A look at Spanish public schools during the Spanish Civil War and Postwar period through the eyes of teaching students and their practice reports

Abstract

In recent times, the history of education has expanded its scope of studywith the use of new sources, such as teaching practice reports of primaryschool would-be teachers. In order to know the reality of the public schoolsystem in post-war Spain, we focus on the analysis of an unpublished collectionof teaching practice reports, written between 1936 and 1949, storedin the archives of the University of La Laguna (Tenerife, Canary Islands). Thisanalysis allows us to affirm that there are aspects of classroom everyday lifethat surpass the archetypes of the Francoist school and its school culture,determined by its ideological impositions and its legal norms. It is confirmedthat there was certain continuity in the pedagogical renewal of education atthe time, a fact that shows the distance that separates what is prescribed bylegislation and what actually happens within the school classroom.