Diferencias de género en el sistema educativo liberallas escuelas público-municipales de la ciudad de A Coruña en la época isabelina (1833-1868)

Resumen

The Courts of Cadiz upheld a model of universal public instruction for boys, the future citizens, without mentioning women. This principle was included in the Quintana's Report (1813) and remained in the first third of nineteenth century, during the Liberal Triennium and also along the subsequent absolutist reaction (Plan and Regulations of Primary Teaching of the Kingdom, 1825). In the Elizabethan period (1833-1868) the governments, striven to organize a consistent and centralized educational system, made significant efforts and took interest in the improvement of the education of girls (Act of Primary Instruction, 21st July 1838). The basic text that regulates the education in Spain in the nineteenth century is the Act of Public Instruction of 1857, inspired by Claudio Moyano. This text organizes thoroughly all the levels of education and establishes the elementary education as something universal and compulsory for boys and girls since six to nine years old, taking into account features as relevant as a specific training for women teachers. In our study we pretend to see how the liberal educational plans, emanated from the Courts of Cadiz, become reality in a city of liberal tradition as Corunna, the first in ratifying the Constitution of 1812. During the absolutist reaction the General Porlier was executed by firing squad in Corunna (1815); and in the Liberal Triennium Espoz y Mina lived in the city, while he was Commander in Chief of Galicia, married to Juana de Vega, who later will become governess of the Queen Elizabeth II and her sisters. We chose the Elizabethan period because it is a long and coherent period, when the liberal political system is definitely settled. And we are also going to analyze the differences between the model of education proposed for boys and girls in the council public schools basically, and laterally in other institutions. The liberal educational model proposed for boys aims to form good and helpful citizens, whereas the model designed for girls aims to form "women of home", meek wives and proper mothers, through specific subjects such as "chores befitting her sex", thoroughly described, or notions of domestic hygiene. Using statistical records we will see the different school progress of boys and girls and the main reasons of school abandonment in a case and in the other. Likewise, we will see the differences in training and wages between women and men teachers. And finally, the gender bias in the liberal educational model of a progressive city, loyal to the principles of Cadiz in Spain during the central years of the nineteenth century