REFLECTIONS ON THE CREATION (AND FRUSTRATION) OF A NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM (1813-1857)

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. This article focuses on the creation of the national educational system promoted by the liberals of the Parliament of Cádiz and on the subsequent frustration of this model, produced in the third constitutional period which began with the death of Ferdinand VII. It begins with an introduction that briefly marks the terminus comparationis, that is, the state of education in the Old Regime, the necessary counterpoint to understand the extraordinary innovation represented by the project of national education developed in the report of 1813 on the new system of public instruction. METHOD. A historical method is used, based in the study of primary and secondary. From these sources the paper analyses the foundational texts that developed the national educational system, designed in Title IX of the 1812 Constitution, while highlighting the historical uniqueness that the new system represented in Spain. RESULTS. The analysis made of this study and of the historical evolution that the model suffered indicate that the national educational system, truly revolutionary for its time, was replaced in the third constitutional period by another one, a state educational system, resulting in a process that culminated in the Moyano law of 1857. DISCUSSION. This conclusion should allow to open new debates among researchers today.