A review of the theory of the neutral common school in Spain

Abstract

Based on Glenn’s work on the myth of the common school in the Netherlands, the USA and France, and on two previous analyses of the Italian and the Spanish educational systems, this paper shows how the understanding of the public and the private as universal and particular spaces respectively has gradually prevailed. This distinction is linked to neutrality as the ideological conception that must dominate in the public school. The paper studies the jurisprudence of the Spanish Constitutional Court and its doctrine, so as to clarify the concept of neutrality. The analysis reveals that the concept of neutrality is used in many different, even opposing, ways. Whilst often regarded positively, some criticism of the concept deserves our attention. Examination of notions such as liberal and republican laity, neutrality-abstention and neutrality-confrontation, internal and external pluralism, constitutional ideology and indoctrination, allows us to consider the possibility of passing from neutralism to pluralism. The logic of pluralism seems more aligned to the nature of education and the freedom of teaching, but without exempting us from seeking broad consensus. It is argued that the solution to educational conflicts will neither emerge from a context of political inhibition, nor from one of the models under discussion prior to the constitutional consensus.