Qualification: Formation and expansion of the educational system in the rural areas of the province of Santiago del Estero (Argentina) in the first half of the 20th century

Abstract

This article is located within the field of History of Education and aims to describe and analyze the genesis-development process of the educational system in rural contexts of the province of Santiago del Estero during the first half of the 20th century. This, with the more general purpose of explaining how education was conceived and thematized by the national and provincial governments for subalternized populations, particularly indigenous and peasant populations in rural Santiago del Estero, at that historical moment. Methodologically, this text is produced from a qualitative approach, appealing to historiography and ethnohistory, through the review of archives and documents. The sources used were legislation, regulations, reports of the General Education Council (CGE) of the province of Santiago del Estero, school textbooks, historical books and minutes of rural schools in the province, etc. The content analysis carried out made it possible to provide a status of education and its sedimentation in the second half of the 19th century, and its progressive territorial expansion in the first half of the 20th century. The reflections of the study allow us to realize that the expansion of the educational system in the first half of the 20th century in Santiago del Estero was possible, in principle, due to the normative-legal frameworks, as well as the need on the part of the provincial State to "civilize" the subaltern populations, and incorporate them into the "national patriotic identity" that had been developing from national educational policies, and also, to direct-group the population of rural contexts to a socio-productive and capitalist economic "progress".