Educating the New Sovereign. Chile between 1810 and 1814

Abstract

The political break generated in Chile by the creation of a new order based on popular sovereignty represented a profound departure from the colonial education at the conceptual and institutional level. From a conceptual perspective, education had a republican sense and was expected to form citizens familiar with civic virtues. Therefore, republican education had to be public education sponsored and directed by the state in order to create a «political society». State education meant to confront the education al offers linked to the corporations. The new approach was incarnated in the foundation of the National Institute in 1813. The new sovereignty brought up for the first time in Chile the need for an expansion of education, mainly basic education (primeras letras) for women and men. This article argues that education in the Revolution of Independence was not «a» political approach, but that it was «the» political core that set the conceptual basis for the creation of the national educational system that the national state built in the nineteenth century