Civic education and visions of war and peace in the Spanish transition to democracy

Abstract

This article explores visions of war and peace in the education system during the Spanish transition to democracy. During those years, the Spanish state was faced with the challenge of leaving its authoritarian political past behind and forging a democratic civic culture. As the concepts of war and peace are inextricably linked to those of state and citizenship, they are a useful tool with which to examine changes in civic education. A wide variety of educational sources has been explored, with particular attention to the emotional nature of the depiction of both war and peace. This study reveals two opposing styles. The official discourse demonstrated a factual treatment of war and a tendency to concentrate on international bodies and their actions, when it came to fomenting peace. The treatment of peace in the circles of teachers’ local initiatives was different. First, peace was defined not only as the absence of war but also in terms of social equality and solidarity. Second, there was a conscious effort to get the students involved in opposing war, reinforced by emotionally charged messages regarding its horrors.

Keywords:

• Spanish transition to democracy
• war and peace
• emotions
• textbooks
• progressive education

Notes

¹ Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002269/226924e.pdf#page=6, page 5 (accessed 30 June 2015). Spain became a member of UNESCO on 30 January 1953.

² See, for example, Adam Hotges, ed., Discourses of War and Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

³ The journal Vida Escolar was the official publication of the Centro de Orientación y Documentación Didáctica de Enseñanza Primaria (CEDODEP), founded in 1958 as a technical organism of the Ministry of Education, under the Dirección General de Enseñanza Primaria. Mainer states that the journal was present in the majority of schools as it was distributed among teachers. See Juan Mainer Baqué, La forja de un campo profesional: pedagogía y didáctica de las Ciencias Sociales en España (1900–1970) (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2009), 620. The importance of the journal is demonstrated by the fact the Pedagogical Guidelines issued in the years 1970, 1971 and 1976 were published only in Vida Escolar.

⁴ It must be clarified that official discourse is identified with the textbooks officially sanctioned by the Ministry because it was not until 1998 that prior administrative authorisation was substituted by ordinary supervision and inspection through Royal Decree 1744/1998 of 31 July on the use and supervision of textbooks and other curricular material corresponding to the official curriculum. Official State Bulletin, Boletín Oficial del Estado, BOE no. 212, Friday 4 September 1998, p. 30006. No such experience as the Harold Rugg textbook controversy could have taken place in Spain at the time. See Charles Dorn, “‘Treason in The Textbooks’: Reinterpreting the Harold Rugg Textbook Controversy in the Context of Wartime Schooling,” Paedagogica Historica 44, no. 4 (August 2008): 457–79.

⁵ Also known as the second generation of textbooks, this new departure came about in Spain with the reform passed in 1965. Agustín Escolano Benito, “La segunda generación de manuales escolares,” in Historia ilustrada del libro escolar en España. De la posguerra a la reforma educativa, ed. Agustín Escolano (Madrid: Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez, 1998), 20–29.

⁶ Ibid., 33. The most predominant publishing groups are Anaya and Santillana, followed by Vicens Vives and SM. Our sample includes various textbooks published by these corporations. For further information about these editorial groups, see Miguel Beas Miranda, “La Asociación Nacional de Editores de Libros de Texto: desde la Transición hasta el siglo XXI. Entrevista a Don Mauricio Santos,” Historia de la Educación, no. 19 (2000): 145. Textbooks were written by teams of authors. The tradition of a single author writing his or her own personal textbook was rapidly abandoned.

⁷ During the twilight years of the Franco dictatorship, the approval of certain special materials, such as, e.g., political educational texts, also required the approval of the delegations of the Movimiento. Manuel de Puelles, “La política del libro escolar. Del franquismo a la restauración democrática,” in Historia ilustrada del libro escolar en España. De la posguerra a la reforma educativa, ed. Agustín Escolano (Madrid: Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez, 1998), 71.

⁸ We mean sterile – in this case, free from emotional contamination.

⁹ Patricia Ticineto and Jean Halley, eds., The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 3.

¹⁰ Jack Barbalet, Emotion, Social Theory and Social Structure: A Macrosociological Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 and 2001); Barbalet, ed., Emotions and Sociology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); Barbalet, “Boredom and Social Meaning,” British Journal of Sociology 50, no. 4 (December 1999): 631–646; and Thomas Scheff, “Shame and the Social Bond: A Sociological Theory,” Sociological Theory 18, no. 1 (March 2000): 84–99.

¹¹ Gavriel Salomon and Baruch Nevo, eds., Peace Education: The Concepts, Principles and Practices Around the World (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002), 274, cited in Ben Porath Sigal, “Review Article: War and Peace Education,” Journal of Philosophy of Education 37, no. 3 (2003): 526.

¹² See, for instance, Carolyn Kay, “War Pedagogy in the German Primary School Classroom during the First World War,” War & Society 33, no. 1 (2014): 3–11.

¹³ António Nóvoa, “Textos, imágenes y recuerdos. Escritura de ‘nuevas’ historias de la educación,” in Historia cultural y educación. Ensayos críticos sobre conocimiento y escolarización, ed. Thomas S. Popkewitz, Barry M. Franklin and Miguel A. Pereyra (Barcelona/México: Ediciones Pomares, S.A., 2003), 70. See also Inés Dussel, “The Visual Turn in the History of Education: Four Comments for a Historiographical Discussion,” in Rethinking the History of Education: Transnational Perspectives on its Methods, Questions and Knowledge, ed. Thomas S. Popkewitz (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 29–49.

¹⁴ Nóvoa, “Textos, imágenes y recuerdos” 71.

¹⁵ For a thorough view of the role of illustrations in Spanish school textbooks on science and religion, see Ana Mª Badanelli, “Ilustraciones en los manuales escolares: España 1900–1970” (PhD diss., UNED Madrid, 2003). Supervised by Prof. Federico Gómez Rodríguez de Castro. The relationship and discrepancies between text and images in textbooks have also been studied by Cucuzza and Spregelburd analysing the nation and the citizen in Argentinean history. See Marta Cecilia Herrera, “Political Culture, School Texts and Latin American Society: Introduction,” Paedagogica Historica 43, no. 5 (2007): 630.

¹⁶ Falk Pingel, UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision (Paris and Braunschweig: UNESCO, Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, 2010), 48.

¹⁷ Paloma Aguilar, Memoria y olvido de la Guerra Civil española (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1996).

¹⁸ Ley de 20 de septiembre de 1938 de Reforma de la Segunda Enseñanza; Ley de Universidades de 1943; Ley de 17 de julio de 1945 de Educación Primaria. They are included in Manuel de Puelles Benítez’s analysis of the period, Manuel de Puelles Benítez, Educación e Ideología en la España Contemporánea (Madrid: Tecnos, 2010), 294–305.

¹⁹ Juan Manuel Fernández Soria, Educación, socialización y legitimación política [España 1931–1970] (Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch, 1998), 183.

²⁰ José María Pemán, “Recordar y Olvidar,” ABC Madrid, 19 May 1964, 3. Note that the author explicitly employs anaphora as a linguistic resource to awaken emotions.

²¹ “Preparativos de las bodas de plata de la Paz española” was the title of an article published in ABC describing the activities programmed by the regime for a period of nine months. The Exhibition España 64: XXV Años de Paz, was itinerant across Spain. ABC, 1 March 1965, Morning edition, 64.

²² Paul Preston, Franco, ‘Caudillo de España’ (Madrid: Debolsillo, 2011), Prologue. The celebration of the 25 years of peace was closed on 28 December 1964 by the Minister for Information and Tourism, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, who placed the first stone of the future Palace of Congress and Exhibitions and said that: “Peace had very rarely been a respite for the Spanish people but rather a wish and a hope”. See http://www.rtve.es/filmoteca/no-do/not-1147/1469069/ (accessed 30 June 2015), and ABC, 22 December 1964, Morning edition, 89.

²³ Paloma Aguilar Fernández, Políticas de la memoria y memorias de la política. El caso español en perspectiva comparada (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2008), 196.

²⁴ BOE no. 148 (22 June 1959), 8881.

²⁵ See http://www.rtve.es/filmoteca/no-do/not-1114/1474761/ (accessed 30 June 2015).

²⁶ ABC, 2 May 1964, 57.

²⁷ The names remained for years. See, for example, the news article published in 1977 in the national newspaper El País regarding the national school (Colegio Nacional) XXV Años de Paz in the quarter of San Blas, Madrid. El País, April 22, 1967: http://elpais.com/diario/1977/04/22/madrid/230556259_850215.html (accessed 2 October 2015).

²⁸ In the quarter of la Rondilla, in Valladolid, the construction of a residential area with 503 flats, two schools and a park was concluded in 1967. They were given the name “XXV Años de Paz”. In San Sebastián 732 flats were also constructed and named “La Paz” in 1967. Franco inaugurated the act of handing over the keys to the owners of the new flats. See NO-DO 25-09-1967, Nº 1290A. NO-DO stands for Noticiarios y Documentales cinematográficos, which were official cinema broadcasts shown before all films.

²⁹ A monument placed in the Parque de la Paz in the Barrio de la Paz: see http://www.zaragoza.es/ciudad/artepublico/detalle_ArtePublico?id=26 (accessed 30 June 2015).

³⁰ NO-DO 13/04/1964 Nº 1110C. See http://www.rtve.es/filmoteca/no-do/not-1109/1475248/ (accessed 30 June 2015).

³¹ A contest was held to choose the commemorative image for the 25th anniversary of peace.

³² For a full account of the significance of commemorative stamps as propaganda instruments, see Guillermo Navarro Oltra, ed., Autorretratos del Estado. El sello postal del franquismo (Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla La Mancha; Santander: Publican Ediciones de la Universidad de Cantabria, 2013), 29–32.

³³ Igor Contreras Zubillaga, “El concierto de la paz: tres encargos estatales para celebrar el 25 aniversario del franquismo” (Working paper 2011/2, Dpto. de Hª del Pensamiento y de los Movimientos. Sociales y Políticos, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Fundación José Ortega y Gasset, 2010–2011).

³⁴ Paz Carrillo Navarro, “La propaganda electoral predemocrática en España. Estudio de las campañas de dos referendos: 1966 y 1976,” Revista electrónica de Estudios Filológicos no. 21 (July 2011), https://www.um.es/tonosdigital/znum21/secciones/estudios-8-propagandaelectroral.htm (accessed 30 June 2015).

³⁵ Santos Juliá, “España, 1966,” in La Ciudad abstracta. 1966: el nacimiento del Museo de Arte Abstracto Español (Cuenca: Fundación Juan March, 2006), 17–29.

³⁶ Francisco Franco, 30 December 1970. Speech on Radio Nacional de España and Televisión Española. See: http://www.generalisimofranco.com/Discursos/MENSAJES/00031.htm (accessed 30 June 2015).

³⁷ España hoy (Paris: Ruedo ibérico, 1963) and Luis Ramírez, Nuestros primeros veinticinco años (Paris: Ruedo ibérico, 1964).

³⁸ Carme Molinero and Pere Ysàs, “Movimientos sociales y actitudes políticas en la crisis del franquismo,” Historia Contemporánea, no. 8 (1992): 269–79; Pamela Beth Radcliff, Making Democratic Citizens in Spain, Civil Society and the Popular Origins of the Transition, 1960–1978 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); and Xavier Domènech, “Orígenes. En el protohistoria del movimiento vecinal bajo el franquismo,” Historia del Presente 16 (2010): 27–41.

³⁹ The case of Humberto Baena – a member of the FRAP (Frente Revolucionario Antifascista y Patriótico, a terrorist group active at the time) – who was shot on 27 September 1975, only two months before Franco’s death, was taken to the UN Human Rights Tribunal. The newspaper ABC, in its issue of 27 September 1975, no. 21.681, p. 5, displayed the following headline: Cinco condenas a muerte y seis indultos (Five death-sentences and six pardons), explaining that the execution would be carried out by fusilamiento (firing squad).

⁴⁰ Resolution 36/67 of 30 November 1981, which established Peace Day to be held annually on the third Tuesday of September: http://www.peaceoneday.org/un-ga-resolution (accessed 30 June 2015).

⁴¹ See http://www.un.org/es/events/peaceday/ (accessed 30 June 2015).

⁴² Ibid., 13.

⁴³ Ley 14/1970, de 4 de agosto, General de Educación y Financiación de la Reforma Educativa. http://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-1970-852 (accessed 30 June 2015). For further discussion on the democratic discourse during the Franco regime see Tamar Groves and Cecilia Milito Barone, "Imagining a Democratic Future, Forgetting a Worrisome Past: Educational Policy, School Textbooks, and Teachers under the Franco Regime", War & Society 33, no. 1 (February 2014): 43–58.

⁴⁴ The main document was the Recommendation concerning Education for International Understanding, Co-operation and Peace and Education relating to Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, adopted by the General Conference at the eighteenth session in Paris, 19 November 1974.

⁴⁵ Vida Escolar no. 127 (1971): 23.

⁴⁶ See Pedro Oliver Olmo, “El movimiento pacifista en la Transición Democrática española,” in Historia de la Transición en España. Sociedad y movimientos sociales, ed. Rafael Quirosa-Cheyrouze and Mónica Fernández Amador (Almería: Instituto de Estudios Almerienses, 2009), 271–84.

⁴⁷ In Spanish it is known as the Día de la No-violencia y la Paz (DENIP). See BOE no. 290 (3 December 1976), 24093.

⁴⁸ Llorenç Vidal, “Fundamentos teóricos del día escolar de la no violencia y la paz (DENIP),” Educación XXI 6 (2003): 48.

⁴⁹ Vida Escolar, Supplement (1976): 8.

⁵⁰ Ibid.

⁵¹ Ibid., 10.

⁵² BOE no. 290 (3 December 1976), 24093.

⁵³ Llorenç Vidal, “Los derechos del niño y la educación para la paz,” Vida Escolar no. 204 (1979): 57–61.

⁵⁴ This discursive rhetoric about international peace appears to fit in with the discourse in the inter-war period in the West: “characteristic of the peace campaigners was a high level of rhetoric, concentrating on broad visions of a common brotherhood of nations, with liberally educated children moving out as the model world citizens of tomorrow, from house and home, to the school neighbourhood, the city, the region, the nation, and the global community”. William E. Marsden, “‘Poisoned History’: A Comparative Study of Nationalism, Propaganda and the Treatment of War and Peace in the Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-century School Curriculum,” History of Education 29, no. 1 (2000): 46–47.

⁵⁵ Juan Rastrilla, Historia Universal y de España. 8º curso (Madrid: SM, 1978), 243.

⁵⁶ Juan J. Fernández and Gabriel García, Mundo y Sociedad 8º EGB (Madrid: SM, 1981), 140.

⁵⁷ Pablo Jáuregui, “National Pride and the Meaning of ‘Europe’: A Comparative Study of Britain and Spain,” in Whose Europe? The Turn towards Democracy, ed. Dennis Smith and Sue Wright (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 276.

⁵⁸ Área de Ciencias Sociales. Orbe-País 8, 4th ed. (Barcelona: Vicens Vives, 1978), 91. Chapter 8: “La Primera Guerra Mundial y sus consecuencias” (The First World War and its consequences).

⁵⁹ Beatriz Feijóo and Aurora García, “Tratamiento informativo del asesinato del archiduque Francisco Fernando en la prensa gallega y nacional,” Historia y Comunicación Social 18 (2013): 245.

⁶⁰ CEDA stands for Spanish Confederation of Autonomic Right-wing Parties (Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas) – an alliance of Catholic and right-wing parties founded in 1933.

⁶¹ Departamento de Investigaciones Educativas, Consultor 8, Ciencias Sociales. Libro de consulta (Madrid: Santillana, 1974), 442.

⁶² Juan José Fernández and Gabriel García, Mundo y Sociedad 8º EGB (Madrid: S.M., 1981), 130.

⁶³ José López and Emérita Ramos, Sociedad 8º EGB, (Madrid: Miñón, 1977), 196. Chapter 16: “La segunda guerra mundial” (The Second World War).

⁶⁴ Some reflections on the use of a neutral, dispassionate discourse as opposed to the use of a propaganda-based, indoctrinating type of discourse can be found in William E. Marsden, “‘Poisoned history’,” 29–47.

⁶⁵ López Pérez, José y Ramos, Emérita, Sociedad. 8º EGB (Madrid: Miñón, 1977), 207.

⁶⁶ Vitaly Bezrogov, “Consolidating Childhood: Children and Warpage in Soviet and post-Soviet Reading Primers 1945–2008,” History of Education and Children’s Literature 9, no. 2 (2014): 157.

⁶⁷ Falk Pingel, UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision (Paris: UNESCO, 2010), 49

⁶⁸ According to the agency which has provided the licence, the information that accompanies the photograph is the following: "Second World War/WWII, conferences, Yalta Conference, 4.2.1945 – 11.2.1945, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, group picture with consultants, patio of the Livadia Palace, right with hat: Vyacheslav Molotov".

⁶⁹ On the teachers’ movements see: Tamar Groves, Teachers and the Struggle for Democracy in Spain, 1970–1985 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). For a more detailed discussion on the emergence and activities of the movements for pedagogical renovation see: Tamar Groves, “Everyday Struggles against Franco’s Authoritarian Legacy: Pedagogical Social Movements and Democracy in Spain,” Journal of Social History 46, no. 2 (2012): 305–334.

⁷⁰ Claus Offe, “New Social Movements: Changing Boundaries of the Politica,” Social Research 52 (1985): 817–68.

⁷¹ “Dossier pacífico para hacer estallar la paz,” Cuadernos de Pedagogía no. 112 (1984): 19–24.

⁷² Ibid.

⁷³ Colectivo para una alternativa no violenta, “Los niños de Getafe declaramos la paz,” Cuadernos de Pedagogía no. 112 (1984): 9–11.

⁷⁴ Ibid.

⁷⁵ Xesús R. Jares, Calo Iglesias and Manuel Bragado, “La paz como investigación,” Cuadernos de Pedagogia no. 112 (1984): 12–15.

⁷⁶ School newspaper: Periódico Escolar Armuñes no. 4 (1979).

⁷⁷ Seminario de filosofía y ética, “Bachilleres por la paz,” Cuadernos de Pedagogía no. 112 (1984): 15–17.

⁷⁸ School newspaper: Periódico Escolar Armuñes no. 6 (1979). The exercise book belongs to the personal archive of Carmen Mateos. She donated it to Tamar Groves, who currently preserves it.

⁷⁹ Vida Escolar, Supplement (1976).

⁸⁰ Suzanne de Castell, Allan Luke and Carmen Luke, eds., Language, Authority and Criticism: Readings on the School Textbook (London: Falmer Press, 1989).

⁸¹ Stanley Eugene Fish, Is there a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 338.

⁸² George Orwell, Looking back on the Spanish War: http://orwell.ru/library/essays/Spanish_War/english/esw_1 (accessed 30 June 2015).

⁸³ Ibid.

⁸⁴ Noah W. Sobe, “Researching Emotion and Affect in the History of Education,” History of Education 41, no. 5 (September 2012): 689–95.

⁸⁵ Edgar Morin distinguishes between rationality and rationalisation, finding in the latter a doctrine that obeys a mechanistic and deterministic model. See Edgar Morin, Los siete saberes necesarios para el futuro de la educación (Paris: UNESCO, 1999), 7.

⁸⁶ Honneth speaks of the liberal meaning of the concept of reification as Verdinglichung, which means to treat and perceive people as objects. See Axel Honneth, Reconocimiento y menosprecio. Sobre la fundamentación normativa de una teoría social (Madrid: Katz Editores, 2010), 63. Also see Richard Rorty, “Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the Reification of Language,” in Essays on Heidegger and Others, Philosophical Papers vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

⁸⁷ Bertrand Russell, “Education for Democracy,” NASSP Bulletin (National Association of Secondary School Principals) 23, no. 81 (1939): 7.

⁸⁸ Ibid., 13.