A look at Spanish public schools during the Spanish Civil War and Postwar period through the eyes of teaching students and their practice reports

Abstract

In recent times, the history of education has expanded its scope of study with the use of new sources, such as teaching practice reports of primary school would-be teachers. In order to know the reality of the public school system in post-war Spain, we focus on the analysis of an unpublished collection of teaching practice reports, written between 1936 and 1949, stored in the archives of the University of La Laguna (Tenerife, Canary Islands). This analysis allows us to affirm that there are aspects of classroom everyday life that surpass the archetypes of the Francoist school and its school culture, determined by its ideological impositions and its legal norms. It is confirmed that there was certain continuity in the pedagogical renewal of education at the time, a fact that shows the distance that separates what is prescribed by legislation and what actually happens within the school classroom.