Some phases of educational progress in Latin America

by Walter A. Montgomery

With the provision incorporated in the projected law, by which control of national secondary education is vested in the universities, the latter will touch national education much more intimately than ever before. The universities of Argentina are those of Buenos Aires, Cordoba, and La Plata, which are national, and those of Santa Fe and Tucuman, which are provincial but will soon be nationalized. In 1917 there was a growing feeling in university circles in favor of decentralization, with greater degree of autonomy for each university. The report of the rector of the university of Buenos Aires for 1917 was of interest as showing the effect of this upon the colegios as well as the universities. How far this has been checked by the projected provision to intrust secondary education to universities can not be learned.

The unrest among the student bodies in the institutions of higher education has constituted perhaps the most remarkable feature of the educational history of the past year. In Buenos Aires reform was demanded in the statutes under which the university was governed, and the adoption of methods in conformity with new tendencies in university instruction. The students demanded especially the right to vote for the election of the authorities. Satisfactory agreement was reached, and the university, after several days of suspension of classes and demonstrations on the part of the student body, resumed instruction, which was uninterrupted for the rest of the year. At the University of Cordoba the conflict between the students and the authorities assumed more serious proportions. Regular work was suspended, the efforts of the mediator appointed by the National Government to hear the claims of the student body and to decide upon the just and practical course for the university authorities to adopt were unsatisfactory to the complainants, and the authority of the minister of public instruction was invoked. Upon investigation the latter official advocated in his report to the executive a complete reorganization of the university in its statutes, regulations, acts of discipline, and staff of professors. These changes were ratified by the executive and were practically embodied in the project of the law submitted to the Congress in those sections pertaining to university education. In the other three universities, those of La Plata, Tucuman, and Santa Fe, the disturbances which impeded the prosecution of the regular routine of studies were comparatively insignificant, though the spirit of unrest was marked and many of the reforms and changes secured in the two leading universities were readily accepted.

The growth of the so-called student centers (centros estudiantiles) has been a feature of higher education during the past two years. These organizations have come to be representative of student life and of the student point of view, and have therefore gained much importance in the eyes of the authorities. They are organized according to departments of studies, such as the centers of medical and dental students, of engineering students, of political science students, of students of architecture, and of law. Each numbers from 100 to 500 members. They are grouped as a whole into the University Federation of Buenos Aires, in which each is represented by delegates, and which is regarded as the mouthpiece of all university students in the metropolis.

Plans are already under way by the executive council of the University of Buenos Aires for the celebration of the first centenary of its foundation, which will occur in October, 1921. Invitations have been extended to the institutions of higher education in all countries of the world to designate and send representatives. Though the actual building of the ancient colegio nacional, in which the university began its operation, has been materially changed, yet the present building occupies the same site, and it has been decided to hold the centennial celebration in it.

Of interest is the projected foundation of a popular university at Buenos Aires, constituted along industrial lines and frankly designed to counteract the technical and industrial influence of North American universities in South American countries.

A survey of educational progress in Argentina may fittingly conclude with mention of the annual American Congress of Education and Commercial Extension, held in Montevideo in January, 1919, in which representatives of all the Latin-American countries participated, and those of Argentina, from her economic and educational leadership, were most prominent. The proceedings of the congress will be discussed in the chapter on Uruguay.

VOCATIONAL EDUCATION IN BRAZIL.

Educational activity in Brazil has been most marked in the field of vocational education. A special commission, appointed by the Director General of Public Instruction, consisting of five experienced teachers in subjects of this nature, was instructed to formulate courses for the State schools which were to be established by law in the Federal District. They were to serve as models for subsequent schools of the same character in the several States and Territories. The commission, of which Senhor Coryntho da Fonseca was the spokesman, after several months of conference and personal visits of inspection to the vocational schools already existent in the several centers, especially in Sao Paulo, and after hearing reports from active teachers in the subjects, presented its report in March, 1919. It was approved by the Vice President, serving ad interim for the President, and was recommended by him to be put into actual operation pending its formal enactment into law by the Congress.

The report as finally presented rested upon four main considerations:

1. The State, in the field of instruction, has primarily an educational function and only secondarily a vocational one. Courses in shop training, designed to awake and develop an aptitude in the pupil for a particular industry, must of course enter into any well-rounded scheme of education. This in turn must be designed to promote a general and not a specialized technical education which will introduce both sexes to industrial and commercial life. For practical reasons of expense, if for no other, the State should not be expected to prepare pupils for specialized vocations.