La formación del carácter y la vocación: discursos médico-educacionales en torno a la “normalidad” y “anormalidad” en la escuela (1920-1940)

• Main Author: María Josefina Cabrera Gómez
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centre de Recherches sur les Mondes Américains 2015-09-01
• Series: Nuevo mundo - Mundos Nuevos
• Subjects: education; school; normality; character; vocation
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/68299

The struggle for the expansion of the educational system and the renovation of teaching coincide with the hygienist and eugenics discourse which revolved around the school. A new model of the citizen emerges from a new conceptualization of childhood and youth. In this process, different disciplines appropriate the ideas about the formation of useful individuals for society. In their discourses as well as their projects and policies of the period it can be understood what is meant by “normal” and “abnormal” in the school system. This distinction is key to be able to understand the transformations of the period. Physicians and teachers were convinced of the relevancy of teaching habits and knowledge about hygiene, as well as the role that physical education would have for the formation of citizens. Democracy and citizens were beginning to acquire a social dimension, which surpassed the solely political. Also the ideal of democracy and of the citizen during these decades were put at the service of the ideas about the nation. Which as a result, represented together with the civic rituals, a very characteristic synergy of the period in study