la conclusión deque todo aquello que se había deseado hacer en 1966 ya estaba hecho.Además, en los últimos tiempos, alrededor del centro se había creadouna imagen equivocada sobre las actividades que se organizaban ensus instalaciones, y era esta imagen la que ponía en riesgo que elCIDOC terminara institucionalizándose y convirtiéndose en un centrouniversitario al uso donde el nivel de independencia alcanzado seríaamenazado significativamente. Lo que llevó al cierre definitivo delcentro en abril de 1976 (Cayley, 1992, p. 202).

3. Del interés en los años setenta al ostracismo en el ámbitoacadémico en los ochenta y noventa.

Fue en la década de los años setenta cuando la comunidad académicainternacional de la pedagogía centró su interés en las teorías de ladesescolarización lanzadas desde Cuernavaca. Numerosos críticosanalizaron sus más afamados postulados en revistas académicas,prensa, semanarios, folletines divulgativos y libros que fueronpublicados en diferentes países del mundo. En Europa y EstadosUnidos algunas de las revistas más prestigiosas publicaron reseñas,estudios y monográficos a las tesis sostenidas por esta generación decríticos de la escuela. No debe extrañar, por tanto, que en este tiempolos nombres de Holt, Goodman, Illich y Reimer fueran citados coninsistencia y la lectura de sus libros fuese requerida en las principalesuniversidades del mundo. Podría decirse, en función de este notable

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impacto, que los teóricos de la desescolarización cumplieron enprimera instancia con el objetivo de provocar un debate en el corazónde las sociedades desarrolladas en relación con el rol quedesempeñaban las instituciones educativas en las regiones que mejorrepresentaban la modernidad industrial. Con todo, en estos primerosacercamientos a las teorías de la desescolarización, quedó patente elmodo en que más que un análisis del fundamento teórico y del métodode aproximación para el estudio que daba sustento a la crítica a lasinstituciones escolares, desde el mundo académico se optó por tomarpartida en un debate relacionado con el sentido último de la escuela enlas sociedades modernas. Entre los textos más representativos de estadiscusión generada, pueden destacarse los publicados en la revistasSaturday Review, Social Policy y Perspectivas.

Así, uno de los primeros artículos críticos con los planteamientosexpuestos por los teóricos de la desescolarización fue el presentado porColin Greer (1973) en el número de octubre de 1971 de la revistaSaturday Review con el título “All Schooled Up”. En este texto elcuestionamiento de las instituciones educativas trabajado por el grupode pensadores asentados en Cuernavaca fue calificada como un intentode crítica que había derivado en un planteamiento anarquista queapostaba por la supresión del estado moderno. Según Green el cambioinstitucional que se estaba proponiendo era más una visión utópica deun futuro incierto que un estudio riguroso de cómo era posible afrontarese cambio al inicio de los años setenta. Y es que más que plantear unconjunto de pasos lógicos y bien fundamentados que condujeran aldesmantelamiento de las instituciones educativas, lo que se estabaproponiendo era la ruptura radical e inmediata con un andamiajeinstitucional que había tardado siglos en asentarse en occidente.

Por su parte, en los primeros meses de 1972 en la revista SocialPolicy fueron publicados diferentes artículos en los que se hacía alusióna las tesis planteadas por Illich, Holt, Goodman y Reimer. Un total desiete textos conformaron este monográfico dedicado a las teorías de ladesescolarización, lo que convierte a este número en una excelentemuestra del espectro de simpatías y rechazos que causó la crítica a lasinstituciones educativas en la comunidad académica estadounidense3.

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Pues fueron en su mayoría profesores vinculados a universidadesnorteamericanas los que mostraron su posición en relación con losprincipales postulados de la desescolarización. No pocos, de hecho,consideraron que esta crítica era un golpe dirigido a quienes se habíanconsiderado parte de la solución del los males del mundo y nuncacomo el centro del problema. Aunque se compartía la visión de queesta corriente pedagógica acertaba en la novedosa crítica contra laescuela, en su mayoría los autores de los artículos aparecidos en estenúmero no dejaron escapar la ocasión para realizar sentidos alegatos endefensa de las instituciones escolares.

Asimismo, los artículos publicados en la revista Perspectivas de laUNESCO por Ricardo Nassif y Arthur Petrovsky son una buenamuestra de las reacciones suscitadas por las teorías de ladesescolarización en los años setenta. Baste mencionar que el textopublicado en 1975 por Nassif fue uno de los primeros elaborados porun académico de América Latina en respuesta a las teorías de ladesescolarización. En su artículo titulado “La teoría de la«desescolarización» entre la paradoja y la utopía”, este catedrático depedagogía en la Universidad Nacional de La Plata reconocía que elacercamiento a la obra de estos autores le había resultado complicadoen la medida que los textos estaban plagado de razonamientosabsurdos, asperezas y trampas (Nassif, 1975, p. 336). Si bien, esteandamiaje lleno de incoherencias con el que se había articulado lapropuesta desescolarizante, para Nassif, era inherente a la propiadoctrina de la desescolarización que en sí misma era absurda y, endefinitiva, también una trampa. Por su parte, Petrovsky en el artículotitulado “¿Qué hay tras la desescolarización?” calificaba los trabajos delos teóricos de la desescolarización como los propios de un grupo depersonas movidos por el radicalismo, que partían de una propuestapoco original y en los que quedaba patente una tendencia clara alrelativismo pedagógico propio de los ignorantes. Y es que en estosestudios, según Petrovsky, se pasaban por alto los importantes logrosalcanzados por las escuelas en distintas regiones del mundo. Tanto esasí, que según este prestigioso académico ruso, sólo quien desconocíalos avances que el floreciente sistema público soviético de educaciónestaba efectuando en las últimas décadas, podía construir argumentos

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en contra de los sistemas escolares (Petrovsky, 1976, p. 70). Por el contrario, entre quienes se desmarcaron de esta tendencia dedefender la escuela y los sistemas educativos por medio del descréditode esta generación de autores críticos con las escuelas modernas, cabedestacar las aproximaciones realizadas por Herbert Gintis (1972a;1972b) en su intento por analizar desde una perspectiva materialistalos postulados de la desescolarización; Ian Lister (1974) y su afán poranalizar los pilares teóricos compartidos por los teóricos de ladesescolarización que eran la base de la crítica contra las institucionesescolares y los sistemas educativos modernos; o el trabajo de JohnOhlinger y Collin Maccarthy (1971) que se basó en un análisisdetallado de la novedosa metodología analítica propuesta por Illich ysus colegas de Cuernavaca. Asimismo, todavía en los años setentaaparecieron las primeras tesis doctorales que abordaron esta corrientede la pedagogía. Siendo significativo mencionar que principalmenteestos trabajos fueron defendidos en universidades norteamericanas4.

En el caso del contexto académico español, fue la revista Cuadernosde Pedagogía la que desde sus primeros números introdujo en Españael debate en trono a la crítica a las instituciones educativas planteadopor las teorías de la desescolarización. Así, el artículo publicado porEstanislao Pastor y José María Román en 1975 puede ser consideradocomo el primer texto que hizo referencia en el contexto español de lapedagogía a las nuevas corrientes críticas de estudio de las escuelasque estaban desarrollando en los años setenta. El texto apareció en elnúmero 5 de la revista con el título “El movimiento de la ‘educaciónliberadora’”. Para Pastor y Román pensadores como Reimer,Goodman o Illich representaban un nuevo enfoque crítico que desdeuna perspectiva histórica podía estudiarse en analogía con elmovimiento de la educación nueva que había revolucionado elpanorama pedagógico en las primeras décadas del siglo XX. Laactividad crítica que se estaba llevando a cabo en el CIDOC deCuernavaca, según quedó expuesto en este artículo, podía sercomparada, asimismo, con la se había desarrollado a partir de 1912 enel Instituto JeanJacques Rousseau de Ginebra, donde trabajaronautores como Ernst Scheneider, Jean Piaget y Hélène Antipoff (Pastory Roman, 1975). Apenas unos meses después la misma revista


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dedicaría un monográfico al análisis del pensamiento de quien entoncesera una de las voces más destacadas de la crítica en relación a lasinstituciones educativas a nivel mundial. Pues sucedió que Illich visitóen 1975 la redacción de la revista en Barcelona. Y el resultado de estavisita fue la entrevista publicada en el número monográfico de julio yagosto de ese mismo año titulado “Dossier Freire/Illich”. En estemonográfico, además de la interesante entrevista a Illich, se publicó untexto firmado por Rosika Darcy de Oliveira y Pierre Dominice (1975)titulado “IllichFreire: pedagogía de los oprimidos. Opresión de lapedagogía”.

Si bien, en apenas una década la presencia destacada de las teorías dela desescolarización en el debate pedagógico cayó en el olvido. Lacomunidad internacional de la pedagogía en los años ochenta y noventapuso su mirada en otros autores y otras fuentes comenzaron a ganarprotagonismo entre quienes continuaron una línea crítica deinvestigación de las instituciones educativas. En un nuevo contexto enel que las políticas económicas detectaron en la educación un servicioinmaterial en el que invertir grandes cantidades de dinero sin ocasionardaño alguno al medio ambiente (Meadows, 1972, p. 219), la críticalanzada a las instituciones educativas modernas fue borrada del mapa.El giro conservador que las potencias económicas realizaron al iniciode los ochenta –como principales hitos del giro conservador de estetiempo pueden destacarse las presidencias de Ronald Reagan en losEstados Unidos, Margaret Tatcher en Gran Bretaña o la elección deKarol Wojtyla como papa de la Iglesia católica– fue también unelemento clave que explica el escaso impacto de las teorías de ladesescolarización una vez finalizada la década de los setenta. Enconsecuencia, a partir de los años ochenta, se comenzó a calificar a losautores más representativos de la desescolarización de intelectualescontrarios al progreso y el bienestar occidental; se les etiquetó comomísticos de una pedagogía ancestral imposible, conspiradores de lomoderno, bohemios rencorosos o incomprendidos resentidos por lacapacidad innata de las sociedades capitalistas de reinventarseconstantemente a partir de cada periodo de crisis. Sus postuladosfueron interesadamente sintetizados y esquematizados para terminarocupando un lugar reducido y fijo en los manuales para la formación de


futuros maestros o en las estanterías de libros de quienes por un tiempovieron al inicio de los años setenta una oportunidad para abordar deraíz los principales problemas del mundo moderno. No obstante, para entender la repentina desaparición de Illich, Holt,Goodman o Reimer del panorama académico internacional de lapedagogía, es imprescindible tener presente todavía una cuestión más;pues resulta que en buena medida fueron estos autores los que deforma intencional marcaron una distancia significativa del debate quesus trabajos habían generado. Así, si bien es cierto que Goodmanfalleció en 1972 y apenas tuvo tiempo de dar seguimiento al debateque justo entonces comenzaba a germinar en el seno de la pedagogía,otro autor como Holt centró sus esfuerzos hasta su muerte en 1985 aorganizar una gran red internacional que agrupara y diera apoyo a lasfamilias que habían tomado la decisión de no enviar a sus hijos a laescuela. En este sentido, la crítica de Holt a las instituciones educativasdio paso a un conjunto de estudios en los que apostó por una línea detrabajo más propositiva que sería la base, a su vez, de movimientospedagógicos como el homeschooling o el unschooling. El problemafue que esta nueva vertiente de trabajo en la trayectoria de Holt noresultó de interés entonces para la investigación impulsada por lasgrandes universidades al servicio de los sistemas escolares imperantes. Por su parte, Reimer, que falleció en 1988, no publicó ningúntrabajo con posterioridad a La escuela ha muerto, y tampoco mostróinterés alguno por el impacto que su obra generó en la pedagogía, laeducación y sus instituciones. Caso contrario al de su amigo Illich, yaque éste posiblemente fue de todos los teóricos de la desescolarizaciónel que tras la publicación de su trabajos más afamado, La sociedaddesescolarizada en 1971, más empeño puso en dejar a un ladoexplícitamente sus trabajos críticos con la escuela para abordar otrosfrentes de crítica a la modernidad, tal fue el caso de su libro de 1973dedicado al estudio de los medios de transporte, Energía y Equidad, ysu trabajo crítico con los hospitales y la medicina moderna publicadoen 1975, Némesis Médica. Además, a partir de los años ochenta Illichdio preferencia a la búsqueda de nuevas perspectivas de crítica de lascertezas modernas a partir de lo que las instituciones modernas decíande los seres humanos, y no tanto en relación con el impacto que estasinstituciones tenían sobre los individuos, la sociedad y la cultura. Entre


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los libros publicados por Illich en este tiempo cabe destacar: El trabajofantasma, El género vernáculo, ABC: The alphabetization of thePopular Mind, y ya en los años noventa, En el espejo del pasado y Enel viñedo del texto. No obstante, en estos trabajos es posible encontraraclaraciones, matizaciones o rectificaciones sobre algunas de las tesisque tiempo atrás había presentado en su análisis crítico de lasinstituciones educativas. Tanto es así que en una conferencia de laAmerican Education Research Association a la que fue invitado en1986, terminó por rectificar el punto de partida de La sociedaddesescolarizada al definir la educación como aprendizaje bajo laaceptación de la escasez (2008a, p. 555). La educación, desde estaperspectiva, es un género de aprendizaje bajo la aceptación de que losmedios para la adquisición de algo llamado conocimiento son escasos.Y es que no es posible tener una idea de educación sin la creencia ocerteza de que el conocimiento se puede empaquetar, definir, medir oincluso valorar si puede ser apropiado o no. Por eso Illich no dudó enmostrar su preocupación por el marco o espacio mental dentro del cualtoma forma la propia construcción de la noción de educación. Cuestióna la que dedicaría alguno de sus últimos trabajos hasta su muerte en2002.

4. La desescolarización en el siglo XXI.El debate en torno a las teorías de la desescolarización ha encontradonuevos enfoques y perspectivas en el inicio del siglo XXI. Aunquedurante los años ochenta y noventa, como se ha tenido tiempo deseñalar en este artículo, desde las más importantes publicacionesacadémicas del campo de la pedagogía prácticamente cualquierreferencia a los trabajos publicados por esta generación de autoresfueron omitidos sistemáticamente, en diferentes partes del mundo, en laúltima década, se han realizado interesantes acercamientos a suspostulados. Tanto es así que el debate propuesto por las teorías de ladesescolarización desde Cuernavaca, y especialmente por Illich, pareceque, después de cuatro décadas desde la comercialización de Lasociedad desescolarizada, ha encontrado sustento entre algunos autoresafincados en México. Resulta que quienes fueran amigos personales deIllich en México, es el caso José María Sbert5, Javier Sicilia6, Braulio


Hornedo7 y Gustavo Esteva8, se presentan en la actualidad como losmás importantes intelectuales de América Latina que en los últimoaños han elaborado algunas de las interpretaciones más destacadas deesta corriente de pensamiento para el campo de estudio de lasinstituciones educativas. En este sentido, la revista mexicana Ixtuseditada a finales de los años noventa bien puede ser considerada comoun importante punto de encuentro para esta generación de pensadores.De hecho, el número 28 editado en 2000 fue un monográfico tituladoIván Illich la arqueología de las certidumbres. Tras la desaparición deIxtus en 2007, ha sido la revista Conspiratio bajo la dirección de JavierSicilia, la que ha recogido el testigo de su publicación predecesora.Iván Illich la arqueología de las certidumbres. Tras la desaparición deIxtus en 2007, ha sido la revista Conspiratio bajo la dirección de JavierSicilia, la que ha recogido el testigo de su publicación predecesora.

En Estados Unidos, por su parte, es importante destacar que nuevosparadigmas pedagógicos están realizando aproximacionessignificativas al pensamiento de las teorías de la desescolarización. Unejemplo a tener en cuenta es la corriente de la ecopedagogía, corrientepedagógica que, si bien encuentra su primer desarrollo en una esferateórica próxima a la pedagogía crítica, en los últimos años, y enespecial después de la crisis económica internacional desatada enoctubre de 2008, viene operando un giro teórico más próximo a losplanteamientos defendidos por algunos de los autores afincados enCuernavaca al inicio de los años setenta. Este nuevo enfoque haquedado desarrollado en libros como el recientemente publicado en2010 por Richard Kahn titulado Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy &Platenary Crisis. The Ecopedagogy Movement. Algo interesante queplantea Kahn en su trabajo es la escasa influencia que las tesis de ladesescolarización han tenido entre quienes en las décadas de los añosochenta y noventa desarrollaron, a partir de estudio minucioso delpensamiento de Paulo Freire, la corrientes que hoy se conocen como lapedagogía crítica. Y lo que este autor propone es retomar los trabajosde esta corriente crítica de las instituciones educativas mediante laconstrucción de una relación dialéctica con los planteamientosinspirados en la obra de Freire que han venido siendo discutidos porlos sectores más críticos de la pedagogía norteamericana.

Con todo, más allá de las corrientes teóricas que desde una

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perspectiva académica están dimensionando las posibilidades queofrece la corriente pedagógica de la desescolarización, conviene tenerpresente tres movimientos o alternativas que en la actualidad estánrepensado los planteamientos críticos con la escuela expuestos porautores como Illich, Reimer, Holt o Goodman. Estos son: elhomeschooling o unschooling, la web 2.0 y la alternativa de carácterindigenista al capitalismo neoliberal.

Así, es importante recordar que si algún autor puede ser consideradocomo ideólogo de referencia y fundador del homeschooling en losEstados Unidos, ese es John Holt. De hecho, la revista GrowingWithout School, fundada por este autor 1977, es un punto de referenciahistórico obligado para las familias que en las últimas décadas handecidido no enviar a su hijos a la escuela. No obstante, aunque la raícespedagógicas del homeschooling pueden remontarse hasta finales de losaños setenta, no es hasta los años noventa que, ya como movimientoorganizado, experimentó un proceso de expansión en dos planos: elgeográfico y el referente al debate pedagógico abierto en su interior. Encuanto al plano geográfico cabe destacar que la práctica delhomeschooling es, entrado el siglo XXI, una opción pedagógica que nosólo tiene presencia en casi todos los países de occidente, sino quecuenta con millones de familias que han optado por esta opciónpedagógica para la educación de sus hijos . Por su parte, en cuanto aldebate pedagógico que se ha abierto a partir de los años noventa, sedebe señalar que un frente destacado lo configuran quienes en la últimadécada han reubicado su posición crítica respecto a la dirección quevenían tomando el propio movimiento del homeschooling y han dadoinicio a lo que se conoce como unschooling.

Y es que, según revindican en algunas de las publicaciones quevienen lanzando quienes participan de este movimiento, el unschoolingse diferencia del homeschooling en que no se conforma con sacar a losniños de la escuela, sino que, yendo un paso más allá, intenta rompercon los procesos educativos planificados propios de las institucionesescolares. Quienes participan de esta corriente rechazan organizar elaprendizaje por edades, seguir currículos diseñados de antemano,utilizar libros de texto o depender de maestros profesionales. Se alejan,en última instancia, de la tendencia que diferentes sectores del


homeschooling han mostrado en los últimos años de convertir la casaen un aula escolar. De ahí que, desde el unschooling se busque elaprendizaje dentro de una práctica pedagógica que centra su acción enpermitir que los niños aprendan a partir de sus propias experienciasnaturales de vida. Desde esta perspectiva, quienes toman parte de estemovimiento, creen que la escuela no sólo interrumpe el libreaprendizaje de los niños en las distintas materias de conocimiento quese imparten dentro de sus muros, sino que también rompe la relaciónque los niños establecen con la comunidad, su espontaneidad o laexperiencia con el mundo real. Y lo interesante es, además, que desdeesta corriente se han realizado nuevas lecturas, específicamente, de laobra de Holt e incluso de Illich10. En segundo lugar, entre quienes están intentando investigar losnuevos paradigmas pedagógicos abiertos a la sombra de lastecnologías de la comunicación y la información, y en especial comoconsecuencia del desarrollo y expansión de las herramientas de laversión 2.0 de la red de Internet, se están realizado acercamientos decierto interés a los planteamientos expuestos por los autores de ladesescolarización. Resulta que esta revolución tecnología ha puestosobre la mesa un debate en torno al modo en que el fenómenotecnológico de las redes sociales abre nuevos paradigmas para lapedagogía, la educación y el aprendizaje11. Lo que ha llevado a que nosean pocos los autores que estén encontrando en las teorías críticas conlas instituciones educativas modernas un referente desde el cualinterpretar las posibilidades pedagógicas que ofrece el nuevofenómeno tecnológico12. Y es que al leer en el inicio del siglo XXIalgunos de los trabajos publicados desde Cuernavaca en los añossetenta, resulta sorprendente el modo en que las tesis planteadasentonces encajan en este nuevo contexto de cambio de paradigmaspara el aprendizaje y sus instituciones.

En tercer lugar, la alternativa de carácter indigenista al capitalismoneoliberal puede ser concebida como otra de las prácticas en las quelas teorías de la desescolarización están siendo estudiadas yalcanzando, también, un peso significativo. La Universidad de laTierra, en este sentido, es una iniciativa que desde su fundación enMéxico toma como referencia explícita para la acción el pensamiento


45

de algunos pensadores de la desescolarización (Igelmo Zaldívar,2009). De hecho, este es un proyecto que parte de la base de que elestudio es el ejercicio ocioso de la gente libre; o mejor dicho, en susactividades no se concibe el estudio como el medio que permite escalaren la pirámide meritocrática de los ciclos formativos, cursosacadémicos, certificados de asistencia y títulos compulsados. En susinstalaciones, como principio, se aprende sin la necesidad deprofesores, currículo, alumnos, libros de textos o títulos. Cualquierintento por controlar el trabajo de quien está interesado en aprender esinmediatamente suprimido y los procesos de aprendizaje parten entodo momento del interés del sujeto en cuestión. En contacto directocon las comunidades indígenas de la región y con algunos de los másdestacados movimientos indigenistas anticapitalistas –tal es el caso delEjército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), cuyos lazos deproximidad con este proyecto son conocidos –, la Universidad de laTierra posee dos sedes en el sureste de México: en la ciudad de Oaxacay en San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas.

5. Conclusiones.Habiendo transcurrido más de cuarenta años desde la aparición de lasteorías de la desescolarización, los textos que fueran publicados en losaños sesenta y setenta por autores como Illich, Holt, Reimer yGoodman, lejos de alejarse del debate pedagógico, parecen recobrarcierto protagonismo entre quienes piensan la educación y susinstituciones en el siglo XXI. En un contexto de crisis profunda delsistema capitalista y del modelo de desarrollo y progreso que hadominado las relaciones culturales, políticas, económicas, sociales yeducativas desde mediados del siglo XX, y en un tiempo en el que lasnuevas tecnologías de la información y la comunicación estántransformando los pilares de la pedagogía moderna, pareciera que hallegado el momento de repensar los límites y las posibilidades decambio que ofrece un sistema agotado, deprimido y en evidentedecadencia. De ahí que una reconsideración de carácter histórico delimpacto que el pensamiento teórico desarrollado por esta generaciónde pensadores ha tenido en las últimas cuatro décadas sea preciso en laactualidad.


No obstante, por lo general, las tímidas aproximaciones que se estánrealizando a las teorías de la desescolarización tiene más que ver conun estudio de las posibilidades de aplicación que presentan lasalternativas a las instituciones educativas planteadas por esta corrientepedagógica, que con un intento por conocer históricamente lascircunstancias que explican el desigual impacto que las teorías de ladesescolarización han tenido en las últimas décadas. Situación que confrecuencia ha derivado en aproximaciones teóricas que han terminadopor desvirtuar y tergiversar el potencial de estudio que esconde sulectura detenida. Y es que una aproximación a los trabajos publicadospor estos críticos de las instituciones educativas que pretendaaprovechar el potencial teórico de estos trabajos, no debería plantearsecomo una búsqueda de recetas o alternativas inmediatas queconduzcan a cambios sustanciales o que estructuren hojas de ruta parauna transformación inminente de los sistemas educativos. Entendidasasí, de hecho, las teorías de la desescolarización pierden su fuerzan ysu posible golpe de efecto queda reducido a un brindis al sol carente debase teórica. No en vano, el conjunto de alternativas planteadas porestos autores lejos de mostrar espacios por explorar en la actualidadpor la pedagogía, son el testimonio del espectro de pensamientoabierto en la segunda mitad del siglo XX que respondía a unascircunstancias concretas. De ahí que una aproximación a lasalternativas propuestas por los críticos de la escuela afincados enCuernavaca tenga más sentido para el historiador de la educacióninteresado en cómo se pensaban los sistemas educativos en los añossetenta, que para el teórico preocupado en dibujar nuevos escenariosposibles para la educación y la pedagogía.

Por lo tanto, si de lo que se trata es de analizar en qué aspecto lasteorías de la desescolarización pueden ser de interés una veztranscurridos más de cuarenta años de su aparición en el escenario delpensamiento y la pedagogía internacional, dos son las respuestasposibles: para el estudio de las tendencias teóricas predominantes en eldebate internacional de la pedagogía en la segunda mitad del siglo XXy para el análisis del grado en que estas teorías pueden inspirar nuevasformas de pensamiento crítico.

Así, un acercamiento detenido del impacto de las teorías de ladesescolarización desde su aparición en los años setenta, bien puede


47

ser presentado como la fabricación de una herramienta teórica quefunciona a modo de espejo en el que la práctica totalidad de las teoríaspedagógicas construidas en los últimos cuarenta años pueden versereflejadas. Esta es una de las principales consecuencias, sin duda, quese desprende del hecho de haber explorado los límites del pensamientoen un campo conservador por definición, como lo es el de la educación.De forma que las simpatías generadas, las distancias contrastadas o laomisión deliberada respecto a los planteamientos lanzados por estosautores, permiten ubicar dentro del espectro del pensamiento educativoa la mayoría de reformulaciones teóricas construidas desde que ladesescolarización hiciera acto de presencia en el pensamientopedagógico.

Resulta de gran interés, en consecuencia, seguir investigando lascircunstancias históricas que posibilitaron al inicio de los años setentaque las teorías de la desescolarización se colaran con una fuerzainusitada en el debate pedagógico internacional. De la misma manera,es tarea de los historiadores de la educación estudiar el contexto quesilenció al inicio de los años ochenta y durante buena parte de ladécada de los noventa las voces de estos autores. Un silenció que enapenas una década hizo caer en el olvido a quienes habían conseguidoponer en jaque las posibilidades de expansión de las políticasescolarizadoras a nivel mundial, y barrió de los planes de estudio de lasuniversidades y de las estanterías de las librerías dedicadas a la materiaeducativas los libros más destacados publicados por Illich, Holt,Reimer y Goodman.

De ahí la necesidad de analizar con detenimiento el contexto social,político, social y cultural en el que las teorías de las desescolarizaciónfueron articuladas y encontraron su sentido teórico. Un análisis que nopuede ser ajeno al tiempo en el que los principales protagonistas de estacorriente pedagógica participaron de los debates abiertos en el CIDOCde Cuernavaca. Pues fue en este espacio donde, en contacto con otrosintelectuales críticos con las instituciones modernas, fue sembrada lasemilla de la desescolarización. Siendo este centro, por tanto, no sólouna referencia obligada para todos aquellos interesados en indagar envertientes de crítica de las escuelas, sino un centro que ha de serestudiado con detenimiento por historiadores del pensamiento


pedagógico del siglo XX. Por lo tanto, las publicaciones lanzadasdesde el CIDOC, los seminarios organizados en ese espacio, la lecturadel contexto desarrollada desde Cuernavaca o la misma estructuraorganizativa del centro, se presentan como un foco de estudio de granvalor tanto para historiadores de la educación, como parainvestigadores de las teorías educativas.

Por eso, como se ha tenido tempo se señalar, el resurgir del interéspor la desescolarización entrado el siglo XXI poco aportaría al debatepedagógico si se restringe a la aplicación literal de sus ingenuasalternativas o a la adopción del tono descarado de sus crítica. Puespoco sentido tendría en la actualidad un acercamiento a esta corrientecrítica de la pedagogía que no se preocupara por explorar la principalaportación de esto autores, que no es otra que una actitud de críticaradical de las certezas que mayor fuerza están asentadas en elimaginario social de un tiempo determinado. Y es que son estascertezas las que no sólo otorgan un significado al mundo y a nuestrasaspiraciones existenciales en él, sino que, también, conforman el modoen que se mira al pasado, se normaliza y normativiza el presente y seidealiza el futuro de los individuos y las sociedades. Siendo lasinstituciones educativas instancias que contribuyen con una fuerza yeficacia difícilmente superable por otra institución o aparato social, aconformar y transmitir los principios teóricos axiales sobre los que seasienta el imaginario social moderno.

Jon Igelmo The Deschooling Theories48

49

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Freire, J. (2008) “Educación abierta y digital: ¿hacia una identidadedupunk”. En blog: Nómada. Reflexiones personales einformación sobre la sociedad y el conocimiento abiertos.Accesible en http://nomada.blogs.com/jfreire/2008/07/educacinabiert.html– (Consultado 22 noviembre 2010)

Gintis, H. (1972a) Toward a Political Economy of Education: ARadical Critique of Ivan Illich´s Deschooling Society. Harvard


Education Review, 42 (1), 7092.Gintis, H (1972b) Critique de L’Illichisme en Les Temps Modernes, 29

(312313), 525557.Goodman, P. (1960) Growing Up Absurd. Estados Unidos: Vintage

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Frank Riessman (1973) After Deschooling, What?. New York:Harper & Row.

Gross, R. (1972) After Deschooling, Free Learning. Social Policy, 2(5), Enero/Febrero, 3739.

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Hoinacki, L. (2003) The Trajectory of Ivan Illich. Bulletin of Science,Technology & Society, 23 (5), 382389.

Holt, J. (1976) Libertad y algo más ¿hacia la desescolarización de lasociedad?. Buenos Aires: Editorial el Ateneo.

Home School Legal Defense Association (2009) HomeschoolProgress Report 2009: Academic Achievement andDemographics. Accesible enhttp://www.hslda.org/docs/study/ray2009/2009_Ray_StudyFINAL.pdf (Consultado 2 noviembre de 2010).

Hornedo, B. (2004) “Iván Illich. Hacia una sociedad convivencial”.Boletín ciudades para un futuro sostenible, 24, marzo. Accesibleen http://habitat.aq.upm.es/boletin/n26/abhor.html (Consultado el11 de mayo de 2010)

Igelmo Zaldívar, J. (2009) La ciudad mexicana de Cuernavaca, puntode encuentro de la pedagogía mundial de los años setenta del sigloXX. Sembrando Ideas, 3, 2739



Igelmo Zaldívar, J. (2009) La Universidad de la Tierra en México.Una propuesta de aprendizaje convivencial. En Hernández Huerta,J. L.; Sánchez Blanco, L. y Pérez Miranda, I. (coor.) (2009) Temasy perspectiva sobre educación. La infancia ayer y hoy. Salamanca:Globalia.

Illich, I. y Sanders, B. (1988) ABC: The alphabetization of the PopularMind. New York: Vintage Books.

Illich, I. (1993) En el viñedo del texto. Etología de la lectura: uncomentario al “Didascalión” de Hugo de San Víctor. México:Fondo de Cultura Económica.

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Notes1 El lo sucesivo, en este artículo, se hablará en plural de “teorías de la desescolarización” con laintención de hacer constar la existencia de diferentes perspectivas teóricas y referenciasfilosóficas presentes en los trabajos de los autores que generalmente son estudiados bajo elenunciado de la “desescolarización”. No es el propósito de este texto hacer un análisis de losdistintos enfoques y planteamiento que tienen cabida dentro de esta corriente de la pedagogía.

2 En biblioteca Daniel Cosío Villegas de El Colegio de México puede consultarse el documentointerno del CIDOC (1963) titulado Request For Founds CIDOC. Se trata de un documentoinédito, no publicado, y que fue elaborado por la junta directiva del Centro InvestigacionesCulturales –espacio predecesor del CIDOC– con el objetivo de justificar la inversión económicanecesaria para iniciar con el nuevo proyecto de documentación en Cuernavaca.

3 En el número de enero/febrero de Social Policy del año 1972 fueron publicados los textos de losprofesores de la New York University Neil Postman (1972), “My Iván Illich problem”, y RonaldGross (1972), “Afer Deschooling Free Learning”, y también el texto de Roy Fairfiel (1972),“Need For a Risk Quotiente”. En el siguiente número de marzo/abril aparecieron cuatro artículosmás firmados por Rosen M. Summer (1972), “Taking Illich seriously”; Judson Jerome (1972),“After Illich What”; Maxine Greene (1972) “And It Still is News” y Arthur Pearl (1972, pp. 5152), “The case for Schooling America”.

4 Entre las tesis defendidas en universidades de los Estados Unidos cabe destacar: la elaborada enla Michigan State University por Charles Raymond Schindler (1972) con el título A philosophicalanalysis of Ivan Illich´s Construct, “Deschooling society” and related terms; el trabajo presentadopor Ideson Johnson (1973) titulado Hermetic Alchemy as the Pattern For Schooling Seen By IvanIllich in the works of Amos Comenius en la Universidad de Ohio; la denfendida por JohnLawrence Elias (1974) en la Temple University titulada A comparision and critical evaluation ofthe social and educational thought of Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich, with a particular emphasis uponthe religious inspiration of their thought y la de Lucille C. Bruch 1(974) también en la MichiganState University con el título de Deschooling and retooling: An examination of The Philosophy ofIvan Illich with particular emphasis on his analysis of the structures of society.

Jon Igelmo The Deschooling Theories

5 El libro póstumo de Sbert comercializado en 2009 con el título Epimeteo, Iván Illich y elsendero de la sabiduría, es, sin duda, uno de los acercamientos más innovadores hasta el momentopublicado en relación a la filosofía que subyace en el pensamiento de Illich

6 Su trabajo ha sido clave para que una casa editorial del prestigio del Fondo de CulturaEconómica publicara en dos tomos la primera edición en castellano de las Obras Reunidas deIlich en 2006 y 2008 respectivamente. El prólogo que el propio Javier Sicilia realizó para elsegundo volumen puede ser considerado en la actualidad uno de los textos claves para entender elconjunto de la obra de Illich desde una perspectiva teológica apofática (Sicilia, 2008).

7 En el caso de Braulio Hornedo la lectura del pensamiento de Illich tiene un componente máscercano a las posturas anarquistas y contestatarias al sistema capitalista. La ruptura con lasinstituciones educativas planteada por Illich, desde esta perspectiva, es analizada a la sombra deotros intelectuales que se rebelaron contra la tradición prometeica, es el caso de León Tolstoi,Piotr Kropotkin o los hermanos Flores Magón (Hornedo, 2004).

8 Gustavo Esteva ha relacionado el pensamiento de Illich con la lucha que movimientoscampesinos, organizaciones urbanas y comunidades indígenas han llevado a cabo en México yAmérica Latina en las últimas décadas. El libro que publicó en 1998 con el título EscapingEducation: Living as learning within Grassroots Cultures escrito junto con Madhu Suri Prakashpuede ser considerado como el principal trabajo que en los últimos años ha intentado actualizar enel contexto de finales del siglo XX y principios del siglo XXI las tesis planteadas por Illich añosatrás.

9 En una publicación de la organización Home School Legal Defense Association tituladaHomeschool Progress Report 2009: Academic Achievement and Demographics (2009, p 2), seseñala: “La anecdótica evidencia del éxito del homeschooling ha sido respaldada por múltiplesinvestigaciones en el pasado. Sin embargo, han transcurrido al menos diez años desde que algúnotro gran estudio nacional sobre el homeschooling haya sido elaborado. Durante este tiempo, elnúmero de niños que participan del homeschooling ha crecido de unos 850.000 aproximadamentea un millón y medio, de acuerdo con el Centro Nacional de Estadística en Educación. Otrosinvestigadores estiman que esta cifra es conservadora. Algunos estiman que el número supera los


dos millones”.

10 Existe una revista gestionada por personal académico de la Nipissing University de Canadá enla que no solo se está desarrollando el debate en torno al unschooling, sino que, también, se estáindagando en las fuentes teóricas que sirven de fundamento a esta propuesta pedagógica. Larevista en cuestión es The Journal of Unschooling And Alternative Learning, y los siete númerospublicados desde 2007 pueden consultarse en su página de Internet: www.nipissingu.ca/jual.

11 Juan Freire ha descrito este fenómeno en su blog Nómada en el post titulado “Educaciónabierta y digital: ¿hacia una identidad edupunk?” del 1472008, de la siguiente forma: “Laconfluencia de la Internet, la tecnología 2.0 y la cultura digital está modificando radicalmente laeducación. Pero mientras las instituciones tradicionales intentan, con mayor o menor éxito,integrar tecnologías, una parte de la comunidad educativa explora nuevos caminos al margen delas instituciones al entender que no nos enfrentamos a un reto tecnológico, sino a un cambiocultural en que la tecnología actúa como facilitador al tiempo que les permite independizarse delas estructuras organizativas convencionales (que en muchas ocasiones actúan como barreras parala colaboración)”.

12 En el libro coordinado por Joe Kinchenloe y Peter McLaren titulado Critical Pedagogy: WhereAre We Now?, Juha Suorante y Tere Vadén (2007, p. 149150) presentan, en este sentido, unainteresante reflexión tomando como referencia el fenómeno de la Wikipedia: “Las libertadesinternas y externas de la Wikipedia, y las posibilidades para la bifurcación y la colaboración enprocesos de creación conjunta de contenidos, causarán una completa reevaluación de lainstituciones de educación. […] Esta situación nos lleva a la visión expuesta por muchos filósofosde finales del siglo XX, quienes mantuvieron que las diferentes tecnologías iban a jugar unimportante papel en la sociedad democrática que estaba por venir. Parece como si las nuevastecnologías de la información completaran algunas de las tempranas profecías de éstas y otrasutopías. […] Iván Illich habló de una sociedad convivencial, una red de comunidades con supropia libertad y autonomía, que organizaba el aprendizaje a partir de redes y clubs en los que lagente puede disfrutar de los medios de comunicación y crear sus propios contenidos y mensajes”.


Jon Igelmo Zaldivar es Profesor de la Facultad de Psicología yEducación de la Universidad de Deusto, BilbaoContact Address: Facultad de Psicología y Educación,Universidad de Deusto. Email address:[email protected].



Democratic Adult Education in United StatesItxaso Tellado1

1) Department of Pedagogy Department of the University of Vic, SpainDate of publication: February 23rd, 2012

To cite this article: Tellado, I. (2012). Educación democrática de personasadultas en Estados Unidos. Social and Education History, 1(1), 5877.doi: 10.4471/hse.2012.03To link this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.4471/hse.2012.03



HSE Social and Education History Vol.1 No.1February 2012 pp. 5877

Democratic Adult Education inUnited States

Itxaso TelladoUniversity of Vic

AbstractDemocracy in adult education promotes an outstanding organizational practicefor adult learning centers. Regularly, low literate, workingclass people, andBlack individuals were excluded of political decisions and learningopportunities of the adult learning organizations they attend. This paperfocused on adult learners’ participation in an adult school in the South of theUnited States, Highlander Folk School. Learners and educators are engaged inall the school decisions to overcome social inequalities. The involvement oflearners in decisionmaking teams is essential to the success of sharedgovernance and other participative structures and, is one of the aspects thatexplain the higher levels of participation in the school. The paper is centered onthe strategies used within the community organization for the implementationof democratic adult educational practices and how those successful experienceshelp the overcoming of social exclusion.Keywords: Democratic adult education, social change, participation,Highlander.


HSE Social and Education History Vol.1 No.1February 2012 pp. 5877

Educación Democrática de PersonasAdultas en Estados Unidos

Itxaso TelladoUniversity of VicResumenLa democracia en la educación de personas adultas promueve una destacadapráctica organizativa para los centros de educación de personas adultas.Regularmente, las personas analfabetas, de clase trabajadora y las personasnegras estaban excluidas de las decisiones políticas y de las oportunidades deaprendizaje de las organizaciones a las que asistían. Este artículo se centra en laparticipación de estudiantes adultos en una escuela de adultos del sur de losEstados Unidos, Highlander Folk School. Participantes y educadores seentregan a las decisiones del centro para superar las desigualdades sociales. Laparticipación de las personas que aprenden en los equipos de toma dedecisiones es esencial para el éxito de una gestión compartida y de unasestructuras participativas, y es uno de los aspectos que explican los altosniveles de participación en el centro. Este artículo se centra en las estrategiasutilizadas en la organización comunitaria para llevar a cabo educacióndemocrática de personas adultas y como estas exitosas experiencias ayudan asuperar la exclusión social.Palabras clave: educación democrática de personas adultas, cambio social,participación, Highlander.

2012 Hipatia PressISSN 20143567DOI:10.4471/hse.2012.03

60 Itxaso Tellado Democratic Adult Education in United

IntroductionMany were the rights that black people in United States did not haveover a long period of time in history. In U.S. history many battles werefought to achieve equal treatment and equal rights. Laws were passedand orders promoted by Presidents and Committees. In recent history,discrimination still was a common fact, although:

In late 1946 President Harry Truman, appointed aCommittee on Civil Rights, which recommended that thecivil rights section of the Department of Justice be expanded,that there be a permanent Commission on Civil Rights, thatCongress pass laws against lynching and to stop votingdiscrimination, and suggested new laws to end racialdiscrimination in job. (Zinn, 1980, p.449)

His interests for these actions were little the moral reason but theeconomic purpose since discrimination was costly to the country andmainly because of the new role that U. S. was taking in the world order. Politically many actions could have been taken to implement the lawsand orders that have been passed on democratic rights and againstdiscrimination since the 19th century. The 14th and the 15thAmendments, plus other laws passed in the late 1860s and early 1870s,giving the President enough authority to wipe out racial discrimination(Zinn, 1980, p.449). For instance the 14th Amendment was ratified on1868 and states among other issues that:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject tothe jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of theState wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any lawwhich shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of theUnited States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life,liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to anyperson within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The 15th Amendment was ratified in early 1970 ant states that “Theright of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or

61abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color,or previous condition of servitude”. None of the 15 Presidents of theUnited States, from Andrew Johnson to Harry Truman, nor the laterused their power to terminate racial discrimination, they were UlyssesS. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur,Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, WilliamMcKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, WoodrowWilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover,Franklin D. Roosevelt. For political reasons as stated before Trumanissued an executive order asking that the armed forces institute policiesof racial equality. In 1954, the Court finally struck down the “separate but equal”doctrine that it had defended since the 1890s. The NAACP (NationalAssociation for the Advancement of Colored People), a civil rightsorganization for ethnic minorities in the united States, brought a seriesof cases before the Court to challenge segregation in the publicschools, for example Brown vs. Board of Education. “In 1965, tenyears after the “all deliberate speed” guideline issued by the Courtstating that segregated facilities should be integrated, more than 75%of the school districts in the South remained segregated” (Zinn, 1980,p.450). In the early 1960s black people arose in rebellion all over the South.The south is a large distinctive area in the southeastern and southcentral United States. The region is known for its distinct culture andhistory, having developed its own customs, literature, musical styles,and varied cuisines. The South owes its unique heritage to a variety ofsources, including Native Americans, early European settlements ofSpanish, English, French, ScotsIrish, Scottish, and German, andhundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans. In late 1960s hundred ofnorthern cities engage in the insurrection. The facts and the eventscame one after another. By the end of 1955 came the Montgomery BusBoycott. These rebellions also included the Mississippi FreedomSummer, the March on Selma, Alabama, and the assassination ofMartin Luther King, Jr. The Montgomery Bus Boycott came three months after the arrest ofMrs. Rosa Parks, a fortythreeyearold seamstress whose name hasbeen known around the globe for refusing to obey the law providing


for segregation on city buses, by sitting in the “white” section of thebus. Why she refused to give up her sit, and where did her strength tomaintain her stand came from? These questions will be solved in thispaper through the detailed study of the connections between socialparticipation, social movements and adult education.

Democratic Adult educationContemporary societies are diverse and changing. Societies have toconfront the challenges of globalization, as well as the opening of themarket, culture and education. Adult education must be responsive tothose needs. Current social theories emphasize the importance ofdemocracy and within it the creation of dialog conditions for livingtogether (Castells, 2004; Flecha, Gómez, & Puigvert, 2001). Thesetheories recommend the participation of all actors affected by andtaking part in society. From these positions it may be posited thateducation is the key for social promotion, and that education can leadto equal opportunities for everyone. The hierarchic organization of society, which is characteristic of theindustrial society, is an obsolete organization in the contemporaryinformation society. In addition, social and cultural developments arefacilitating the organization of social movements. Social movementsare being organized by means of strengthened egalitarian objectives,consensus processes, and the inclusion of voices of all stakeholders(Beck, 1999). Furthermore, Gelpi (1996) asserted that “working classmovements, in their political and cultural trade union action, havedeveloped adult education as an instrument of struggle andemancipation”(p.129). This assertion provides evidence that adulteducation has been linked to participation from grassroots proposals. Several scholars explore the relationship between socialparticipation, social movements and adult education; for example,communities that organize to provide literacy classes (Picon, 1991),and alternative models to formal education (Paulston & Letroy, 1982),such as popular education (La Belle, 1987, 2000). Research alsodemonstrates that engaging in Freirean education practices can inducesocial activism (Puigvert, 2001; Stromquist, 1994). Also, many studies


examined social movements that utilized education to pursue socialjustice such as the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. (Morris, 1984;Rachal, 2000). Adult education and education in general can be fundamental tocreating transformational possibilities. Societies around the world haveinequalities to overcome. The idea of education underlying theaspiration to achieve important social purposes is not new (Welter,1962). But in the context of the informationbased global societyeducation increasingly enables social mobility, thus explaining itscentrality to movements pursuing social justice. The need to have amore inclusive and participatory civil society that involves cooperationamong all stakeholders in education has been internationallyacknowledged (UNESCO, 2004). Some recommendations forpractitioners are, among others, to make citizenship and democracycentral to the design of adult education programs. Participation is one of the most widely studied areas in adulteducation (Merriam & Caffarella, 1999). Adult education responds to amodel that guarantees participants the possibility of acquiring,updating, and completing knowledge as varied as, for example, basiceducation, work training or social and cultural activities. Followingthese possibilities, adult education must be based on an organized andmethodical model which permits flexibility for the rhythm and learningtimes of adults, allowing different training itineraries to be acquired inresponse to the needs and demands of adults. Program planners mustalso consider the individual psychopedagogical characteristics andsocial situations of adults. In Adult Education there are different areas:Basic Education, Training for the labor market, Training in cultural orleisure activities, and Education for Citizenship. Adult Education mustalso ensure training in personal development, awareness of one’ssetting and active social participation. The need to discuss those concepts and do research on democracy,social justice and citizenship with regards to participation in adulteducation is fundamental. There is plenty of literature on those issues(D’Amico, 1981; Selman,1991; Vasta, 2000; Coare & Johnston, 2003;Banks, 2004). Contemporary society also needs adult educators whoare determined in their pursuit of equality, justice, peace and educationfor all.


Scholars in political economy and the sociology of knowledge aswell as in sociology of education have argued that public schools incomplex industrial societies make available different types ofeducational experience and curriculum knowledge to students indifferent social classes. Bowles and Gintis (1976) for example, haveargued that students in different socialclass backgrounds are rewardedfor classroom behaviors that correspond to personality traits allegedlyrewarded in the different occupational class positions. Bernstein(1977) and Apple (1990) focusing on school knowledge, have arguedthat knowledge and skills leading to social power are made available tothe advantaged social groups but do not operate for the workingclasses to whom a more "practical" curriculum is offered (manualskills, clerical knowledge). Participation in adult education is defined as taking part in alearning process for adults. That is, “participation in adult education”is the engagement of the adult participant or learner in the process ofmaking decisions, assessing, and defining goals in the organizationwhere democratic adult education takes place. Internationalorganizations (such as UNESCO) proclaim that adult education(especially literacy) should be a gateway to fuller participation insocial, cultural, political and economic life in all regions of the world(2004). Literacy enables individuals to function effectively in theirsocieties and to fashion and shape them. In such a process,communities affect their own cultural and social transformations.Literacy must address the needs of both women and men, to enablethem to understand the interconnections between personal, local andglobal realities. Habermas describes it in the language of social Darwinism (as citedin Castells, Flecha, Freire, Giroux, Macedo, & Willis, 1999). Thesituation entails educational curriculum that has become a factor in theprocess of social dualization as the selection of the fittest. Flecha(1999) adds that as the educational gap increases, stable workers arethose with a university degree, and the unemployed are those withoutan elementary level of education (p.66). For most people, formaleducation is a social good, a source of hope in the quest for individualimprovement and social change (Stromquist, 1994).


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On behalf of education, hooks (2003) agrees that “without ongoingmovements for social justice in our nation, progressive educationbecomes all the more important since it may be the only location whereindividuals can experience support for acquiring a criticalconsciousness, for any commitment to end domination” (p.45).Previously she states that democratic educators have to work to findways to teach and share knowledge in a manner that does not reinforceexisting structures of domination such as those of race, gender, class,religion, culture or sexual orientation. Freire (in Bell, Gaventa & Peters, 1990) poses several questions onbehalf of the right of people to take history into their hands. He asks“Do the people have the right or not to participate in the process ofproducing the new knowledge?” (p.97). He declares that processes ofsocial transformation imply change in the way of producingeconomically but also that “greater participation of the masses of thepeople in the process of power. Then it means to renew theunderstanding of power” (p.97). Participation has to be understood notas the institutionalization of the protest, but the elaboration of moreefficient policies, based in the previous consultation and in the profitingof the acquired experience (ETGACE, 2002). Freire (1970) suggeststhat the educator must know in favor of whom and in favor of what heor she wants. That suggestion means educators need to know againstwhom and against what they are working as educators. Many times the practice of adult education is developed in theunique form of schooling. Illich (as cited in Collins, 1998) critiquesschooling and expresses the idea that learners should not be subjectedto mandatory education. His scheme of lifelong education for thepeople by the people would be facilitated through skill exchanges,reference services, and peermatching arrangements (p.16). Accordingto Illich, schools get in the way of relevant learning which fosterspersonal competence and peoples’ capacities to develop genuinecommunity. He adds, professional educators teach their students tobecome dependent on experts who, in turn reinforce the dependency(p.3). The scholastic model is defined for a curriculum that is oftenindifferent to social needs and is often solely based in instrumental and


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academic competencies. The scholastic model often stresses theclassroom as the predominant location for learning, and may overlookthe importance of preparing individuals for a social, work andeducational life. For that reason, prior experiences are not taken intoaccount or any other knowledge that can be learned at the same time inother contexts (Freire, 1970). Therefore, the scholastic model startsfrom the deficit and not from what people have learned in othercontexts. The scholastic model creates a vicious circle that harms vulnerablegroups, and often ends up being compensatory and reproductivetraining for participants. In such programs, many educators believe thatthe learners have very little interest in participation. Moreover, in suchprograms the learners are relegated to merely receiving informationbecause program planners do not take into account the capacity of theparticipants for critique. In such programs, minimal egalitarian dialogexists between educator and learner. The participants are relegated toreceive information and attend courses implemented through masterclasses. In this kind of model the educator is an expert who fillsparticipants’ heads with information and data and attempts tocompensate for their deficits (Freire, 1970). This kind of relationshipbetween educator and learner results in negative power relations.Another characteristic of the scholastic model is the strict bureaucracycarried out in the educational process. This type of bureaucracypromotes learners to adapt their needs to the system instead of thesystem adapting to their demands and needs. As an alternative to the scholastic model, the social model (Medina,1997) is responsive to grassroots populations and is aligned with thecharacteristics of social movements. The intent of the social model isnot to compensate but to address social and educational inequalities.The social model involves prior experiences of the participants, highexpectations, active participation and egalitarian relations. This startingpoint allows the transformation process to emerge in an environmentthat promotes learning for all participants without discriminatingagainst people because of their ethnic group, age, culture or socialclass. The social model is premised on the belief that everybody can learn.

Itxaso Tellado Democratic Adult Education in United

This model starts from a “pedagogy of maximum”, meaning thatlearning can occur in all contexts (Coare & Johnston, 2003). Thelearning process it is not a closed process that has to be based in aclassroom. Furthermore, learning is not restricted to a one waytransmission of information from the educator to the learner. Anothercharacteristic of the social model is its focus on promoting solidarityand its support of the idea that everybody has to participate intransforming difficulties into possibilities (Freire, 1997). In such aprocess, participants and educators are collaborative learners. A central characteristic of the social model is to give priority to thelearners who have a higher risk of social exclusion. Participants getbetter results and higher participation when their active participation ispromoted and their voices are taken into account. The higherexpectations that are set for them influence their level of motivation.This phenomenon not only changes their lives but also affects thosearound them in their social setting (FACEPA, 2002). The social modeltakes into account key elements for social inclusion like access,selection and data processing. Therefore it promotes a learning thatconsiders basic aspects of data selection and processing throughoutpeople interactions (Ferrada, 2001). In the social model, educators or facilitators provide theirknowledge to participants by means of an egalitarian dialog,promoting participation and learning from participants. Theparticipants contribute to the learning process by sharing their priorexperiences and their cultural background, promoting an egalitarianrelationship that improves the learning quality. An underlying premiseof this model is that reflection through dialog is a basic element thatdefines society and individuality (Beck 1999). Adult education in some locations is currently going through aprocess of democratization, following tendencies of society.Participants are organizing themselves and demanding to share withteachers and administrators the decisionmaking about their education.In this movement – called the Democratic Adult Education (DAE)Movement – they are reinventing popular education. The DAEmovement follows the dialogic tendency of current society. However,it did not appear by chance, but as a result of many years of workwithin the field of adult education towards the democratization of


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education and culture. Freire (1987) argues that literacy should beinscribed inside a democratic adult education approach in which theparticipants of the learning process have the space and the opportunityto speak up and name the word and the world. He promotes that adulteducation needs to recover its radical democratic basis by promotingexperiences that overcome social exclusion by gender, race, culture andclass. New channels and projects that foster the radicalization ofdemocracy are emerging. As a result of many years of work within thefield of adult education toward the democratization of education andculture the DAE movement appears to represent the interest of thosepeople whose lack of academic studies, among other barriers, hasexcluded them from many positions in society. Democratic Adult Education is carried out in a social model of adulteducation that consists of including the participant’s voice in thedecisionmaking places, in the management and the assessmentprocesses. More and more, public decisions are carried out by means ofdeliberative processes where citizens affected by the decisions take partin them even if they are not experts on the subject (Habermas, 1984).In order to legitimize the decisions, it depends on the inclusion of allthe voices in the dialog process. The future of adult education is beingdreamed and reinvented by the organizations and learners. Thoseproposals point to the same place as deliberative democracy anddemocracy radicalization achieving a better education directed to thepresent society. For example, Prajuli (as cited in Collins, 1998) is aneducator with experience of popular education among communitybased groups in Nepal. For him popular education as counterdiscoursecalls for the practice of a “bottom up” approach in contrast to the“trickle down” approach which has provided the rationale formodernizing schemes according to conventional development theory(p. 142). Again, according to Freire (1987), learners are able totransform the world through their actions and to express the reality in acreative language. By interacting with other people in schools andcommunities, adult learners raise questions about already heldinterpretations and collectively create new meanings that redefinethem. This adult education has a dialogic approach which is characterized


by being an approach that arises from the dialog between participantsand educators or researchers in several areas of social sciences. Theidea of equality is a basic concept in this context that belongs bothfrom the traditional popular adult education as well as from authorssuch as Freire, Habermas and Flecha among others. In fact, there is ademocratic tradition in this educational and management approach.Dewey (1916), for example, elucidates that “in order to have a largenumber of values in common, all the members of the group must havean equal opportunity to receive and to take from others. There must bea large variety of shared undertaking and experiences” (p.84). Andthose are the kind of ideas present in this approach. Dewey’s vision ofeducation connected to democracy argues a democratic society withhigh value to the relationship between individuals. He (1916) states:

A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily amode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.The extension in space of the number of individuals whoparticipate in an interest to consider the action of others to givepoint and direction to his own. (p.87)

Dewey’s vision of democracy challenge citizens to participate inspaces of decisionmaking. In fact, this author states that the morevoices participating in the spaces of decision the more possibilities offinding the best solution for the group. To illustrate this educational model there is an example in the U.S.context that requires detailed study. In addition it will also answer therefusal of Mrs. Parks to give up her sit and explain her strength tomaintain her position. Her civil rights experiences as many of otherblack citizens and white citizens of U.S. came from the life experienceand educational exchanges that had priory taken place in HighlanderFolk School, a school for adults.

From Highlander Folk School to Highlander Research andEducation Center

Crowther (2009) states that “The Highlander Folk School has an iconicstatus in radical adult education and was founded by Myles Horton,


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along with others, in 1932 in Tennessee, USA.” Highlander FolkSchool original mission was to educate rural and industrial leaders for anew social order. From 1932 until the mid1940s, Highlander workedtogether with woodcutters, coal miners, government relief workers,textile workers, and farmers in the region to build a progressive labormovement. Within the labor movement in the region Highlanderconducted labor education programs with workers from 11 southernstates, developing at that time a residential educational programdesigned to help build a broadbased, racially integrated, and politicallyactive labor movement in the South (Highlander, 2012). Although thefirst black speaker at a workshop arrived in 1934, it was not until 1944that the first integrated workshop at Highlander was held. As thehistory of Highlander (2012) states “these integrated workshops causedgreat controversy among segregationists and union leaders. Oppositionleaders equated Highlander's racial policies with communism andbegan a campaign to shut Highlander down that culminated in 1961”.Before the closing of Highlander at Monteagle, Tenessee, it had a greatinfluence in another social level. In 1953, Highlander Folk Schoolchanged its focus from labor to Civil Rights Movement. This change offocus was due to, first, the believe of the staff in the fact of abolishingpoverty and winning progressive change in the region by fightingprejudices of racism and segregation. Secondly this change wasbecause the staff predicted that the imminent decision from theSupreme Court on the case of Brown vs. Board of Education wouldstart important conflicts in the South. The work of Highlander in theCivil Rights Movement focused mainly on school desegregation andvoter education/voting rights (Highlander, 2012). In addition, due to itsgroundbreaking efforts to conduct crossrace educational sessions, italso served as a key gathering place for civil rights activist, such asRosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr, to name the most wellknown. Highlander citizenship schools were several initiatives to bringeducation on voter education and voting rights to the citizens. Theseschools (Highlander, 2012) “operated under the leadership of EsauJenkins, Bernice Robinson and Septima Clark”. Its purpose was to helpAfrican Americans learn to read. This was not a solely purpose, themain aim was for the literate African Americans to be able to pass the


literacy test required at that time to become eligible voters in theSouth. The Citizenship Schools played a critical role in building thebase for the Civil Rights Movement helping millions of AfricanAmericans to become literates. At that time in 8 southern states therewas a 2 and half functional illiterates (Highlander, 2012). In this context, Rosa Parks had been participating of the Highlanderworkshops and worked on voter registration and youth programs. Bythe time of her arrest (1955), she was a respected community leader. In1943 she became secretary of the Montgomery NAACP chapter andtried to register for vote three times before doing so for the first time in1945. Highlander began by focusing on subjects to bring culture andeducation to rural areas, to later become in its commitment to socialchange into a key environment to promote social participation, socialmovements and education. The successful work on promoting education and encouraging theCivil Rights Movement provoked a fierce reaction among southernsegregationists. The angry reaction took the form of the publication ofseveral pieces of propaganda against Highlander Folk School calling ita school for communist training under the attack from the press. In theU.S. context calling someone a communist is a major insult. Theseattacks were aimed at Myles Horton, director and one of the foundersof Highlander, and others such as Martin Luther King Jr. who was oneof the speakers at the event of the 25th anniversary workshop on LaborDay weekend, 1957. The campaign against Highlander ended in 1961(Highlander, 2012) when the State of Tennessee canceled the contractof the Folk School and took away the land, buildings and otherproperties of Highlander Folk School. These facts took place “Despitethe support of people such as Eleanor Roosevelt and United NationsUnderSecretary Ralph J. Bunche, the Tennessee Supreme Court wasable to manipulate the law to shut down Highlander” (Highlander,2012). At that moment, a The new Highlander relocated to Knoxville,Tennessee, in 1961 and remained there until 1971, when it moved toits current location, in New Market, Tennessee. At that momentHighlander name change to be Highlander Research and EducationCenter. Over that later period of time participants at Highlander alsoidentified the need to shift its focus and started to look at struggles for


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economic and social justice. Over the 1980s and 1990s Highlander Research and EducationCenter supported local communities in the global context, developingworkshops for democratic economic development, youth leaderships,environmental health programs. In that period of time Highlanderplayed an active role in international adult education efforts, helping tohost exchanges and education programs with communitybasededucators. After several meetings, in December 1987 Paulo Freire andMyles Horton held long conversations and dialog with Highlander staffand friends to finally create a “speaking book”. Angela Miles (1996)states that “in the opening section of their dialogue in the book WeMake the Road by Walking, Myles Horton and Paulo Freire (1990)share their common understanding, after years of practice, thateffective adult education for social change must be grounded in socialaction”. Highlander Research and Education Center continues today, in theearly 21st century, connected to groups working on many differentissues and providing a democratic gathering space for localorganizations at the same time of supporting and educating forovercoming regional, national and international struggles, for instance,providing educational resources for social justice activists, languageskills and rights education for migrants and young people.

ConclusionsRosa Parks actions were not disconnected to the educationalexperiences she had had before December of 1955 in the bus. In facther actions were consequence of many conversations, thoughts andteachings for democratic rights. She once stated to Myles Horton to thequestion “What was on your mind, Rosa?” about her decision that day,that she had been thinking at work “when, how would we everdetermine our rights as human beings?”(Highlander, 2012). The literature review showed that the study of the organization andfunctioning of the adult education centers is closely related with a greatdiversity of aspects. These aspects are democracy, participation, dialog,a critical review of the educator role inside and out of the classroom,


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the ability of participants deciding what education they want, lifelonglearning, power relations in the structures of decisionmaking insidethe school, creating spaces of identity, and the impact of the socialcontext in the functioning of the centers of adult education amongothers. All these issues are important because they have directconsequences on the participation of adult individuals in the center ofadult education and outside of it. The literature review for this papershowed that the successful experiences in adult education are the onesin which there are routes and channels for the participants to share theirpoints of view and where they feel respected. In this case, Highlander is a good example of the social model ofadult education and mainly an example of democratic education in U.S. connecting social movements and education with the focus of itscurriculum changing and developing for the ideas and problems ofsociety and from their participation. The participants at Highlanderworkshops are not merely spectators, by learning and doing each oneof them become part of the action, an activist for social change and acontributor to a better society. The success of Highlander Folk School and the Highlander Researchand Educational Center was and still is the focus that the organizationtakes on current and real problems as well as the direct and trueparticipation of citizens in the solution and actions for intervention.Highlander experiences and results support theories and practices thatemphasize the value of learners’ participation in the management ofthe adult school. The consequences of such participation affect notonly the individual but the center, the people around the participant andthe community, in short, the citizenship.


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Writing Educational Spaces in Twentieth Century Reformist IndianDiscourseBarnita Bagchi1

1) Utrecht UniversityDate of publication: February 23rd, 2012

To cite this article: Barnita, B. (2012). Writing Educational Spaces inTwentieth Century Reformist Indian Discourse. Social and EducationHistory,1 (1), 78100. doi: 10.4471/hse.2012.04To link this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.4471/hse.2012.04



HSE Social and Education History Vol. 1 No. 1February 2012 pp. 78 100Writing Educational Spaces inTwentieth Century ReformistIndian DiscourseBarnita BagchiUtrecht UniversityAbstractThis paper analyses discourse and practice around educational spaces intwentiethcentury India, with attention to notions of region, nation, and theinternational, and a concurrent focus on the gendering of such spaces. My focusis 19201960. The actors and writings examined were important shapingpresences in the reformist/ progressive educational field of that time and place.By reformist or progressive education, we refer to theories and practices ofeducation that sought to radically change prevalent official or formal systemsof education, with a valence of achieving progress in society. We examine the(very different) contours of the village communitybased school and arenovated, internationalist ashramlike space found in the educational practiceand thought of M.K. Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, both of whomformulated influential models of education. We consider also notions ofeducational space found in the writing and practice of women educationistssuch as Rokeya Hossain, Marjorie Sykes, and Jyotirmoyee Devi. Tagore,Gandhi, Hossain, Devi or Sykes were grappling with formulating educationalpractices and concepts in a country which, under the rule of Britain,experienced a highly entangled and complex educational arena, wherecompeting deprivations, demands, practices, and institutions subsistedEducational space and spaces embodied such contradictions, entanglements,and deprivations.Keywords: educational spaces, India, gender, Tagore, Gandhi, nation, region,international2012 Hipatia PressISSN 20143567DOI: 10.4471/hse.2012.04


IntroductionMy article analyses educational spaces in reformist and progressiveeducational writing in twentiethcentury India. While this article in noway claims to be comprehensive (the educational ideas and practicescirculating in the first half of 20th century India were plural anddiverse), the actors and writings examined here were very important,active, and influential shaping presences in the reformist/ progressiveeducational field of that time and place. By reformist or progressiveeducation, we refer to theories and practices of education that sought toradically change prevalent official or formal systems of education, oftenwith a valence of achieving progress in society. The actors and writersI discuss were negotiating a highly complex set of positions Weexamine in this article the (very different) contours of the villagecommunitybased school and a renovated, internationalist ashramlikespace found in the educational practice and thought of M.K. Gandhi andRabindranath Tagore, both of whom formulated influential models ofeducation. We consider also how such space was analysed by womeneducationists such as Marjorie Sykes, who worked with both Tagore andGandhi, and writeractivists such as Rokeya Hossain and JyotirmoyeeDevi. My focus will be 19201961: these were years in which anticolonial movements for independence from Britain were in full swing,followed by India being partitioned and granted independence in 1947,and the years just following that granting of sovereignty.

The King called the nephew and asked, “Dear nephew, what is thisthat I hear?”The nephew said, “Your Majesty, the bird's education is nowcomplete.”The King asked, “Does it still jump?”The nephew said, “God forbid.”“Does it still fly?”“No.”“Does it sing any more?”“No.”“Does it scream if it doesn't get food?”

80 Barnita Bagchi Writing Educational Spaces

“No.”The King said, “Bring the bird in. I would like to see it.”The bird was brought in. With it came the administrator, theguards, the horsemen. The King felt the bird. It didn't open itsmouth and didn't utter a word. Only the pages of books, stuffedinside its stomach, raised a ruffling sound.Outside, where the gentle south wind and the blossoming woodswere heralding spring, the young green leaves filled the sky with adeep and heavy sigh. (Tagore, 2004)

This radical critique of arid, institutionalized education by RabindranathTagore, in ‘The Parrot’s Tale’ (Tagore, 2004), is also spatialized: aworld of green, natural woods and attendant freedom is contrasted to thestifling world of the court where parrots get stuffed with paper and aremurdered in the name of teaching. Rabindranath Tagore, M.K. Gandhi,Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Jyotirmoyee Devi, and Marjorie Sykes,figures whose writing I analyse in this article, were grappling withformulating educational practices and concepts in India, a countrywhich, under the rule of Britain, experienced a highly entangled,complex, and messy educational arena, where competing deprivations,demands, practices, and institutions subsisted, a country in whichliteracy remained abysmally low. Educational space and spacesembodied such contradictions, entanglements, and deprivations, theneven more than now. The village school; the school at home; the formalclassroom with desks and benches; the classroom under the trees; theurban, cramped slum school; the clay cottage housing a school; aclassroom which is also a crafts workshop; the highceilinged collegeclassroom where boys and/ or girls sit; a school housed in a grocer’s:numerous and diverse kinds of spaces around education, bothelementary and higher, point to how multifarious educational spaces andspatialization were in colonial India. Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay’sBengali novel The Song of the Road (Bandopadhyay, 1969), forexample, offers vivid representations of these different kinds ofeducational spaces, from the indigenous private basic school housed in agrocery, to the formal educational spaces of colonial India. The precolonial past of Indian education and its colonial presence both servedas norms, positive or negative, for future development; the spaces

thereof, such as the forest school, the ashram, the tapovana (both ofthese last being spaces, originally associated with Vedic Hinduism,often housed in forests, where teachers and students constituted integralparts of the community), the formal schools and colleges set up onpartly British models by British and Indian men and women, allinterconnect and overlap in Indian education. As we are increasingly coming to recognize, it is a falsity to contrastin simple terms the indigenous precolonial educational space orpractice with the imported colonial Britishformulated formaleducational space: the work of Jana Tschurenev (2010) and othersshows that such key elements in nineteenthcentury British educationalpractice as the monitorial system owed much to Indian practices, forexample, in the Malabar region of southern India. One often seesnineteenthcentury pictures of proper British boys and girls, one ofwhom is taking the lead as a monitor, teaching her peers; however,behind the picture is one of children in south India who had learnt,using such methods, for centuries. Thus modernity and tradition, thehybrid and the indigenous are always imbricated and mutuallyintertangled, a point which it is vital to remember: traditions are oftenreinvented, and modernities are often rooted in the past, in educationalspaces in twentiethcentury India. Rabindranath Tagore (18611941) was himself a dropout fromschool, and found the formal school environment constricting. Histravels in rural Bengal and India before the onset of the twentiethcentury left a deep mark on him, so that he eventually decided to founda new educational and creative community in Shantiniketan in theBirbhum district of Bengal in presentday India: this place had beenused as a meditative and contemplative space by his fatherDebendranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore focused on a rural area,engaged in practices that promoted local rural development, workedwith the tribal Santhals of the surrounding villages, and supported theiraesthetics and way of life. He also brought in crafts such as batik fromIndonesia, sent his son and a soninlaw to study agriculture in theUSA, and welcomed visitors and teachers from all over India and theworld. The Japanese painter Okakura Kakuzo (Tenshin), who visitedCalcutta in 1902, was an inspiration for teaching the Japanese style ofpainting to the future art teachers of the university that Tagore founded.


Tagore’s educational space was envisioned as a roomy, open spacewhere cultures of the world would connect and dialogue. Hiscommitment to the local, to the composite Indian, to the Asian, and tothe global space made his educational practice particularly intriguing inthe overlaps and connections between the local, the regional, thenational, and the international. Tagore wrote,

I well remember the surprise and annoyance of an experiencedheadmaster, reputed to be a successful disciplinarian, when he sawone of the boys of my school climbing a tree and choosing a forkof the branches for settling down to his studies. I had to say to himin explanation that ‘childhood is the only period of life when acivilized man can exercise his choice between the branches of atree and his drawingroom chair, and should I deprive this boy ofthat privilege because I, as a grownup man, am barred from it?’What is surprising is to notice the same headmaster’s approbationof the boys’ studying botany. He believes in an impersonalknowledge of the tree because that is science, but not in a personalexperience of it. This growth of experience leads to forminginstinct, which is the result of nature’s own method of instruction.The boys of my school have acquired instinctive knowledge of thephysiognomy of the tree. By the least touch they know where theycan find a foothold upon an apparently inhospitable trunk; theyknow how far they can take liberty with the branches, how todistribute their bodies’ weight so as to make themselves leastburdensome to branchlets. My boys are able to make the bestpossible use of the tree in the matter of gathering fruits, taking restand hiding from undesirable pursuers. I myself was brought up ina cultured home in a town, and as far as my personal behaviourgoes, I have been obliged to act all through my life as if I wereborn in a world where there are no trees. Therefore I consider it asa part of education for my boys to let them fully realize that theyare in a scheme of existence where trees are a substantial fact, notmerely as generating chlorophyll and taking carbon from the air,but as living trees. (Tagore, 1933)

The living, useful, spreading tree's space thus becomes a vital site ofeducation in Tagore's school. This is part of his articulation that the


mere artifice and crampedness of the humanbuilt classroom is inferiorto the unbounded space of the natural environment, including dirt anddust. He aimed that the space of the school should take students into'personal experience' of the 'completeness of the world.'

In my school, much to the disgust of the people of expensivehabits, I had to provide for this great teacher — this bareness offurniture and materials — not because it is poverty, but because itleads to personal experience of the world. What tortured me inmy schooldays was the fact that the school had not thecompleteness of the world. It was a special arrangement forgiving lessons. It could only be suitable for grownup people whowere conscious of the special need of such places and thereforeready to accept their teaching at the cost of dissociation from life.But children are in love with life, and it is their first love. All itscolour and movement attract their eager attention. And are wequite sure of our wisdom in stifling this love? Children are notborn ascetics, fit to enter at once into the monastic discipline ofacquiring knowledge. At first they must gather knowledgethrough their life, and then they will renounce their lives to gainknowledge, and then again they will come back to their fullerlives with ripened wisdom. But society has made its ownarrangements for manipulating men’s minds to fit its specialpatterns. (Tagore, 1933)

This is a surprising rationale for an educational space bare of thespecial paraphernalia of usual formal classes. Left to the largeness andmultitudinousness of the natural world, the children's senses and loveof beauty will be satisfied. The normal classroom, quite the contrary, isheld to be specialised and ascetic. All his life, again and again, Tagoreargued for creativity and experience, and against asceticism, ineducation. To that extent, the fact that he spoke positively about theancient Indian tapovana or ashram (the ‘forest colonies of greatteachers’in the following passage) as a possible model for hiseducational practice does not imply that he wanted some kind ofascetic experience for his students: rather, song, exuberant colour,


dance, and all the plastic and performing arts were valued inShantiniketan.

In India we still cherish in our memory the tradition of the forestcolonies of great teachers. These places were neither schools normonasteries in the modern sense of the word. They consisted ofhomes where with their families lived men whose object was tosee the world in God and to realize their own life in Him....Thusin the ancient India the school was there where was the life itself.There the students were brought up, not in the academicatmosphere of scholarship and learning, or in the maimed life ofmonastic seclusion, but in the atmosphere of living aspiration.They took the cattle to pasture, collected firewood, gathered fruit,cultivated kindness to all creatures, and grew in their spirit withtheir own teachers’ spiritual growth...That this traditionalrelationship of the masters and disciples is not a mere romanticfiction is proved by the relic we still possess of the indigenoussystem of education. These chatuspathis, which is the Sanskritname for the university, have not the savour of the school aboutthem. The students live in their master’s home like the children ofthe house, without having to pay for their board and lodging ortuition. The teacher prosecutes his own study, living a life ofsimplicity, and helping the students in their lessons as a part ofhis life and not of his profession. (Tagore, 1933)

Again, we have a sense of education as part of the totality of life, andnot artificially divorced and specialised from the round of humanactivities. Here too the field, the pasture, the forest and suchlike spaces,which are also used for humanity to gather and produce food, becomean integral part of the process of education. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (18691948) started his educationalexperiments on Phoenix Farm and Tolstoy Farm in South Africa atnearly the same time as Tagore started Shantiniketan, and in 1915 heand his Phoenix Farm students visited Shantiniketan. Tagore's andGandhi’s notions of educational space have much in common, but alsomajor differences. The two men, as has been movingly documented(Bhattacharya, 1999), remained reverent friends and acute mutual


critics until Tagore died, seven years earlier than Gandhi. Gandhi'seducational space was deliberately framed to be more austere, stark,and manualworkbased than Tagore’s. While Tagore favouredcreativity in education, Gandhi favoured productive work and moral,social, and economic selfsufficiency. Both believed in ruraleducational spaces, and, at the same time, the transnational, thecosmopolitan, and the international constantly collided creatively withthe local and the indigenous in their educational spaces and practices. Women were important actors in Tagore's and Gandhi's educationalspaces. In this article, I shall be reading Gandhi's notion and practiceof education through the words of a remarkable actor in the field ofeducation in India in the twentieth century, and a vital femalepresence: the British Quaker educator Marjorie Sykes, who workedboth in Shantiniketan, and then for long years in Gandhi's Sevagram(meaning the village of service), in Wardha in western India.Marjorie Sykes (19051995) analysed and described Gandhi's 'NaiTalim' or Basic Education at Wardha, which started in 1937. Sykeswas educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, took a teacher'sdiploma, and opted for overseas service in India. She came to Madrasin 1928 as a teacher in a local school, the Bentinck School. She livedand worked on in India till 1991. She worked in Shantiniketan in thelast three years of Tagore's life, later translated some of Tagore'sworks, and wrote a biography of him. She was a close and sympatheticobserver of the early years in Sevagram, Wardha, and, invited byGandhi to be a key member of his Basic Education team, became, afterGandhi's death, Principal of his Basic Education Scheme in Wardha. Sykes writes,

My excitement about Gandhiji's ideas had not arisen in a vacuum.It was the natural result of a great deal that had gone before, rightback to my own childhood. We children were expected to help inall the daily chores, the cooking and cleaning of a very simplehome. My father drew a modest salary as headmaster of thevillage school in a poor coalmining community in northernEngland. It was an "ordinary" school, but he was not an"ordinary" teacher. He knew that children learn by making and


doing things, and he spent long hours at home in the eveningpreparing things for them to make and do, while I, his own eldestchild, watched and helped. He showed the school children how tomake cardboard models that really worked railway signals thatmoved up and down, a waterwheel that turned when one pouredfine sand upon it to simulate the water. Real water would not dofor a cardboard wheel, but the principle was the same. So mathsand science were learned, and also manual skill and accuracy.Geography and history, poetry, music, were linked up with thechildren's own experience. Once an assistant teacher came whohad lived in Canada and knew how to make fire by striking aspark in tinder. Father at once arranged a demonstration and thenlet all the children try it for themselves. (Sykes, 1988)

As we see, spaces in progressive education were resonant andinterlinked across countries and social classes; thus Sykes's sympathyfor an Indian radical educationist's emphasis on learning by doing andby using one's hands owes its genesis to observing similar methodsused by her father, teaching in a poor community thousands of milesaway in coalmining northern England. This is utterly unsurprising: though to most people Gandhi and thevillage community in India remain inextricably linked, his earliestexperiments took place in a transnational community in South Africa.Inspired by Ruskin and Tolstoy, his closest collaborators included theGerman Jew, Hermann Kallenbach. By the time he wrote Hind Swaraj,Gandhi formulated powerfully the notion of the village republic, andschools that would combine education with productive, manual, oftencraftbased work. Suspicious of state interference, Gandhi aimed tomake his schools as far as possible selfsupporting financially, and in acontinuum with home. Both Tagore and Gandhi used the resonantmetaphor of the ashram as a partial model for their highly innovative,radically modern schooling: a spiritualised, renovative community. About Segaon (Sevagram), the village where the Wardha BasicEducation activities started, Asha Devi, one of the key members of thefounding team wrote,


It is a most obscure little village of about 700 people, more thanhalf of whom are Harijans. For four or five months in the year itsfields are green, there is work for all, and a brief illusion of beautyand plenty. But for the rest of the year it lies like a speck of dust inthe midst of the bare plains of the Central Provinces, hands idle inevery house. There is no water except from the few dirty wellsjealously guarded by each little caste and subcaste. There are nohills, no trees, no natural playground for children. About 20 of thefamilies have land, the rest are landless labourers, and most ofthem cannot afford to eat even the equivalent of the "C" class dietprovided in the Government jails.(Sykes, 1988)

As a result of the implementation of the Government of India Act, 1935,Indian National Congress ministries (that is, belonging to Gandhi’sparty) came to power in 1937 in several provinces. In April 1938 theHindustani Talimi Sangh opened a training school at Wardha. TheCongress government of the Central Provinces, of which the WardhaDistrict was then a part, was sympathetic, and the old village school wasclosed down in order to give the new experiment the fullest scope.Sykes quotes Gandhiji: Gandhiji wrote his seminal article in Harijan of the 31st July 1937:

"By education I mean an allround drawing out of the best in childand manbody, mind and spirit. Literacy is not the end of educationnor even the beginning. It is only one of the means by which manand woman can be educated. Literacy in itself is no education. Iwould therefore begin the child's education by teaching it a usefulhandicraft and enabling it to produce from the moment it begins itstraining. Thus every school can be made selfsupporting, thecondition being that the State takes over the manufactures of theseschools.”(Sykes, 1988)

Sykes writes that by 1961, the Sevagram experiment stagnated:Why was it that during the next ten years the Sevagram storyseemed to some of its best friends to have come to an end? Why


did they feel that after about 1961 a period of "stagnation" hadbegun, rather than a new and exciting phase of "nonviolentrevolution"? While the Kothari Commission in 1966 paid tributeto the creative ideas embodied in Nai Talim. and, spoke stronglyof the need for its ethical and spiritual ideals to be incorporated inthe education of the nation, nothing significant actuallyhappened. Travesties of the "workexperience" recommended bythe report soon became as common as, at an earlier period, thetravesties of basic crafteducation had been. (Sykes, 1988)

Gandhi was greatly admired by another innovative educatorwriter,Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (18801932), who did accept grants fromthe British government for the school she founded and ran.Educational spaces are multifariously inflected in her work too. As aBengali Muslim woman advocating girls' and women's education, andan educatoradministrator running a school for girls, Rokeya's writingnavigates multiple channels in which her identities as woman, asBengali, as Muslim, and as Indian come together with those of teacher,campaigner, and writer, to build up a compelling case for populareducation for girls; she voices sympathy for emerging nationalmovements, while at the same time giving women's education thedignity of a distinct sphere. In her essay ‘Boligarto’ (‘The Sacrificial Hole’) Rokeya presents ananatomy of unfree, corrupt, feudal Indian ruling classes who aresycophantic to colonialism; in contrast to this are posited in positiveterms women active in rural educational work, sympathetic to theIndian National Congress’s strategy of anticolonial activism based onrural regeneration and reform. ‘Boligarto’ begins thus:

The college was closed for the summer. I was sitting in theveranda. Suddenly I noticed Kamala Didi coming up the stairs,panting, and accompanied by a Muslim woman called JahedaBibi. Kamala Devi is a dedicated Congress worker whosemission was to propagate khadi and the spinning wheel. Shepulled up a chair at once and sitting down, she said, ‘I have won


over a lot of territory… Now let us go to Boligarto.’‘And where can that be?’ I asked.‘My maternal uncle's home is there. He is no more, so it's thebastion of my cousins,’ said Jaheda.‘O fine! Then it'll be easy to spread the message of the spinningwheel,’ I said.‘O no! It's not as easy as you think. The village is quite out ofbounds. Moreover Jaheda is banned from entering it.’‘Why? What has she done?’‘Because she goes about with me and has some education, wearskhadi and takes vegetarian food.’‘Then why go to Boligarto? Since it's the home of Jaheda'scousins, and she herself is banned entry?’‘How can that be? I am Kamala for whom all doors are open.Besides because entry is forbidden, all the more I must enterthere. And you have to go with us.’ (Hossain, 1920)

The feudal lord of the sacrifical hole of Boligarto is Khan BahadurKhatkhate, and his brother Farfare, who are exposed, throughdevastating satire, as sycophants of the British rulers, oppressors ofwomen and peasants, corrupt, and greedy. Khatkhate and Farfare aresatirical, connotative names; ‘Khatkhate’ suggests both ‘dry as a stick’and ‘staccato’; Farfare suggests ‘one who talks too much’ as well as‘shallow and evanescent’. These men are cousins of Jaheda, whoinsists on visiting the benighted village. The purpose of the women’svisit is to lay the groundwork for a movement of awakening there.They find that Farfare and Khatkhate pretend to be devout Muslims,yet eschew the liberal practices of that religion and borrow illiberalones from other religions when it suits them: thus, they will not allowthe remarriage of a young widowed sister, contrary to the sanction thatIslam gives to such remarriage. They will not permit the women intheir family to go out even in a covered car without them performingpenance. They embezzle money from orphanages they run. They areagainst human beings being photographed and yet have no problems ifa photo is taken with British colonial officials. They, of course, opposefemale education.


Published in 1927, Boligarto clearly shows Rokeya’s sympathy withGandhi’s project of regeneration of spinning, weaving, and otherartisanal trades. Spinning coarse cotton cloth, called ‘khadi’ or‘khaddar’ on the spinningwheel became a powerful emblem andpractice in Gandhi’s educational as much as moral and political space.In popular perception a pursuit associated with women and the lowerclasses, spinning indigenous cloth was the most important in the arrayof trades and schemes that Gandhi favoured for regenerating villageIndia. Earlier, when the Indian cotton textile industry dominated thetextile trades of the world, before deindustrialization in the nineteenthcentury, one major source of earnings of upperclass women in Indiawas spinning (Tilly, 1994; Bagchi, 2010). In Boligarto, the hellhole ofa village ruled by despotic, procolonial landlords, is the antithesis ofthe regenerated, radical, innovative rural educational space of Gandhiand Tagore. Rokeya’s own educational and welfarist institutions werelocated in urban India, in Calcutta: she represented the contours of herown educational community and space with great élan in her semiautobiographical novella Padmarag or The Ruby. Rokeya first started a school for girls in Bhagalpur in the province ofBihar, in October 1909, five months after her husband’s death. Whenshe was forced to leave Bhagalpur, she restarted the school in 1910 inCalcutta. Slowly the school grew, so that by the time of her death in1932, it was a fullfledged high school where 75% of the studentspassed the matriculation examination. In 1935, the school began toreceive government aid, and even today it is a wellfunctioninggovernment school in Calcutta, and the most lasting testimony toRokeya’s competence as educationist. In her novella Padmarag ([1924] 2005), Rokeya creates a complexeducational and philanthropic female utopia, complementing herfuturistic dreamvision or utopia, Sultana’s Dream, 1905. Padmaragdescribes a femalefounded and femaleadministered community set incontemporary Bengal, where women from diverse religions, regions,and ethnicities, with unhappy histories of patriarchal and familialoppression, band together with an educative and philanthropic project.Their set of activities ranges from formal education to propagatingcrafts and caring for the sick and the destitute. It offers a series ofpersonal narratives of the women working in the institution. These tales


recount and indict familial and marital oppression, to redress which theinstitution Tarini Bhavan is founded. Rokeya’s community is inhabitedby Hindus, Brahmos, Muslims, and Christians, black women and whitewomen, all suffering from patriarchal oppression, and all needing toreceive and impart refuge and education. The philanthropic institution ‘Tarini Bhavan’ is named after itsfounder DinaTarini Sen, a Brahmo woman. The name is connotative:‘Dinatarini’ means saviour of the distressed’. Literally, ‘tarini’ is aboatsman, who in the metaphorical sense rows the distressed out ofdanger. It is a name infused with the spiritual and the religious, andmany Bengali songs are addressed to God imaged as Dinatarini. Thereis a distinctive plangency to the term: quite often, old women wouldpray to God to steer them across the sea of life to a haven beyond. Tarini is the second wife and then a very young widow of a mucholder barrister. She founds the institution at the age of twentyone inthe bloom of youth, resolving to go against the wishes of relatives byher act. Rokeya too founded her school after her husband’s death, whenshe was still in her twenties, using money which her husband hadbequeathed her explicitly for the purpose of setting up a girls’ school. Tarini Bhavan has a school, a workshop or training institute for adultwomen, a home for widows, and a home for the sick and distressed.The school has both dayscholars and boarders. It is a Society for theAlleviation of Female Suffering that forms the moral, ideological, andinstitutional core of the project. Some of the inhabitants of TariniBhavan are called ‘sisters’, short for ‘sisters of the poor’, wear auniform of saffron or blue, and have no separate rooms: the monasticideal of service and renunciation is thus as present in the institution asit is in its founder’s life. The space that is created in Tarini Bhavan isindeed somewhat like a nunnery or ashram, secluded from themainstream social and familial space that most women occupy, eventhough the workers of Tarini Bhavan, by virtue of their improvingactivities, come into constant contact with the established social milieu.One cannot compartmentalize Tarini Bhavan to any one religion:Christian nunneries, Hindu ashrams, Islamic ideals of the welfarist andgodly community are all synthesized to create a secularized space. Thespace is also both very local, grounded in Calcutta and an urban milieu,while also drawing in women from other races and nationalities, such


as the British. We are shown that law and custom oppress whitewomen in Britain, just as they oppress Hindu, Brahmo, or Muslimwomen in India. Thus, in a sweeping vista on women’s globaloppression, the space of Britain and the space of India, as well as thecapacity of women from many such global spaces to work together ineducating themselves , are collocated,. In the workshop or training institute in Tarini Bhavan, women aretaught bookbinding, spinning, typing, and sewing are taught, sweetsare made to be sold, teacher training is given, is taught, as is nursing:we get a veritable compendium of the various marketable skills forwomen in Rokeya’s time. The women also set out to deliver relief inkind, including through nursing, to places struck by disasters such asfamine or floods. Some of the trainees help in running the home for thesick and distressed, where refugeless poor and handicapped peoplereceive medical attention. The school does not take government grants or sponsorship. Nordoes it accept donations or help from native states pledging allegianceto the British government. Nor are the students in the school taught thekind of colonial history that teaches them to despise their own past andculture. Rokeya’s nationalist and regenerative agenda becomes clearthrough such prescriptions. The pupils are also given an education inall standard subjects, such as mathematics, geography, physical andlife sciences. They are taught to be selfsufficient, and not ‘woodendolls’. In real life, as we have said, the Sakhawat Hossain MemorialSchool did accept government aid. I come now to the chronologically latest among my writers,Jyotirmoyee Devi (18941988), and her postPartition, post1947writings. As India and Pakistan came into being as sovereign entitiesafter partition of British India, writeractivist Jyotirmoyee Devi wroteabout spaces and practices of education, and the agency of women inthis sphere, in Punjab and Bengal. Chronicler of the trauma of thePartitition of India, chronicler of feudal Rajasthan (a province in thewest of India, where the Thar desert lies), polemical feminist writer,deeply sympathetic to genuine spirituality, Jyotirmoyee Devi is at oncea rational and empathetic writer. She was born in Jaipur, one of India’smany princely states, in 1894. Jyotirmoyee’s writing career started


after she returned as a widow, at the age of 25, with six small children,to her parents’ house in Calcutta. She also knew Delhi well. In herwritings, her knowledge of highly semifeudal Rajasthan, urbanBengal, and the city of Delhi gave her work a wide geographical,transregional sweep. She wrote in a whole variety of prose genres.She is famous in particular for her short stories, as piercing as they areluminous. In recent years, she has been receiving much recognition as awriter on the Partition of India (Bagchi and Dasgupta, 2003;MookerjeaLeonard, 2003). In today’s article, I focus on the educational space Devi delineates inher fictional works, Harijan Unnayan Katha, ‘Tales of Development ofHarijans’, and Epar Ganga Opar Ganga (‘The River Churning’).Harijan Unnayan Katha, the author states in her preface, is set againstthe backdrop of Delhi in 194953, though it was originally published inthe periodical Prabasi in 197172. It offers sketches of life in acommunity of lowercaste, Dalit, or Harijan Indians, in particular thesubcaste of Bhangis, who were primarily sweepers and cleaners. Thenode is the Gandhian institution of Balmiki Bhavan, which holdsclasses for adults and children from the Harijan or Dalit community.Traces of Gandhi’s own life are to be found in Jyotirmoyee’s name forthe institution in her work. In 1946, Gandhi decided, to express hissolidarity with ‘untouchables’, to move to a colony of sweepers andcleaners, named the Balmiki Colony, on Reading Road in Delhi.(Gandhi, 2010, pp. 518519). Balmiki was the writer of the Indian Hindu epic, the Ramayana:having been a lowly hunter before becoming a poet, he has beenclaimed as the common ancestor of the ‘Untouchables’: hence thename Balmiki Bhavan. ‘Harijan’, meaning people of god, was theterm Gandhi used to designate India’s lower castes, or socalleduntouchables. The term has now come into disuse, with Dalit, meaningthe downtrodden ones, gaining ascendancy in popularity; Bahujan,meaning the majority, is also popular, as is ‘Dalit Bahujan’. Jyotirmoyee takes us into the everyday life of welfarist institutions inrecently independent India. In Balmiki Bhavan, she shows, in themorning, little girls and boys studying their primers and multiplicationtables. The older ones come with their small brothers and sisters in


their laps, dressed in tattered clothes. Their mothers, many of whomare sweepers and cleaners, come to the Adult Education Centre in theafternoon. The ages of the girls and women range from the teens to theseventies. In the evening, adult education classes are held for men,most of whom are Dalit sweepers and cleaners. Jyotirmoyee tells the story of some of the students, and teachers.She chronicles the shattering of many of Gandhi’s ideals in the handsof his successors. She also holds out a cautiously optimistic message,despite her anatomizing of discriminatory practices. Suchdiscrimination is blatant, for example, when a few of the BalmikiBhavan boy students go to a nearby school, and are denied admission,on the pretext that there are not enough places, though under theConstitution of the newly independent Republic of India they cannotbe denied entry. The boys find space in a Christian missionary schoolthrough the help of a sympathetic teacher. Meanwhile, two girls fromthe Bhangi community studying in the Balmiki Bhavan centre areprepared by the teachers there privately for the matriculationexamination, and succeed. Sukhmatiya, one of the girls, trains andworks as a nurse. Her role model is Sant Kaur, one of the BalmikiBhavan teachers, who one day divulges that she is also Bhangi andDalit, though she and her family had converted to Sikhism, a religionfounded by Nanak which had protested against the caste discriminationpracticed in Hinduism; however, Sikhism could not keep itself free ofcaste prejudices or discrimination, as Sant Kaur’s lifestory will alertus to. Sant Kaur tells the story of how, in her teens, on hearing herbeautiful singing, an established, prosperous, handsome Sikh man hadnearly wanted to marry her: but on learning that Sant Kaur was lowercaste in origin, matters did not progress. Sant Kaur findsempowerment, however, through the education she gets in a Gandhianstudy centre in Delhi. She becomes a teacher herself. And shediscusses with her uppercaste colleagues, after divulging her casteorigins, whether religions can truly level differences and hierarchiesbetween human beings: their prognosis is somewhat pessimistic. Inparticular, they speak about the great Dalit leader and constitutionmaker of India, B.R. Ambedkar, who, with family and followers,converted to Buddhism in 1956, finding Hinduism too oppressive.


Gandhi and Ambedkar both worked against untouchability and castediscrimination; however, Gandhi was far more paternalist than themilitant Ambedkar, who was himself a Dalit, unlike the middle,tradingcaste Gandhi. Ambedkar was also far more critical andskeptical of the capacity of Hinduism to deliver justice to‘untouchables’, unlike Gandhi. But Gandhi, while aware of hisdifferences with Ambedkar, also had enough sense of justice todemand a key role for Ambedkar in framing the Indian constitution. Itwas out of a tussle and negotiation between Ambedkar and Gandhi inthe early 1930s (with Ambedkar wanting separate electorates for‘untouchables’, and Gandhi seeing them as an integral part of Hindus)that the ‘untouchables’ secured reservation of seats in governmentposts and institutions, something which was rewritten and expandedinto the Indian constitution. Sukhmatiya, while she works as a trained nurse, finds that it is nolonger possible for her to marry Ramsukh, with whom her marriagehad been informally fixed by the families since birth. Ramsukh, alsoone of Balmiki Bhavan’s students, had to drop out of school due to hisfather’s illness and death. He in turn goes on his own journey, as hefinds space in the Ramakrishna Mission, one of the reformist groups inHinduism, founded by Swami Vivekananda, which tried to eschewcaste discrimination. Sukhmatiya, through Sant Kaur’s efforts,eventually marries the latter’s Sikh brother—this despite oppositionfrom some sections of Sukhmatiya’s Delhi community. Sant Kaur’s own life narrative forms part of Jyotirmoyee’s belief inIndia as a vibrantly multireligious space, and her faith, like that ofmany others, that a school and college education would play a key rolein harnessing this diverse, tolerant ethos into a new democracy andcitizenry that would nonetheless be based on the strands of opennessand tolerance. But this faith is enunciated against a wider context ofbitter denunciation of all those who are strangling the abilities andaspirations of ordinary Indians:

India, independent thanks to British alms and courtesy, has on theone hand opened its eyes through powerloving, consumptionloving peddlers of rhetoric, while on the other hand tens ofmillions of Indians… such as the adivasis and pariahs and


Barnita Bagchi Writing Educational Spaces96

farmers and labourers… are spending their days in pain…. Andwith them have gathered the refugees of Partition. (Devi, 1994, p.87)

Perhaps the most famous such refugee in Jyotirmoyee’s fiction isSutara Dutta, lecturer in Yajnaseni College, Delhi, in the 1950s,heroine of Epar Ganga Opar Ganga, (The River Churning,’ 1966). Hereducation and her role as educator enable her to find a space of herown in a stifling existence. Sutara had been rescued by a Muslimfamily in East Bengal during riots; this adoptive family cared for herwhen her own family was killed. Once returned to her ‘own’, that is,natal Hindu family in West Bengal, Sutara is viewed as a defiledpariah, particularly by the older women in her extended family. Shetoo is sent off to a Christian missionary school, then to college, andthen moves to Delhi to teach history. Jyotirmoyee criticizes masculinist, patriarchal chronicling of storiesand histories, of wars recounted as victories or defeat by men andpowers that be, who try to erase the gutwrenching loss of lives, trauma,women’s experience of sexual violence, displacement, and the loss ofloved ones. It is in Sutara’s classroom, in a formal, degreegranting,governmentaided college, that groups of lively young women,described as being from diverse regions of India, critically discusswhat gets passed down and taught. Sutara’s students only get to learnthe history of national movements in India till 1888. The studentsclamour for more recent history, from their own regions such asGujarat, Bengal, Punjab, and Madras. Jyotirmoyee says, ‘They find itunbelievable that the history of (Indian) independence would notinclude the names of people from their regions.’ (Devi, 2001, p. 98).The word I have translated as ‘region’ is ‘desh’, which we could alsotranslate as ‘land’ ‘country’ or even ‘nation’. India is a vastlycomposite nation in Jyotirmoyee’s oeuvre. Sutara then says to herstudents:

‘History is no small matter. It is not written by one person. All ofyou should study well, and then write the history of your ownnation. How about that? And history doesn’t get written only onpages of paper; victors blacken the histories of their vanquished


enemies; they keep such histories in the darkness of truth. Andwhere do we find written in history the annals of those who areweak and in difficulty?’… And…Sutara Dutta did notfinish…With bright eyes, several students asked, ‘And what wereyou going to say?’ Sutara remained silent for a little while andsaid, ‘You are not yet old enough to understand the matter I wasgoing to speak of. Alright, now finish the task set for the classtoday.’ (Devi, 2001, p. 98)

What follows is the novel, which offers us the story of Sutara’s life. Fictionsteps in where official history cannot tread. It is noteworthy, though, that it isprecisely the space offered by formal education, by a college where citizensfrom all parts of India come, that offers a locus for women to reflect onhistory and think critically about it.

ConclusionRokeya and Jyotirmoyee all wrote and believed in formal education asa means of empowerment; they wrote imaginatively about educationalspaces encompassing the local, regional, the national, and the global.Rokeya and Jyotirmoyee did not receive any formal education, yet theformer devoted her life to building up a school for girls, while thelatter repeatedly in her writings stressed the value of girls and womenreceiving an education in schools and colleges. They also believed innonformal and informal processes of education. They did not whollysubscribe to Gandhi’s views on education: while Gandhi was a boldand radical thinker on education, he advocated a craftsbased, villagebased, model of education; and advocated Indians boycotting andwithdrawing from the government schools and colleges in BritishIndia. Rokeya or Jyotirmoyee, and indeed Tagore did not adhere tothese views of Gandhi. He wrote, when Gandhi asked students toboycott governmentsponsored educational institutions in the early1920s, ‘The idea of noncooperation is political asceticism. Ourstudents are bringing their offering of sacrifices to what? Not to afuller education but to noneducation. It has at its back a fierce joy ofannihilation which at its best is asceticism, and at its worst is that orgy

Barnita Bagchi Writing Educational Spaces98

of frightfulness in which human nature, losing faith in the basic realityof normal life, finds a disinterested delight in an un meaningdevastation as has been shown in the late war...’ (Bhattacharya, 1999,p. 57). That is to say, while seeing the positive empowering role ofradical, progressive, anticolonial educational spaces for women’slives, they nonetheless believed that the space of formal education,including the statesupported one, could open up to all, in a way thatcould empower hitherto deprived sections such as women and lowercastes. Trees, ashrams and tapovans (forest communities), formal schoolsand colleges, rural and urban spaces, connections between farawaycountries such as Britain and South Africa, women and men as actors:the diversities and heterogeneities of educational spaces in twentiethcentury India do not constitute a simple, linear, or reductionistnarrative of educational ‘forward momentum’: they are writings thatshow the simultaneous unfolding of ideas around the local, theregional, the national, the transnational, and the international, withcomplex valorization of each of these axes.

HSE Social and Education History, 1 (1) 99

ReferencesBagchi, A. K. (2010). India and Colonial Economy. Delhi: Oxford

University Press.Bandopadhyay, B. (1969). The Song of the Road. (T. Mukherji and

T.W. Clark, Trans.). London: Allen and Unwin. Original workpublished 1929.

Bagchi, J., & Dasgupta, S. (2003). The Trauma and the Triumph:Gender and Partition in Eastern India. Kolkata: Stree.

Bhattacharya, S. (Ed.) (1999). The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters andPapers Between Gandhi and Tagore 19151941. New Delhi:National Book Trust, 1999.

Devi, J. (1994). Jyotirmoyee Devir Rachana Samkalan. Ed.Gourkishor Ghosh. Kolkata: Dey’s.

Devi, J. (2001). Jyotirmoyee Devir Rachana Samkalan. Ed. Subir RayChaudhuri. Vol. 1. Kolkata: Dey’s.

Gandhi, R. (2010). Gandhi: The Man, His People, and the Empire.London: Haus Publishing.

MookerjeaLeonard, D. (2003). Disenfranchised Bodies: JyotirmoyeeDevi’s Writings on the Partition. Genders 38. Retrieved 5September, 2011 from the World Wide Web:http://genders.org/g38/g38_leonard.html

Hossain, R.S. (2005) Sultana’s Dream and Padmarag: Two FeministUtopias. New Delhi: Penguin

Hossain, R.S. (2002, 20 July). Boligarto. (T. Gupta., Trans.).Retrieved 5 September, 2011 from the World Wide Web:http://www.parabaas.com/translation/database/translations/stories/gBoligarto.html.

Sykes, M. (1988). The Story of Nai Talim Fifty years of Education atSevagram, 19371987. Retrieved 5 September, 2011 from theWorld Wide Web:home.iitk.ac.in/~amman/soc748/sykes_story_of_nai_talim.html

Tagore, R. (1933). My School. (lecture delivered in America, publishedin Personality, London: MacMillan), Retrieved 5 September,2011 from the World Wide Web:http://vidyaonline.net/readings/pr23.pdf.

Tagore, R. (2004, 1 December). The Parrot's Tale. (P.B. Pal, Trans.).Retrieved 5 September, 2011, from the World Wide Web:http://www.parabaas.com/translation/database/translations/stories/gRabindranath_parrot.html. Original work published in 1918.

Tilly L. (1994). Connections. American Historical Review, 99(1), 117.

Tschurenev, J. (2010, February). Colonial Lessons: The Rise ofModern Schooling and the Monitorial Method in India andBritain. Paper presented at international workshop ‘Learning inthe Past, Research Agendas for the Future: Connecting Historiesof Education, 17002000,’ coorganized by InternationalStanding Conference for the History of Education and Instituteof Development Studies Kolkata.


Barnita Bagchi is Assistant Professor in Literary Studies of theDepartment of Modern Languages, Utrecht University,Netherlands.Contact Address: Department of Modern Languages, UtrechtUniversity, Trans 10, Room 2.21, Utrecht 3512 JK, Netherlands.Email address: [email protected]


Hipatia de Alejandría. Un Equipo Plural de Científicas Desvela laVerdad sobre la Primera Mujer de CienciaMarc Sampé Compte1

1) Universitat Rovira i VirgiliDate of publication: February 23rd, 2012

To cite this article: Sampé, M. (2012). Hipatia de Alejandría. Un equipoplural de científicas desvela la verdad sobre la primera mujer de ciencia.Social and Education History, 1(1), 101103. doi: 10.4471/hse.2012.05To link this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.4471/hse.2012.05




Reviews (I)García, C., Ruíz, L., Puigvert, L., & Rué, L. (2009) Hipatia deAlejandría. Un Equipo Plural de Científicas Desvela la Verdad sobre laPrimera Mujer de Ciencia. Barcelona: Hipatia.La vida pública y privada de Hipatia de Alejandría ha sido tema dedebate de múltiples personas expertas en filosofía, historia, ciencias, etc.durante siglos, así como sus aportaciones científicas. La consideradaprimera mujer de ciencia ha dado mucho que hablar y tampoco hadejado indiferente a las cuatro autoras del libro que presentamos. Desdela diversidad de sus campos profesionales, nos acercan a esta figuraclásica de la forma más objetiva y científica posible, desmontando losmitos y leyendas creados a su alrededor, tanto durante su vida comodesde su muerte, por una sociedad dominada por el pensamientomachista. Hija del filósofo Teón, profesor de la célebre Biblioteca deAlejandría, deslumbró por sus aportaciones científicas e incluso superóen conocimientos a su padre. Sin embargo, pocos son los documentos dela época que se conservan en relación a su figura y toda la literaturaposterior se ha basado en invenciones y ocurrencias de personas a lasque, mujeres como Hipatia, triunfadoras en terreno considerado dehombres, les han generado envidias o han representado ser un obstáculopara su camino hacia el poder, ya sea político o religioso. El libro que presentamos se basa en la investigación elaborada desdelos diferentes ámbitos científicos que afectan a la vida personal eintelectual de Hipatia. La obra, dividida en cuarto apartados, estáintroducida por una breve biografía de la filósofa alejandrina.


102 Marc Sampé Hipatia de Alejandría

En el primer capítulo se hace un recorrido por la Alejandría de laépoca, una ciudad abierta al mundo dónde convergían culturas yreligiones de forma armoniosa. Allí se debatieron temas querevolucionarían el mundo como los orígenes de la teoría del movimientoheliocéntrico de la Tierra y surgieron ideas que cambiarían para siemprela forma de entender la vida. Alejandría era la cuna de la ciencia dóndetenían lugar los encuentros, debates y diálogos de los intelectuales que,debido a la atracción que tenían por la creación e intercambio deconocimiento, acudían a la ciudad desde las diferentes regiones delMediterráneo, aún incluso de más lejos. En un segundo apartado se hace una breve aproximación a ladefinición del amor platónico. Durante muchos años, la dominación delsexo masculino en nuestras sociedades ha deformado ese concepto y hahecho ver al mundo una Hipatia sólo desde dos posibles perspectivas.Hablar de ella como alguien que fue virgen toda la vida por el hecho dehaber rechazado a uno de sus seguidores y por ser partidaria de las ideasneoplatónicas o para desvirtuar sus aportaciones, hablar de alguiencomo alguien promiscuo. Ese interés por su vida sexual, que nunca haexistido por otros científicos o filósofos hombres, no puede ser otro quedesvirtuar sus aportaciones a la ciencia. Las autoras creen que,independientemente de la postura y vida personal que Hipatia decidieratener ante el sexo, lo que importa no son sus relaciones o no relacionessino sus contribuciones a la filosofía y a la ciencia. De ahí, surge undebate sobre las interpretaciones que se han hecho del amor platónico ysu relación con la violencia de género. Según los relatos de Hipatia, elamor verdadero o el amor ideal no puede ser nunca materializado. Unamala interpretación de esa afirmación lleva a crear falsas expectativasen la búsqueda de un amor inexistente, conduciendo directamente a laspersonas a la frustración y posterior fracaso de la relación. Eso, noslleva a la definición de un amor romántico basado en la violencia y en ladesigualdad, no en la búsqueda de un ideal. El tercer capítulo narra la relación que Hipatia tuvo con las diferentesreligiones influyentes en la Alejandría de los siglos VI y V. Según lahistoria, Hipatia ha sido tildada de anticristiana, hecho que ha facilitadofomentar la imagen de incompatibilidad entre personas de ciencia yreligión.

103HSE Historia Social y de la Educación, 1(1)

Aquí se muestran diferentes ejemplos de grandes personajes quedesmienten esa teoría, desde Copérnico hasta Stephen Hawking, y sepresentan debates actuales como la utilización de embriones humanos yde sus células para la medicina regenerativa, que demuestran comociencia y religión van cogidas de la mano, son dos caras de la mismamoneda que se necesitan para el progreso de la humanidad. Finalmente, el libro termina con un símil de lo que hoy en día podríanser las Hipatias del siglo XXI, mujeres luchadoras en un imperiodominado por los hombres, difamadas en entornos de silencio,fanatismo, envidias y ansias de poder. Una primera parte presenta algrupo de mujeres RAWA, Revolutionary Assotiation of the Women ofAfganistan, que han sufrido y continúan sufriendo las persecuciones delos fundamentalismos religiosos. Por otra parte, se habla del Grupo deMujeres SAFO, que sufren la persecución en occidente por haber roto elsilencio e investigado sobre la violencia de género en las universidadesespañolas. La rigurosidad con la que se presenta el libro nos ofrece unaoportunidad única para conocer de más cerca la que ha estadoconsiderada la primera mujer de ciencia. Las autoras desvelan unaHipatia veraz, actual, basada en las pocas fuentes de sus coetáneos yotras aportaciones fundamentadas y sobre todo desde una visiónfemenina que, sintiéndose como un reflejo de la propia protagonista,hacen que poco a poco se produzca un avance hacia una sociedad mejory más igualitaria.

Marc Sampé Compte, Universitat Rovira i [email protected]


Free Women (Mujeres Libres). Voices and Memories for a LibertarianFutureEmilia Aiello Cabrera1

1) Unversitat Autònoma de BarcelonaDate of publication: February 23rd, 2012

To cite this article: Aiello, E. (2012). Free Women (Mujeres Libres). Voicesand Memories for a Libertarian Future. Social and Education History, 1(1),104106. doi: 10.4471/hse.2012.06To link this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.4471/hse.2012.06




Reviews (II)Ruiz, L. (2010). Free Women (Mujeres Libres). Voices and Memoriesfor a Libertarian Future. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 104pp. ISBN:9789460910876.A través de los testimonios de Pepita Carpena y Sara Berenguer, dosmujeres anarquistas que participaron en el movimiento libertarioMujeres Libres (1936), la autora explica el papel fundamental quedesempeñaron las mujeres trabajadoras durante la guerra civil españolay la revolución social de Julio de 1936. Las Mujeres Libres vieron en larevolución social una oportunidad para conseguir su emancipación yliberación de la triple esclavitud que sufrían por ser trabajadoras,mujeres, y por no tener formación académica, y también para participaractivamente en la construcción de una nueva sociedad. Como organización libertaria, Mujeres Libres rechazaba lasjerarquías y utilizaba la democracia directa y el diálogo igualitario comomecanismo para llegar al consenso. El movimiento incluía mujeres muydiferentes y mayoritariamente no académicas, motivo por el cual habíansido excluidas de los espacios públicos de debate y decisión. Paraerradicar esta problemática Mujeres Libres defendía que erafundamental que ellas accediesen a la educación y a la cultura, unaspecto básico de la lucha social por su emancipación y la de todos lostrabajadores. De acuerdo a este principio y con la finalidad de acabarcon ‘la esclavitud de la ignorancia’, de la cual eran víctimas, laeducación dialógica cultural de la clase trabajadora fue una de susprioridades. Una de las prácticas de más éxito de Mujeres Libres fueron lastertulias dialógicas literarias. En ellas, mujeres que no habían accedido a


105HSE Historia Social y de la Educación, 1(1)

la educación formal leían clásicos universales y reflexionabancríticamente sobre éstos. Las tertulias eran un espacio de creación desentido para mujeres a las cuales nunca antes se les había dado laoportunidad de participar en actividades educativas y culturales. Contodo, este libro documenta cómo las Mujeres Libres, académicas y noacadémicas, creaban redes de solidaridad y apoyo muto entre ellas, ycómo todas juntas llevaban a la práctica su compromiso detransformación social. Ruiz enfatiza también la reivindicación del movimiento libertario deque las escuelas fuesen espacios abiertos a toda la comunidad ygestionados por ésta. En este sentido, la autora reflexiona sobre lainfluencia que tuvo en la educación libertaria la 'Escuela Moderna' deFrancesc Ferrer i Guardia. Ésta no sólo impulsó la renovación ydemocratización del sistema educativo español, sino que también fueuna aportación científica de gran relevancia a la educación del mundoentero y tuvo un gran impacto en las mujeres que posteriormenteconstituirían Mujeres Libres. Otro tema al cual se hace referencia en el libro es la posición deMujeres Libres en el debate sobre el feminismo. La autora explicaporqué ellas no se consideraban feministas, sino ‘femeninas’. Y es queMujeres Libres ya en su época veían como las feministas quedominaban el debate eran mujeres burguesas, que desconocían lasnecesidades reales de las trabajadoras no académicas. Éstas últimas eran“las otras mujeres”, tomando la autora la definición de Lidia Puigvert1,aquellas que por su baja condición social, origen cultural, falta deestudios etc., a menudo su voz ha quedado silenciada. El feminismodefendido por los intelectuales del momento abogaba que una mujer conideas libertarias tenía que alejarse de las formas que le asociaban con eltipo de ‘mujer tradicional’, y rechazar la feminidad ya que éstaimplicaba prácticas que habían sido creadas por valores patriarcales. Esa esto a lo que las Mujeres Libres se oponían, sosteniendo que todastenían que sentirse libres para elegir cómo querían vestir y con quienquerían estar. Este último aspecto era otra de sus reivindicaciones: ladefensa del amor libre como una forma de relación entre las personasbasada en el muto acuerdo, en los sentimientos de igualdad y en lalibertad.

106 Emilia Aiello Free Woman (Mujeres Libres)

En definitiva, en este libro Laura Ruiz documenta cómo MujeresLibres lucharon activamente por la emancipación de la mujer y lasuperación de todas las desigualadas sociales. Mujeres Libres ha tenidouna enorme influencia en otros movimientos sociales y democráticosactuales que reivindican el acceso de todos y todas a una educaciónlibre, igualitaria y dialógica. Reflejo de esto son prácticas como Mil yuna tertulia literarias en el mundo; el proyecto educativo deComunidades de Aprendizaje; y la defensa por parte de las ‘otrasmujeres’ de un feminismo inclusivo, del feminismo dialógico quecondena la violencia de género, practica el amor libre y reivindica quelas voces de las mujeres trabajadoras sean escuchadas y incluidas entodos los ámbitos de la vida social.

Emilia Aiello Cabrero, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spainmariaemilia.aiello@ecampus.uab.cat

Notas1 Puigvert, L. (2001) Las Otras Mujeres. Barcelona: El Roure.

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