Poverty, Exclusion and Social Conflict in the Schoolbooks of Argentina during the First Peronist Period

Abstract

From 1952 onwards, following the approval of the ‘Second Five‐year Plan’, a series of profound changes took place in the Argentinean national curriculum and in its schoolbooks. Some authors have pointed out that such changes implied the use of the educational system as an ‘agency for indoctrination’. Other authors have emphasized, on the other hand, the—at least partial—processes of democratisation implied in those changes. This paper aims to analyse, as part of the vast educational transformations that occurred during this period, the new visibility that was acquired by subjects, classes and social processes which were practically absent in the curricular contents before the Peronist government, as well as the new type of treatment they received. At the same time, the inclusion of new subjects and points of view implied, in a more or less explicit manner, the recognition of the existence of social relations of domination and inequality, which were no longer presented as ‘the nature of society’, but as a field of conflicts concerning political values such as justice, freedom, democracy or authoritarianism. While Peronist values questioned the previous political and social order and allowed the possibility of reflecting on other models of society, the regime’s curricular contents aimed to transmit and inculcate the populist political ideology that was preached by the government, transforming the schoolbooks into a contradictory mosaic of images of social mobilization and disciplinary acceptance, of criticism and passiveness, of personal participation and collective obligation.