Childhood Education and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Argentina: The Case of Buenos Aires

Abstract

HE study of nineteenth-century schooling and childhood in Argentina can shed valuable light on that nation's changing political and social values. Schooling and childhood provide historical lenses through which we may analyze the delicate balance that existed between the political and behavioral uniformity often demanded by the elites and the heterodoxy which they encountered in different communities-between attempts at establishing ideological continuity and the fact of political dislocation. Ideological constructs associated with schooling intensified the competition between political and familial needs as parents became more cognizant that their children's moral and political makeup could no longer be shaped solely by the family. The very idea that learning would increasingly take place in an environment beyond the control of parents had significant psychological, cultural, and political implications.' In their own way, the struggles associated with childhood schooling in Buenos Aires were a legacy of the difficult, antagonistic choices offered by the revolution. This study focuses on the elites' concerns about children and their role in Argentine society. These, in turn, will serve as a convenient point of departure to express, first, the tensions that existed between the private and the public spheres, and then the uneasy relationships between the private satisfaction sought by families and the public goals which motivated political authorities.2 In the process, the analysis will point out essential