Changing Meanings of Public Education in Argentina. A genealogy. Angela Inés Oría Humanities ...

355 Pages·2014·2.07 MB·English

by  Angie Oria

Changing Meanings of Public Education in Argentina.
A genealogy.

Angela Inés Oría

Humanities and Social Science

Institute of Education, University of London

A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
(PhD)
September 2013
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Abstract

This thesis explores the changing meanings of ‘public’ education and its
process of construction. More specifically, I focus on how Argentine
education governance resulted from the meaning policy-makers attached to
‘the public’ at a given juncture, how such meaning evolved over time without
a corresponding change in governance, and how there seems not to be
within public discourse any significant questioning of this divergence
between rhetoric and actual structures. I explore early and current
discourses which used and defined ‘public education’, and analyse how these
paradigmatic definitions shaped policy and constrained practice. The
historical ‘junctures’ addressed in this thesis are firstly, the period of pre-
institutionalisation of the Argentine education system, focussing especially
on the seminal figure of Domingo F. Sarmiento. Secondly, the actual
consolidation of the ‘official’ version of ‘state-public’ education, mainly
achieved during Jose Ramos Mejia’s administration of the National
Education Council, and over and against alternative discourse regimes, such
as that emanating from the anarchist circles. The third period explored in
this thesis is the contemporary. ‘Common sense’ definitions regarding the
‘public’ nature of ‘public’ education are breaking and the discursive space is
opening. Newly admitted voices and versions of schooling seem to be
emerging as a result of new understandings of the meaning of what
constitutes ‘the public’. However, are these signs of structural reform? Is
there any significant questioning within state-public education of its own
forms of governance? The reconstruction of the Argentine educational past
can be used as a framework for thinking about the reconstruction of its
present. I deploy ‘Genealogy’, as understood within the writings of Michel
Foucault, as my research strategy. The thesis is organised into seven
Chapters. The first are introductory and subsequently I develop a detailed
analysis of the varying positions of the public within different discursive
paradigms. Finally, I offer some conclusions.
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Declaration

I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own work. I am
responsible for all the research and analyses submitted in this thesis.
Except where specified or implied in references to other publications, the
work reported is original. This thesis has not been previously submitted for
a higher degree at this or any other institution of higher education. The
word length of this thesis is 79.384 words, excluding endnotes.

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Table of Contents
Declaration..................................................................................................................3

Introduction................................................................................................................7

Main theme and arguments..........................................................................................7

Chapter structure............................................................................................................12

Theoretical approach....................................................................................................14

Chapter One: Overview of the changing meanings of public
education in Argentina.........................................................................................19

Introduction.......................................................................................................................19

An overview.......................................................................................................................19

Historical background..............................................................................................20

A site for the public within the education system..........................................27

Struggles towards defining ‘public education’...............................................30

The public blurred......................................................................................................36

Chapter Two: Conceptual Framework and Method................................42

Defining ‘The Public’......................................................................................................42

Structural Transformation.....................................................................................42

Recovering and broadening ‘the public’ within the social.........................57

After Habermas ...........................................................................................................64

New perspectives in education...............................................................................73

Genealogy and the Writing of History....................................................................75

The genealogical method..........................................................................................76

Part One. The historical layers of meaning embedded in ‘public
education’...................................................................................................................86

Chapter Three: A site for the public within the education system.
Domingo F. Sarmiento’s vision of ‘Popular Education’..........................91

Introduction.......................................................................................................................91

The historical sources and texts...............................................................................96

Displacing views..............................................................................................................99

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‘Popular Education’......................................................................................................112

Programmatic Centralisation..............................................................................114

Administrative Decentralisation........................................................................119

State and education in the 1850’s...........................................................................128

Society and education in the 1850’s.......................................................................133

Education in the 1870’s and beyond......................................................................141

Historical Revisionism................................................................................................147

Conclusion........................................................................................................................153

Chapter Four: State education over and against other alternatives.
José M. Ramos Mejía’s vision of a ‘National state’ education system
.......................................................................................................................................157

Introduction.....................................................................................................................157

The historical sources and texts.............................................................................160

The concept of ‘the multitude’.................................................................................166

A revearsal of ‘public’ education............................................................................173

‘National Education’.....................................................................................................181

Programmatic and administrative centralisation.....................................193

Conclusion........................................................................................................................202

Chapter Five: A counter public education system. Julio Barcos’
anarchist perspective on public education...............................................205

Introduction.....................................................................................................................205

The historical sources and texts.............................................................................206

A counter-public sphere.............................................................................................208

Anarchism and education..........................................................................................216

Barcos’ anarchist counter-discourse....................................................................222

The role of the people...............................................................................................223

Challenging State Monopoly.................................................................................228

Challenging homogeneity.......................................................................................233

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The idea of Reform....................................................................................................236

Programmatic and administrative decentralisation.................................239

Conclusion........................................................................................................................244

Part two. Contemporary Discourse Paradigms.......................................249

Chapter Six: New sites, voices and versions of public education.
New Governance?.................................................................................................251

Introduction.....................................................................................................................251

New discourse paradigms..........................................................................................252

The local debate.............................................................................................................267

The reforms of the 1990s.........................................................................................268

Recent Reform.............................................................................................................277

An Open debate for the New National Law of Education.........................288

Conclusion........................................................................................................................297

Chapter Seven: On Concepts and Governance........................................301

Introduction.....................................................................................................................301

A Comparison of Discourses and Governance..................................................302

Popular Education...................................................................................................304

Anarchist Education................................................................................................307

National Education..................................................................................................310

The contemporary Paradigm. Continuities and Discontinuities..........314

Public opinion and Contemporary Reform........................................................317

Towards a Public governance of Education. Policy proposals and
research topics...............................................................................................................320

Bibliography...........................................................................................................330

Endnotes...................................................................................................................346

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Introduction

Main theme and arguments

This thesis explores the changing meanings of ‘public’ education and
its process of construction. More specifically, I focus on how Argentine
education governance resulted from the meaning policy-makers attached to
‘the public’ at a given juncture, how such meaning evolved over time without
a corresponding change in governance structures, and how and why there
seems not to be within public discourse any significant questioning of such a
divergence.

I address three historical junctures. Although often neglected by
Argentine historiography, the period of pre-institutionalisation of the
Argentine education system is of an extraordinary historical interest, since
it shows the definition of ‘public education’ in Argentina was not an
inevitable road towards a State Centralised Public Education System
(SIPCE). Additionally, it is the period when Domingo F. Sarmiento
published his educational writings and was active in local politics.
Sarmiento is a paradigmatic figure in Argentine history. As such, his name
is frequently deployed as a source of legitimacy for varied education policy
initiatives. However, his particular definition of ‘popular’ education, in
which this key term appears to be used interchangeably with ‘public’, as
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well as the policy design attached to such conceptualisation, are rarely
addressed in public discourse. This thesis turns its attention to this issue.

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the state
became stronger and increasingly aware of its power to advance into new
areas of policy. However, no very clear models for action existed, and other
‘publics’ concerned with social policy debated not only the legitimacy of state
activity but also its organisational form. On the issue of education, their
disagreements over the nature of public organisations revealed fundamental
value conflicts and alternative visions of social development. A plurality of
discourses struggled to prevail as dominant definitions of public education.
However, at the turn of the century, ‘public’ education was widely
understood to mean a system of schooling provided, financed and managed
by the state.

Educational historiography has contributed towards legitimising this
assumption; in part, due to the fact that most works on educational policy
take Education Law No. 1420 (1884) as a starting point of Argentine
educational history and thus leave behind earlier events (Zanotti 1981;
Cucuzza 1995; Carli 2002; Filmus 2003; Tedesco 2003). Leading
intellectuals such as Adriana Puiggrós, whose eight-volume History of
Education in Argentina is compulsory for any student or researcher in the
field, illustrates the peculiarity of Argentine educational historiography.
The first volume of the series begins by saying: ‘In the course of this study,
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we have constructed a series of categories that reveal non-recorded, denied
or neglected meanings in the classic History of Education (…) Events which
contain elements that distinguish themselves from the dominant model (…)
traces of a reservoir of popular-democratic alternatives to the
institutionalised education…’ (Puiggrós 1990: 36). The study in fact
accomplishes this aim very well and there is plenty to acknowledge from
this contribution. However, the subject matter of this compendium of
history is explicitly subsequent to the sanction of the Education Law No.
1420 (1884). Incredibly therefore she omits a place for Sarmiento who is the
key figure who articulates a vision for modern public-popular educational
reform. The history of Argentine education is formed within these texts. I
thus study the historical consolidation of public-state education over and
against alternative discourse paradigms, such as existed within and around
for example anarchist associations. This classical version of public education
remained fairly stable for about a hundred years.

At the other end of this history a new wave of reform processes have
been occurring in Argentina since the sixties, always applying to
substantive aspects of schooling but never reviewing the system’s structural
forms of governance. State policy is embedded in mechanisms of sectorial
pressure, too often affecting the distribution of quality public education for
all (Gvirtz 2009). This results in the unequal supply of resources and
educational opportunities. Following Cunill Grau, it seems the state
continues to be the legitimate provider of ‘public’ education, in spite of an
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increasing ‘depublification’ of its administration (Cunill Grau 1997). I
suggest this form of political practice is ideologically sustained in the
discourse that equates ‘state’ education with ‘public’ education, benefitting
from the normative value of the term ‘public’. Within this context, the
meaning of ‘public’ education is being diminished, and structural
transformation in favour of a democratic state-public education system is
also being constrained.

A few contemporary voices do note the substantial difference between
the nature of ‘state’ and ‘public’ education and question the extent to which
‘Is public education public?’ (Fernandez Enguita 2001). Do public schools
serve the public interest? Are their public(s) a priority or are they
subordinate to non-public interests? How are local public(s) positioned
within the broad public sphere? I pay particular attention to the analyses of
governance structures, the location of power and the arenas for critique and
participation in policy design and administration.

More generally, beginning in the early 1990s, efforts were geared
towards redefining the role of the state in education. Around the world
reform advocates attempted to realign popular thinking about the common
conceptions of ‘public’ education, since they saw the classical definition as
too narrow. In Argentina, the Federal Law of Education passed in 1993
reflected this discursive shift: ‘public’ education turned to include both state
and private schools. However, more recently, Argentina passed a New
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