The 18th century saw the consolidation of the Enlightenment as the hegemonic paradigm of knowledge. The strength of this ideology, together with the consolidation of the European monarchies, led to a pact between the enlightened and the monarchs. This gave rise to what was known as enlightened despotism, which, as the motto went, consisted of doing “everything for the people, but without the people”. The education of the population was one of the points most insisted on by the Enlightenment reformers, who wanted to give the population a utilitarian education. They thus promoted projects to establish primary schools with the aim of making the population literate, under the maxim that an educated and trained people would favour progress and the formation of a political society of a “republican” character. In this fragment, Tomás Virto de Vera denounces the obstacles to the establishment of compulsory schooling, something that was attempted in much of Europe, which does not deny the resistance and complications that these initiatives encountered. In this case, the main social and economic impediments to the introduction of schooling are depicted, as minors were employed to help support the precarious family economies of the working classes. In other cases, schooling was simply not considered to be of value in the children’s future.
Collection: Texts
Chronology: XIX
Scope: Secondary Education, Baccalaureate, University
Link: https://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/109726/1/Revista-de-Historia-Moderna_38.pdf
Resource type: Historical source
Source: Virto de Vera, Tomás, Dirección de Padres de Huérfanos y Superintendentesde Escuelas del Reyno de Navarra, Pamplona, Imprenta de Miguel IgnacioCosculluela, 1802, págs. 132-133. Disponible en: https://binadi.navarra.es/opac/ficha.php?informatico=00009192MO
Language: Spanish
Date: 1802
Owner: Djebril Bouzidi (Modernalia)
Identifier: Virto de Vera, Tomás, Dirección de Padres de Huérfanos y Superintendentesde Escuelas del Reyno de Navarra, Pamplona, Imprenta de Miguel IgnacioCosculluela, 1802, págs. 132-133. Disponible en: https://binadi.navarra.es/opac/ficha.php?informatico=00009192MO
Abstract: Excerpt from Virto de Vera's work on primary training
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