Reading and power: a debate on popular education in the beginning of the twentieth century

Abstract

The political use of schooling as an instrument of mass control is a modern phenomenon that corresponds to a certain stage in the evolution of capitalism. As we shall see it, in the Portugal of the first decades of this century, many people were still aceptical about the advantages of sending people to school. Inside what probably the most cohesive fraction of the ruling classes, the rural bourgeoisie, there were still some who considered total illiteracy as the best way of assuring social stability: nevertheless, there were also some who considered necessary to use schooling as a means of «civilizing» the working masses and outspreading the Salazarist ideology. The analysis of this debate on popular instruction (a debate the fundamentally ideological nature of which the author begins to underline) is the target of this article, which is divided into three parts: in the first one, the author analyses the attitudes towards the people's instruction, focusing not only the official strategies but also the popular attitudes; in the second one, she describes the debate on «the unique school» which raises interesting questions about the role of school in the democratisation of society; at last, in a third part, she sums up the controversies about «neutral school» as well as the debates on the control of the educational system, which will show the attitudes as to the State by several participants.