Las Escuelas privadas en la provincia de Huelva, 1902-1936

Resumo

In the educational arena, one of the tension focal points still unresolved at present Is the one belonging to the relationship between the state school and the private (Independent) school. Supporters of each option take part in a passionate debate with positions essentially sustained by religious, political and social arguments due to the lack of studies that make possible the understanding of the genesis and development of the private (independent) school and enable their proper educational treatment. Consequently, it has been determined to follow the historical development of configuration of a national state and private education system together with the concept of academic freedom, guarantor of, among others, the freedom of establishment of centres, at least from the doceanista liberalism to the dawn of the Civil War in a matrix triangle whose vertices are determined in each historical period by the governmental ideology, the powerful action of the Catholic Church and the always scarce economic funds devoted to instruction. The study follows the methodology of traditional historical research trying to interpret the events based on historical documents. The starting point can not be other than the Royal Decree of 1st July 1902, a document that functions as a state inspection instrument of private (independent) schools that had traditionally been beyond its control and the consequent documentation of more than a hundred education centres applying for the opening and operation procedures directed to the Literary University of Seville. They are a primal source of information with regards to teaching charts (subjects, offices and scientific equipment) and affiliation documents (certificates of good behaviour and residence) among others, including the morality and hygiene conditions where they were working, essential for the approval of the establishment. In those historical moments, the necessary educational reform in terms of education laws, curricula, contents...etc, gives way to the arm wrestle, state-controlled on the one hand, confessional on the other, for the political and ideological control of the school. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the city of Huelva reaches high demographic and economic indices largely due to the mining activity. Thus, the population necessities are translated, under the premise of improving public services, sometimes in private hands, in a higher demand for water, food markets and schools among others. In 1901 the Civil Governor will propose to the City Council a major remodelling of the water supply, it urges to design an appropriate network for providing drinking water to the population. This concern is joined shortly after, in summertime, by the building work of the new food market that will be paralysed due to problems with the metallic structure of the roof. With regards to schools, not rarely educational approaches will remain in the background, noticing mainly the costs involving subsidies, school fees, building work, salary payments...in a diverse school map that accomodates the state elementary school - the national, the Catholic, the secular school and a secondary school. Other problems that concern the City Council are the proffesional begging, which will be studied by the Charity Committee, and the price reduction of prime necessity goods, aspects of a society in rapid growth, The study of the private elementary school requires the establishment of chronological frames. In the first one, spanning from the beginning of the century until 1923, is patent the �autonomous� development of religious schools taking advantage of pacts with the Church, political confrontations, beneficial administrative procedures, at least in terms of qualifications, or the apathy that accompanied these issues. With Primo de Rivera, the restoration of the Royal Decree of 1st July 1902 and the proliferation of elementary and secondary schools of religious congregations and religious high schools. The original approach of the unified school thanks to the Republic and its lay and secular plan will culminate in provisions that will dictate the abolition of subsidies to religious schools, the seizure of their buildings and the dissapearance of some schools. The non-official school of Huelva forms a complex and varied mosaic. Together with the school of the mine emerged from 1873 with the arriving of foreign capital for the exploitation of mineral farms and the Evangelical school, so bound to it and a few non-religious private schools, secular and rationalist tolerated and closely monitored, in the capital and the province, by the servants of the Catholic Church. Together with a few schools for the children of labourers, primary and secondary schools, guarantors of a quality education for the burgeoning middle class and elementary and secondary schools of religious orders, high schools and religious congregations, that establish themselves in the capital and in developed provincial localities to offer besides a quality education, a charity one for the most deprived people, it becomes clear the importance of the Catholic school, core of the education system and this is obvious for two reasons: because of the growing number of established primary and secondary schools, and the growing colonisation of their teachings in the curriculum, not forgetting the inspector role they play in the other schools. It remains to mention private home-schools, the most numerous ones, which are scattered throughout the geography of Huelva, mainly for girls if we look into their management and customers, and that hardly survive with meagre payments or stingy subsidies from Town Councils in exchange of enrolling a certain number of poor pupils, relieving in that way the embarrasing school enrolment lists. The school map should be completed with the educational and social work of Manuel Siurot in his schools of the Sagrado Corazón de Jesús, transmitter of the Manjon and French School pedagogies, real capital educational model that currently endures. This paper finishes noticing the immediate leading figures in the educational process: teachers and pupils. Dividing the chosen period in four decades, the qualifications and duties of teachers are estudied in each of them, referencing to the curricuium and, when data allows it, notice aspects such as marital status, origin, age and number of teachers as well as the educational provision and attendance standards of state schools, private (independent) schoois, sponsored schools and subsidised schools, ail aspects that allow to picture the school in the mentioned period of time. This is our contribution to the knowledge of the private (independent) school, modest knowledge for both the local dimension and the study of documentation that reflects the reality only partially, even if we have accurateily followed all the documents of the mentioned archives, it is also true that we had left behind hundred of private �child-friendly" schools (escuelas �amigas3) outside our matter of study even if they still endure in our memory, An avenue for future research remains open.