Resultados

The Plan General de Estudios (General Plan of Studies) or Pidal’s Plan was originated at a time when the liberals were in power. At that time the Spanish liberal party was divided into two opposing factions: the moderados and radicales (the moderate and radical liberals). Thus, it was the former, the moderate wing, who were ruling Spain at the time. They sought to implement a universal and, what is also very important, secular government-based education. This political party understood education much in the same way as the late eighteenth-century enlightened intellectuals such as Pablo Olavide or Jovellanos himself: education as a public service.

Ruiz Berrio (2008: 30) states that the real person behind Pidal’s Plan was Antonio Gil 66 Teachers of living languages and drawing are not required to possess a degree in

Sciences or in Arts or to have achieved a temporary post.

67 One in each of the seventeen Spanish provinces.

68 The general Senate, where there is a University, will be formed by all the chair-holding teachers, except those of the living languages and drawing.

69 Cf. Howatt & Widdowson (2004).

Alberto Lombardero Caparrós Dipòsit Legal: T 1588-2015

de Zárate (1793-1861) who was supported by two more officials from the ministry:

José de la Revilla and Pedro Joaquín Guillén. Such is the significant influence exerted by Gil de Zárate that Pidal’s Plan is also known in the history of education as Plan de Gil de Zárate (Gil de Zárate’s Plan).

Aside from the origins of Pidal’s Plan, let us move to our focal major area of interest in this section: the treatment of the living languages. The guidelines are as follows:

Article 146. The national language, Spanish, will be used in all the explanations and exercises.

Article 148. The teaching of Spanish will be simultaneous to that of Latin.

Article 150. To teach and learn the Spanish language with all perfection, so that students manage to write it pure and correctly.

As briefly summarized in Rivas’s Plan, secondary schooling is divided into Elementary (5 years) and Special or de Ampliación⁷⁰ (Applied, 2 years). In Elementary education, the humanities are the basis encompassing the classical languages, the foundation of literature and good studies. The only living language studied at this level is French, during the 3rd and 4th years. There is no reference to the French language in the 5th year. The Special or Applied secondary education comprises the study of Arts and Sciences and the study of English or German is introduced according to Article 10 which states that one can graduate with a degree in Arts if, after the degree of Bachiller en Filosofía (Elementary education), the candidate passes the following studies made in, at least, two years: Mastery of the Latin language, Greek language (two courses), English or German language, Literature, and Philosophy.

Those are all the references to the living languages in Pidal’s Plan. However, there is one final point worth mentioning which affects tertiary studies in Article 33 which deals with the requirements to become a Doctor in Arts. Apart from the knowledge of classical languages and their literature, there is an explicit reference to Modern Foreign Literature. Nothing else is specified but, at least, this is the very first time that this type of study formed part of the core curriculum at the University.

With all this data, one can conclude that Pidal’s Plan went one step beyond Rivas’s Plan in terms of clarifying which living languages had to be studied. And not only that, Pidal’s Plan also makes reference to the chairs in living languages, which ressemble those held at the Board of Commerce Language Schools of Barcelona (1824-70 Called ‘Superior’ in Rivas Regulation.

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1851), which had to be accessed by oposiciones (public examinations). The public examinations for a chair in a living language that a candidate had to take in order to become a teacher at a Secondary School according to Pidal’s Plan consisted of:

Article 203. Public examination. A speech written in French, English or German, whenever it is to become a teacher in one of these languages (between 30 and 45 minutes). The speech must be written within 24 hours being isolated either in the University or in another building, in complete confinement.

Article 206. The second exercise deals with a one-hour lesson on a topic to be chosen out of three.

Article 210. The third, and final, exercise consists of a one-hour examination of unrelated questions on all the topics.

For the first time, although already suggested in the 1821 regulation, there seems to be a more official and organized process of selection for the living language teachers. It is important to mention that there was a difference between, on the one hand, the living languages plus Latin, and, on the other, classical languages such as Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic. For the former, the examination was made in the language object of teaching (French, English, German or Latin) while for the latter the examination was in Spanish as Articles 180 and 181 respectively specify.

Ruiz Berrio (2008) gives us the key for the successful implementation of secondary schooling in Spain thanks to the fact that:

[...] la uniformidad y la centralización que caracterizaron a la década moderada ayudaron a la configuración definitiva de la enseñanza secundaria⁷¹. (p. 33).

In the preliminary to Pidal’s Plan, there are two relevant references which contributed to the consolidation of this type of education as we have just mentioned. The first one strikes a very modern chord even though it was decreed more than a century and a half ago:

La enseñanza de la juventud no es una mercancía que puede dejarse entregada a la codicia de los especuladores, ni debe equipararse a las demás industrias

71 [...] the uniformity and centralization that characterised the moderate decade led to the definitive configuration of secondary education.

Alberto Lombardero Caparrós Dipòsit Legal: T 1588-2015

en que domina sólo el interés privado⁷².

The second poignant reference is very illuminating since it pinpoints Spain’s failures in matters of economics attributing the slowdown to a lack of education for the youth:

En lo antiguo, [la educación secundaria] fijaba casi exclusivamente la atención en el estudio del latín más algunos conocimientos de filosofía escolástica, olvidando las ciencias naturales y exactas, cuyo abandono ha sido tan funesto a la industria española⁷³.

Jovellanos’s words from his Treatise on education (1802) still echo in Pidal’s Plan more than forty years later.