Some phases of educational progress in Latin America

by Walter A. Montgomery

SECONDARY EDUCATION.

Reference has been made to the establishment of intermediate schools, at first uniform, later differentiated, substituted for the former fifth and sixth years of the primary school and intended to bridge the chasm between the primary and the secondary schools. This marked a further innovation, in that secondary education had always been left in Argentina to the Provinces, the State nationally exercising only a nominal oversight of this division. For financial reasons, as well as because of the necessity of giving uniformity to a type so widely scattered, the intermediate school was from the very first regarded as national in scope. It may be likened in many respects to the junior high school of American cities. It was designed to give instruction of a general and cultural nature in languages, history, geography, and mathematics, combined with experimental studies in the elements of physical and natural science. Much earlier entrance, its advocates claimed, would thus be possible upon subjects of vocational and technical character, which should test the nascent abilities and aptitudes of the pupil. Especial attention was to be given woodworking, typewriting, stenography, linotyping, decorative design, photography, and special arts and crafts favored by local conditions.

This experiment, though marking an advance in educational methods, was unsuccessful, and after a year of existence such schools were discontinued. They did, however, affect instruction in secondary education, leaving their impress in the radical requirement of early specialization after the fifth and sixth higher primary grades.

The educational policy of Argentina thus returned to its traditional status; and secondary education still centers around the 37 colegios nacionales, institutions for boys of 10 to 14 years of age, which admit those with leaving certificates from the fifth and sixth grades of the higher primary schools, and by revisal of 1911 offer courses arranged by fourfold division of subjects into the physical-mathematical, the chemical-biological, the historical-geographical, and the literary-philosophical groups. A decree of the National Council dated February, 1916, made the certificate of sixth grade of the public school obligatory for admission to the colegio. This was regarded as going far toward settling two fundamental difficulties—the first, the long desired abolition of the entrance examination, as discredited by experience and prejudicial to secondary training, and the second, the official recognition of the compulsory attendance law for children of 6 to 14 years.

Among the new subjects assigned for the colegios is the study of Italian, now restored after being abolished by previous decree. In accordance with this requirement, a course in this language has been instituted in the normal schools for the preparation of teachers.

The close connection of the interests of the colegio nacionale with the university is brought out in the report of the rector of the National University of Buenos Aires for 1916. It is of significance as striking out new lines in what had always been a conservative division, and carried weight in the fluid state of public opinion on education which prevailed just at that time.

Taking up the instructional aspect of secondary education, and the claims put forward by zealous partisans of the opposing views that the colegios should prepare either for higher studies or for practical life, but not for both, he urged legal provisions for both forms of training to supply the demand felt in all modern states for men of thought as well as efficiency in action. In the light of this demand all wrangling as to programs of study could only be to the damage of the State. Since the Argentine colegios half a century ago were modeled after the French lycées, with their emphasis upon the cultural studies, the world had moved far, economically and socially, and sane modifications in secondary education now clamored for recognition.

On the side of administration the peculiar question for Argentina, the land of great distances and many climates and productions, was whether the best organization for secondary instruction was the concentration of power in the hands of a council or of the minister of public instruction, or more or less complete autonomy to be granted to the individual institution. In either case the fixed principle was to be accepted that the universities were directly concerned in the discipline and studies of the students they were to receive, and that they should therefore have the right of intervening in matters of organization and studies of the colegios.

A just decentralization of the colegios could be easily realized and would bring such beneficial results as: (1) More direct and immediate action of the authorities; (2) closer articulation of the colegios with the universities in the matter of studies for preparation for the latter; (3) formation of intellectual groups that would be encouraged to take root permanently in the Provinces, thus avoiding the wholesale migration of the directing classes to the capital; (4) ease of reform, as contrasted with the present system, wherein every change in the program of studies was a disturbance whose utility was not always certain; (5) the best selection, so far as possible, of the personal directive staff of the colegios, as the men in higher education would be familiar with the problems of secondary instruction; (6) economy of administrative expense; (7) the possibility of transforming certain of the colegios into schools of arts, trades, and industries in which general instruction, continuing the primary, might be combined with the special and technical preparation so much needed for the material well-being of the several regions of the Republic.

In the projected law of public instruction, introduced in August, 1918, it is provided that all matters relating to secondary education shall be under the authority of the national universities, with full power to regulate content of courses, curricula, etc. This is manifestly a step suggested by the traditional system of Spain, in which the standard secondary schools (institutos) are arranged according to university districts and are governed by university rector and council. Its wisdom and advisability for a country of the Western Hemisphere have been variously considered.