Education and the conflicts between María's four schools "in difficult times"

Maria de la SaludThe courtyard of the former doll school—which, in fact, was originally a boys' school, as men were given priority in education at the time—is today the Maria Cultural Center. This building, inaugurated in September 1928, was part of the educational center designed by one of the most prominent architects in our recent history: Guillem Forteza Pinya. Forteza designed more than one hundred school buildings in Mallorca.

This space will be the setting for the book presentation today, Friday, September 26, at 7:30 p.m. Maria and education in difficult times: public schools and private schools in Maria (1950-1970). The work, written by teacher and researcher Mariando Joan Carbonell Matas, is subtitled 'A look at the unique case of the Pastilletes School'. Carbonell, an expert in 20th-century educational studies and popular gastronomy, often focuses his research on topics that contribute to recovering and better understanding the historical memory of education in our islands, and in this specific case, in Maria de la Salut.

In this work, Joan Carbonell Matas clearly and thoroughly analyzes the role of education, practically exclusive to the wealthy and dominated classes, and the dedication of teachers who are committed, but not so much, to teaching. Showing the pedagogical and power confrontation between the two public schools (the one for boys, the one for dolls) and the three private ones, the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters (the nuns) and Santa Catalina Tomás, and more eloquently, with Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús (the apothecary), also known popularly.

Four educational centers that coexisted between the years 1950 and 1970, bringing to light people such as Joana Santandreu Garau and her husband, the pharmacist Joan J. Ferragut Rossell –who also served as mayor between 1963 and 1970, who helped and did not help with writing and reading, in a difficult time when the economic efforts of humble families were directed towards giving their children the possibility of having an education that for them was a ray of hope to be able to achieve a better path and less dependent on the rural economy.

This essay highlights the daily conflicts between the director of the public school and the Apothecary –head of the Pastilletes school–, the repressive use of language, the morality of National Catholicism with its tyranny and the lack of freedom that have marked generations of students and teachers. Looking back is a duty: these schools are part of the living memory of the people, not just old stones or distorted recollections, and as Almudena Grandes said: "It is a mistake to think that memory has to do only with the past. It has to do with the present and the future, because if we do not know where we come from we will not be able to know who we do not want to be or who wants to be like us."

The prologist, the doctor Antoni Gelabert Mas, gives us a series of reasonings that are observed in the publication: "Many times I have wondered how it is that with all the educational programs, the pressures on teachers, the controls to evaluate knowledge, the vigilance to ensure there were no ideological deviations and those of the fascist-inspired Franco dictatorship, he did not manage to ensure that all the boys and girls who were educated under his method and tutoring have not come out ideologically ultra-right, intolerant and cavemen."

Without a doubt, these reflections are addressed by Juan, who sequences the reality that was lived, where repression, poverty and fear were the tools to silence the people and without forgetting the hierarchical control that existed in the towns: the apothecary, the doctor, the mayor, the priest, the Civil Guard. None of these social pillars could allow themselves to alter the fragile, but firm, balance of local power. It was not tolerable that one of them, not even under the banner of education, questioned or tried to destabilize the established order, the one that governed daily life and power relations within the town.

It is worth noting some of the phrases that marked the brutality of the moment, such as 'the letter enters with blood, 'He who knows how to hit, knows how to govern., the humiliating punishments, including the obligation to speak Spanish, that surrounded education within an authoritarian, national-Catholic and ultra-nationalist system, Spanish, segregated (sexist, women submissive to men, patriotic and religious), dogmatic, indoctrinating and opposed to pedagogical innovations 1945.

A book with more than 900 footnotes, with a final archive of photos from the 20th century and with interactive QR codes for a better view and with the voices of those who went to school at the different centers, are the documentary basis of the publication.

A book that will surely not leave anyone indifferent, especially generations of the forties, fifties and sixties, who will remember a time that has gradually changed, with obstacles and difficulties, began to open up to the world with educational laws and actions to improve literacy within the population. The beginning of tourism, teleclubs, soccer, ​​television were especially marking the sixties. The ruling classes wanted to continue commanding, but at the same time they began to lose power because the regime needed to improve its image in Europe and the Americans, while the death of the dictator was already a matter of years.

Finally, Joan states that with this publication she wanted to remind us of those dark, gloomy years, which marked the lives and struggle to survive of teachers, children and families who wanted a better world, but who were always watched and could not dream of chimeras or utopias.