«Should we teach the people to read?» - the question of illiteracy (1926-1939)

Abstract

This article is made of three parts. In the first one, entitled «the question of illiteracy », one examines the Salazarist ideology concerning popular education. In the second, entitled «the targets of Salazarist school: the sacred workshop of souls», one determines the ends imposed upon the primary school by Salazarism, reacting against the supposed «aberrations» that Liberalism and the Republic had inculcated in the popular mind. Finally, one tries to answer to the fundamental question that equally worried either the Republicans or the Nationalists: were, or were they not, Portuguese families «interested» in sending their children to school? In relation with this question one remarks that the transformation of a subsistence economy into a market economy makes radical changes in the conscience of the individual and that the attitude towards instruction is precisely one of the first to be touched. But Portugal, in the thirties, was always a tradicional society where not only popular education did not get any official stimulus but also people's aspirations for education were very limited yet. On one side, the government was not interested in industrializing the country, in organizing a modern army, nor in building cleared-up citizens, still less. On the other side, to a large number of Portuguese people, mainly those living in the country-side, the benefits derived from education were more than doubtful. To sum up, a very significant percentage of the population, as a matter of fact, were not «interested» in sending their children to school: properly speaking, the problem did not come even to be raised by them. Thus the Salazarist ideologues were able just to strengthen the anti-school attitudes that were traditional among the peasant classes.