The Spanish Schoolmistress: From Tradition to Modernity

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explain the origin and development of the incorporation of the schoolmistress into state schooling in Spain between 1783 and 1882. Sufficient and adequate theoretical, educational, social political, religious and economic reasons werefound throughout this period, which goes from the Enlightenment up to the Restoration, to be able to trace a typology of schoolmistresses which can show these stages of incorporation. These periods reflect both a negative kind of discrimination, through exclusion–the “illiterate schoolmistress”–and apositive one, through inclusion‐the “maternal scboolmistnss"and the “intuitive‐rational schoolmistress”.1 1 The study fits in with my research in Spain, submitted as my doctoral thesis in 1996 under the title of “The Social Transformations of the Profession of the Schoolmistress in Spain, 1772‐1882”, and, later on revised at the Institute of Education of the University of London. The conclusions of this research have been published under the title of Las primeras maestras. Las origenes del proceso de femmzaàón docente en Esporta. See my doctoral thesis: Las tranrformacones socialed de la profesión maestra. 1772‐1882. Departamento de Sociología de la Universidad de Salamanca, 1996, and my book Las primeras maestras (Barcelona, Editorial Ariel, 1998). In 2001 my last research ‐will be published: La maestra en el proceso de cambio sodai de transition democrática: espacios história generacionalts (1931‐1990) (Madrid, Ministerio de Asuntos Sociales. Instituto de la Mujer), which continues my investigation about the school‐mistresses in Spain.