Education in Late Colonial Río de la Plata

The late 18th century and early 19th century in the Río de la Plata saw a complex, heterogeneous educational landscape with varied institutions and practices.

### Education in the Late Colonial Period of the Río de la Plata: Initiatives, Practices, and Reforms
* 📜 The late colonial period in the Río de la Plata saw the emergence of enlightened educational initiatives that challenged the traditional scholastic disciplines and sought to promote the teaching of **new subjects such as physics, political economy, and law**.
* 🏫 Schools in this period were characterized by a **heterogeneous set of practices** linked to the police power, religion, and charity, with **no centralized authority** governing the creation and management of schools.
* 👦👧 Education was not considered a right, and access to schools was largely determined by social status, with only children from the **privileged classes** being able to attend.
* 📚 The main objective of primary schools was the teaching of **reading, writing, and arithmetic**, combined with the transmission of **Christian doctrine through the catechism**.
* 👩 In addition to schools, the training of mechanical trades apprentices played a crucial role in the educational landscape, with artisans passing on their knowledge to apprentices through **private contracts**.
* 📰 Newspapers and gazettes served as the main channels for communicating **educational news and reforms** to the public.
* 🏛 A turning point in the educational field occurred towards the end of the colonial period, with the need for **profound reforms** becoming increasingly evident.
* 📏 These reforms materialized in the creation of new institutions such as the Nautical Academy, the School of Geometry, Perspective, Architecture, and Drawing, and the Military School of Mathematics, all of which shared a common orientation towards the **principle of utility**.

This class is set between the late 18th century and the early 19th century. We could say it is between the moment when initiatives take place within the framework of the Bourbon reforms and the early revolutionary times. The first thing that I believe is important to highlight for this class is that we need to separate the idea of enlightened education from the revolutionary moment. The ideas of the Enlightenment in the educational field spread and take root in proposals that took place during the last years of the colonial period. At the same time, it is also important to emphasize that the enlightened educational project did not necessarily have as its exclusive purpose the emancipation of man. Rather, we should consider how that enlightened pedagogical project was developed in two very different historical contexts: the late colonial period and the early years of the revolutionary period. By reading in the light of those times the tensions and needs to which that enlightened project tried to respond, I would like to dedicate this class initially to reviewing the enlightened initiatives that took place in the late colonial period. This is in order to understand and characterize what was understood by education in the late colonial context. We are always talking about the last years of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. In a subsequent class, we will address what I have identified as the three main enlightened projects that will be attempted in the region, associated with three pedagogical figures known by all. I am referring to Bishop San.

Alberto to Manuel Belgrano and Mariano in memory, but before that, in this class, I want to rehearse a characterization of the state of education in the late colonial period and see which key points are starting to move, to begin to mobilize in these last years of the colony. For this, it is essential, first of all, to locate a phenomenon of political change until the ascent of the Bourbons who began their reign in Spain exactly in 1700, marking the beginning of the 18th century. In general, education, including education in the colonies, but particularly elementary schools, meaning the schools for basic literacy, had not held a place of privilege among the concerns of the colonial administration, at least in the Rio de la Plata. The 18th century in Spain, as I mentioned, was governed entirely by the House of Bourbon, who promoted a reformist project that constantly clashed with the old structures of the previous Habsburg region. Among the Bourbon initiatives were numerous projects that envisioned, conceived, and proposed bold reforms that would constantly collide with the traditions of the Habsburg government, who had preceded the Bourbons on the throne. Among the Bourbons or the most important Bourbon enlightened figures, let's remember Benito Feijóo, who is the author of a famous book, Defense of Women, considered by some as one of the first books laying the foundations of feminist thought in Spain.

The Count of Campomanes and Gaspar Jovellanos, who are perhaps two of the greatest exponents of the Bourbon court in the field of education, all of them designing and conceiving reforms in the field of education that, as mentioned earlier, clash time and time again with the old traditions of the Habsburgs implemented in the colonial territory. We could especially consider a possible starting point for the Bourbon reforms in the Rio de la Plata, not the Royal Instruction of June 11, 1771, where it established the obligation by the councils - let's remember that the councils are the government units responsible for managing the civil life of the colonies - of the re-destruction, sorry, of 1771, which established that the councils had to pay the doctor, the surgeon, and the school teacher. They had to be established both in charge of the Indian villages and the Spanish villages. Let's also remember that for the old regime, the guiding principle of life was isolation and seclusion as a way to contemplate divinity. This is a principle that structured practically three centuries of colonial life, and the Enlightenment, on the other hand, will postulate and claim that people are above all social beings, and therefore, what needs to be done is to promote by all means that social dimension that each person carries within themselves potentially, awaken, activate, and act on it. And what better scenario, what better institution.

To be able to implement this idea precisely in schools without disregarding or abandoning the religious dimension of education, the question we must ask ourselves is: what did a school mean in those years? We must make a huge effort to think of the school beyond a physical space, more as a place, as a set of practices. A set of practices that, as we will see next, were or are carried out by numerous social agents and that over time will come together, articulate, and build a device that will end up characterizing, distinguishing it from other institutions, and as we know, defining what the schooling device of modern societies is. There is still a long way to go, the path is long and steep, and there are numerous alternatives that will develop during the journey. Therefore, we must not rush at the beginning. In this starting point we are taking, the school form was subject to a heterogeneous set of practices linked to three powers: the police power, religion, and charity. In other words, the ways of schooling were not tied to a single institution or a clearly defined space, but to a set of interventions implemented by a variety of actors. In other words, schooling was carried out within the realms of quality, police, as well as charity.

Religion and, of course, it is expressed in the colonial document what we know about the schools of the last years of the colony, the first years of the independent century, we will find it scattered in a large number of documents throughout the archive: regulations, council memories, apprenticeship contracts, texts, and various manuals, decrees, and so on. That is to say, there is no document that gathers and speaks specifically about what the school is because the school, as we are trying to explain, is scattered, or the ways of schooling are dispersed among a diversity of actors, a diversity of practices, and also with a diversity of purposes not always converging. This is a first, a first issue, let's say it in the negative sense. There was no authority like there may be today, a ministry, a school council that would gather the powers to create and manage schools. In fact, the creation of schools could respond to three types of origins or three types of motivations: through the impulse of an ecclesiastical authority with a religious order, by the will of the municipality governors, or it could also arise as proposals from individuals. At that time, there was also no idea of ​​free public schools. In the elementary schools founded by the municipality, it was the municipality that established the conditions and prices of education. In the schools created by the religious orders, the imprint that the education offered there acquired was closely linked to the charisma of the religious congregation that led

Institutionally, and as for individuals, they had to present themselves to the city council in order to open a school and be authorized. Education was not a right, and parents were not obliged to send their children to school at that time. Those who could afford it did so, which generally represented a great economic effort. Education, in that sense, was much closer to an idea of privilege, accessible only to children from the known sectors at that time as distinguished and meritorious people. It was precisely in the possibility of accessing school or not where one of the main characteristics of this period crystallized: the legal inequality of the colonial order. What established this legal inequality was the norm that whites and children of criollos could pursue studies, but blacks, mulattos, and slaves were completely prohibited. In a book by Juanpe Ramos, one of the first historians, we find a document from the city council of Catamarca in Argentina, where it was reported that a mulatto child named Ambrosio Milica had been punished with a sentence of 25 lashes, which were given to him in the public square for being discovered to know how to read and write. If Ambrosio did not fare well, neither did women. Undoubtedly, women at best received education at home, linked to a training associated with the reproduction of the domestic order. And I would almost say, let's stop here. This is very important.

Who best brings to our present a memory of the educational experience that women went through in these times of the late colonial period is our Sánchez de Thompson, who among other expressions, let's say, characterized a very rich and intense life. She had managed to resist the marriage that her father had wanted to impose on her and had succeeded in marrying the man she truly loved. As a good scholar, Sánchez de Thompson from Jaén left behind a large series of letters, not a great repository of memories to reconstruct daily life in Buenos Aires at the end of the 18th century. That's why I believe it is very worthwhile for us to dedicate some time now to the extensive reading of one of her memoirs. Firstly, because it is written by a woman, and secondly, because in this memoir, rich nuances appear around which we can imagine and represent what a school was like in those years and what place women had. I am going to read for the women, Sánchez de Thompson says there were several schools that not even the name of such would be given to them now. She is not speaking, she is writing from the first half of the 19th century, so her present includes a temporal aspect. The most formal one, where everyone went, was an old house which is now where Don Francisco del Zar's is located. It was run by Doña Francisca López, where boys and girls, girls from five years old and boys up to fifteen, attended,

In this area, where men used to write first and then the women, I must admit that it reminds us that not all parents wanted their girls to learn how to write. Because if a girl could learn to write, it meant she would then be able to correspond with men, and that was not something many parents desired. Those ordinary chairs, going back to the image of straw chairs, were said to be not even good for display. Nowadays, having them was not common either because there were few. All the trades were miserable. So many students sat on the ground on a mat made of esparto. There was a small table with a niche of the Virgin where the blessed was said upon entering and leaving the school. This was all the decoration in the main room, and in one corner, the teacher's bed. The only book was the catechism to read in turns, each child brought a notebook from home where their parents wrote and detailed the whole process of what was taught: reading, writing, the first four rules of arithmetic, and for the women, sewing and marking. It seems like an extraordinary image, an extraordinary portrait of the education situation in Buenos Aires - Viceroyalty in colonial Argentina. Numerous educational institutions and teaching methods coexisted there. There were some designed for the education of the elite, and others intended for the education of the lower class, as mentioned before.

They were absolutely determined by the place of birth, by the color of skin, and by the social status of potential students. Some operated in secluded areas like the University of Cordoba, and others where educational spaces did not interact with activities related to the world of work, trades, or religion. As indicated in Cúcuta, in an excellent work on reading in colonial Buenos Aires, Cúcuta stated: During the colonial era and well into the first decades of the independent period, very few people read, even fewer wrote. Access to reading and writing was limited to the white aristocracy and denied to black slaves. This statement reinforces the previous idea and also accounts for the multiplicity of spaces that we are about to address. 

To conclude and gain a better understanding of what made a school a school in colonial times in the Río de la Plata, firstly, the school schedule was not fixed. There was no standardized organization of time that worked regularly across all schools in the city. On the contrary, it could vary depending on the weather or the lesson of the day. Many of these schools operated with a very minimal, almost non-existent level of organization, and there was no such thing as a common teaching method, a concern that the revolutionary government board would begin to address from 1810 onwards. This heterogeneity of practices should not make us think that there was no uniformity.

There were rules or prescriptions that regulated the daily functioning of the school. It's not that there were no such rules; what there was, was anarchy. On the contrary, or rather, it operated under a different logic. That is the effort we have to try to make from the present in order to understand those school experiences. Not as a disorder, not to say that today there is order and before there was disorder, but that it operated under another logic. That other logic that we could think of together with another great historian of education, Alberto Martínez, as a right of the prince, as the scenario of the normalization and homogenization of the population, as the factory of good Christians, good vassals. However, this statement, I believe, opens up space for numerous nuances to think about numerous aspects, and perhaps that will be the subject of one of the following classes. But, I say, so that we can retain it, what was the main objective of the primary schools? The main objective of the primary schools was the teaching of reading, writing, and arithmetic. These knowledge areas were fundamentally combined with the transmission of Christian doctrine, which was carried out through the reading of the catechism, as recently mentioned by Sánchez de Thompson. The catechism was a book organized based on questions and answers that had to be memorized by the students and repeated aloud in the most faithful manner, sticking as closely to the text as possible. In the case

Dissemination of Father Gaspar de Astete's catechism around 1576, its first edition. This catechism was later replicated and reissued numerous times with many changes. Another famous catechism circulating in America is the Jesuit Ripalda's towards the end of the 16th century. So far, an overview of the elementary school and the first letter school. We must also add to this scenario some other educational institutions. First, let's briefly review what served as the middle school, meaning the school or college that assumed the preparatory studies for the university. In the case of Buenos Aires, this was the Royal College with Victorio Carolino. It is said to have been located where the San Ignacio College operated around 1710. Later, the San Ignacio College became the Grand College around 1767, then became the San Carlos College in 1772, and the Royal College with Victorio Carolino in 1783. Based on that institution, in 1863, Bartolomé Mitre was going to rename it and create and establish the National College of Buenos Aires, which would join the University of Buenos Aires in 1911. I mention all these dates not because the dates themselves seem important to me, but because it is necessary to reconstruct the history of secondary education in Argentina, where different devices and ways of understanding the education of young people are incorporated into models.

The previous excerpt tells a story that does not necessarily progress through stages that overcome one another, but through geological layers that overlap, one upon the other, where novelty is also framed in previous practices. On November 3rd, 1783, Viceroy Vertiz founded the Royal College with Victorio de San Carlos, and a month later, its constitutions began to be dictated. The constitutions are the regulations. These constitutions set the clauses for student admission, aiming primarily to ensure the presence of a student body of the first class, stating that they must be at least 10 years old, legitimate children, able to read and write sufficiently, of good inclinations and customs. These clauses also established the abstention of New Christians, Moors, Jews, those prosecuted by the Holy Office, or practitioners of infamous trades. Pay attention to the regulations of the schools of this school or this college with Victorio Carolino establish who can and who cannot enter their classrooms. And this last fundamental piece of information, who practices infamous trades. Those considered in this way were none other than artisans, the children of artisans, the apprentices—anyone who had attempted to learn a mechanical trade in their life was absolutely excluded from being able to pursue studies at the College with Victorio Carolino. Look, if there isn't an antecedent here on how the formation of secondary education splits from professional training.

Argentinian history, and this decision will have, as we know, a lasting impact. Let's take a little leap and remember that also the Colegio de Victorio Caroni did not exist with another institution that was founded in Cordoba and was named the Colegio Monserrat. This Colegio Monserrat is another important institution of the time, created on August 1, 1687. It was also managed by the Jesuits until their expulsion from Spanish territories. The Colegio Monserrat will have a strongly conservative imprint that will even span throughout the 20th century. An important fact is that only in 1998, an institution created in 1687 allowed women to enter its cloisters. This is not a minor detail of the conservative imprint that many educational institutions in our country have from their origins. Through the halls of the Colegio Monserrat, personalities like Santiago Der, Nicolás Avellaneda, Figueroa Alcorta, Alma Ceo Vélez Sarsfield, and Joaquín de González, who would be the founder of the Universidad de La Plata, passed. Vélez Sarsfield is the most important civilist in our national history. According to these schools, they educated the elites, preparing the men who would later assume the leadership of the country. But it wouldn't be fair to conclude this journey through the different forms of education in colonial times without mentioning the other type of education, which was...

Workshops and hospices, I say others because the question arises: where were the children who never attended elementary schools, Jesuit-run colleges, or universities educated? They were not trained, studied, or learned there, of course. They did so in other circuits that have perhaps not yet been sufficiently considered by the historiography of education and deserve greater attention for their richness and complexity. In many cases, children who had to earn a living, to survive, did not directly enter the workforce but in different sectors of the lower class, there were not necessarily few training opportunities, nor were they non-existent. They could at least take two alternative paths: either be placed under the training of a craftsman to learn a trade or be placed in a house for orphaned or abandoned children. During the late colonial period and with the emergence of enlightened ideas, as we mentioned at the beginning of this lesson, the educational field began to be marked by numerous tensions and disputes regarding the legitimacy of old and new knowledge. It is a fundamental issue to incorporate because in a way, it is what will open a series of debates in the field after the loss of modern pedagogies about enlightened pedagogies. This dispute between old and new knowledge is relevant.

Precisely, with the conditions, the foundations, the attributes that the teachers had to meet, and the institutional places from where this knowledge would be imparted. The Enlightenment period that we are designing today emerged with a strong challenge to the scholastic disciplines that prevailed over several centuries in colonial education. Scholastic education is dedicated to divinity, not the contemplation of divinity, that is, the interpretation of sacred scriptures, the connection with the divine, etc. The hegemonic proposal of education that prevailed over three centuries in colonial times will be opposed by the Enlightenment movement. The enlightened ideas during colonial times will promote programs to teach physics, political economy, law, philosophy, disputing the absolute hegemony of scholasticism in the curriculum up to that point. They will not only dispute the dominance but also seek to challenge many of the ideas promoted by scholasticism. Alongside this debate, which will begin to open up new fields of education, a new sensitivity towards the care of children, especially foundlings, begins to emerge in colonial society. Foundlings are none other than orphans. This new sensitivity starts to develop towards the end of.

In the 18th century, it is completed not at the beginning of the 19th century, and then there will be not just an evolution but a very important subsequent development that will be the subject of other lessons. However, in colonial Buenos Aires, the state of neglect of children begins to receive systematic attention from Viceroy Vertiz. Viceroy Vertiz ruled between 1778 and 1784. During those years, the situation of children in the cities, not only in Buenos Aires but in other colonial cities, sorry, will worsen significantly. Sanitary conditions, of course, were a source of diseases such as smallpox, yellow fever, and typhus, which for these children were absolutely deadly. If none survived, and obviously this is added to the problems associated with malnutrition. Many of these children were victims of malnutrition. Let's remember that these children were abandoned by their parents, who literally left them in the middle of the street. According to documents of the time, many of them were even victims of wild dogs that roamed the city. Faced with this truly dramatic scenario, in 1779, Viceroy Vertiz ordered the creation of a foundling home, which would be under the direction of Martin de Sarratea. This house would also have a printing press, which is another important piece of information.

For the history of reading and writing in the Río de la Plata, printing will have a prominent role as a space for education. Also, in the line of the mentioned trades that we were talking about earlier, and to which I will now refer very briefly. So, in those workshops or in the houses where children were exposed, abandoned children were educated by their parents. There was also a very powerful and important space for education around the mechanical trades workshops, which are the artisanal trades. That is, blacksmithing, shoemaking, carpentry, and all that long etcetera of trades that also met the demands of a viceroyalty that, as it became more complex and as its bureaucracy grew, increasingly required quality furniture and quality tools. Therefore, they needed a properly trained craftsmanship that could respond to those demands. The training of craftsmanship must then be thought of as a collective subject, not as individual people, but as a collective subject formed by pedagogical and work relationships, and by a logic that has one foot in the pedagogical field and the other in the work environment, from which emanates an artisanal knowledge that I would like us to understand as a specific type of knowledge that is as complex as what can be learned in university classrooms. Blacksmiths, tailors, shoemakers will settle in the cities.

Colonial apprentices will carry the trade secrets, techniques, and knowledge that only they know and will not readily share. They will not publicly disclose this knowledge precisely because their livelihood depends on this secret management. However, they were willing to pass on this knowledge to an apprentice as long as the apprentice assisted them throughout the training period in completing the assigned tasks. It was important to note that despite not following a formal institutional structure, the apprenticeship in trades was not without rules or regulatory frameworks. Placing a child under the guidance of an artisan was governed by a set of provisions that varied according to the different local artisanal traditions. In the case of the Río de la Plata, a formal binding relationship was established, not between the artisan and the apprentice, but through a private contract that set out the obligations of each party involved in this relationship. These contracts, which varied from artisan to artisan, could include details such as the duration of training, the period the apprentice would spend under the guidance of the artisan, provision of housing for the apprentice, clothing, food, and care in case the child fell ill.

Sickness and for example among other things, who was responsible for the artisan's apprentice fleeing the home and if the apprentice fled for any reason, often the reasons were linked to the strata or mistreatment by the trade masters who is responsible for bringing the child back to the age of access to the trade. Also, the variable is how variable the origin and social condition of those apprentices were. In some cases, they were slaves whose master sought not to place them in the hands of a master to return them trained and increase the slave's purchase value, or the uses that the slave's master could make of him would be much more profitable for him. It is also important to remember that the training of the artisan also included some knowledge or teachings, rather of the precepts of the Christian faith. In some cases, in some contracts, it was also established that the master could proceed to correct the apprentices prudently and modestly without demanding anything from them in case they made any mistakes. And it always appears in the contracts that none of them can be mistreated. This precisely reflects the changes we referred to earlier, what changes are beginning to occur. To round off with the revolution, this will be the subject of the next class, but here we can anticipate some issues. Perhaps today, the first way to find out about an educational novelty, an initiative.

In the pedagogical field, the main governmental communication channels were naturally social networks, but at that time, gazettes, weeklies, and newspapers were the primary sources through which the public became aware of the news and progress in educational matters. Let's start by reading about this period of significant transformations in the educational field. For example, Manuel Belgrano, through Correo de Comercio, will urge to revalue the training in this healing art we mentioned earlier. Belgrano will state that it is not the state's responsibility to take care of the training of these apprentices. We will also see how engineer Felipe Senillosa will propose the opening of a mathematics academy essential for developing mathematical thinking. I apologize, Senillosa will propose the opening of a mathematics academy. It is Belgrano himself who will propose the opening of a nautical academy. Likewise, Hipólito Vieytes will propose from the weekly Agricultura, Industria y Comercio the absolute and necessary training of rural farmers, who constituted a very extensive sector of the Buenos Aires area. And so on, notes, reports, statements, and expressions begin to emerge indicating the need for a profound reform in the educational field. At the same time, harsh criticisms will be launched, as we mentioned before, for example, from the pages of Telégrafo Mercantil, questioning, as Francisco Cabello did, the barbaric voices of scholasticism.

These notes to which I am referring begin to realize that we were facing a turning point regarding the way pedagogy or teaching was understood up to that moment and the need to establish reforms. These reforms will materialize in the creation of some institutions such as the Nautical Academy, founded in 1799, and instances of the Royal Consulate that will be led by two engineers, Pedro Servin and Juan Alcina. These engineers were appointed to these positions through a competition. Another interesting fact that begins to show changes in the ways of accessing and legitimizing those in charge of educational institutions is the creation of the School of Geometry, Perspective, Architecture, and all kinds of drawing. Drawing is a fundamental tool for the development of mechanical trades; a shoemaker could never produce a good pair of shoes without drawing them first. To draw is a necessary condition to develop that School of Geometry, Perspective, Architecture, and Drawing. Additionally, a proto-medical environment will be developed in 1798, led by Miguel Gorman, who will also give medicine a different status than it had before. A military school of mathematics will also be created. Mathematics is, I would say, the epitome of rational thinking, which will be established in 1810. All these institutions will share a common trait, the main one undoubtedly being that their study programs are oriented towards.

The principle of utility, a knowledge that has to be at the service of development, at the service of the economy, at the service of the progress of society, also begins to intensify the control by the council on how teachers teach in school. In a series of incursions and visits that specific commissions of the council will carry out, then they will elaborate a sort of proposal for a common teaching method based on these school inspections, which ultimately give us the image of a situation, a state of education in the Rio de la Plata in the last years of the colonial period. It is extremely complex, extremely lively, and also begins to account for a growing concern in the consciences of the time about the direction that education imparted to children, girls, and young people should take. This will be the subject of a systematic reflection by the intellectuals of the time, but that is already part of our next class.

Historia de la Educación Argentina: ¿Qué hace a una escuela, una escuela en tiempos de la Colonia?

Nicolás Arata

The Impact of the Bourbon Reforms on Education in the Late Colonial Period

The Bourbon reforms in Spain, which began in the early 18th century, clashed with the existing Habsburg traditions and brought about significant changes in education.

The reforms led to a shift in the colonial administration's focus on elementary education, with the promotion of bold initiatives and the obligation to provide essential services in both Indian and Spanish villages.

The Enlightenment's emphasis on the social dimension of individuals challenged the old colonial principle of isolation and seclusion, advocating for the activation of the social potential in people.

The Historical Evolution of Schooling and Education

Schooling in the past was not just a physical space but a set of practices influenced by the police power, religion, and charity.

The establishment of schools was driven by ecclesiastical authorities, municipality governors, and individuals, with education being a privilege for the wealthy.

During this time, there was legal inequality, with only white and criollo children allowed to pursue studies, while black, mulatto, and slave children were prohibited, leading to severe punishments for those who were caught being literate.

The Educational Experience of Women in Late Colonial Buenos Aires

Sánchez de Thompson's memoirs provide a rich insight into the educational experience of women in late 18th century Buenos Aires, highlighting the limited opportunities for girls to learn writing and the miserable conditions of the schools.

The educational institutions in colonial Argentina were heavily influenced by birthplace, skin color, and social status, with the elite having exclusive access to reading and writing.

The schools operated with minimal organization and lacked a common teaching method, reflecting the heterogeneity of educational practices during that time.

The Evolution of School Regulations and Education in Argentina

Schools in Argentina operated under a different logic, aiming to normalize and homogenize the population as well as to transmit Christian doctrine.

The main objective of primary schools was to teach reading, writing, arithmetic, and Christian doctrine through the memorization of catechism.

Secondary education in Argentina evolved through overlapping layers of practices, and the regulations of the Royal College with Victorio Carolino excluded those involved in infamous trades from entering the classrooms, highlighting a split from professional training.

The Impact of Colegio Monserrat on Argentinian Education

The Colegio Monserrat, founded in 1687, had a strong conservative influence that lasted until the 20th century and only began admitting women in 1998.

The institution played a significant role in educating the country's elites, including important historical figures.

In addition to traditional education, colonial times saw tension between old scholastic knowledge and new enlightened ideas, leading to a shift in the curriculum towards subjects like physics and philosophy.

The Foundling Home and the Education of Abandoned Children in Colonial Buenos Aires

In the late 18th century, Viceroy Vertiz addressed the neglected state of children in colonial Buenos Aires by establishing a foundling home and providing systematic attention to their needs.

The foundling home not only cared for the children but also served as a space for education with the inclusion of a printing press.

The training of craftsmanship in the region was a collective subject, with apprenticeship in trades being governed by rules and private contracts setting out the obligations of both the artisan and the apprentice.

The Impact of Artisan Apprenticeship on Educational Reform in Buenos Aires

Artisan apprentices often fled due to mistreatment by trade masters, who were responsible for their return.

The apprentices came from diverse social backgrounds, including slaves whose training increased their purchase value.

The educational field in Buenos Aires saw significant transformations, with key figures like Manuel Belgrano and Felipe Senillosa advocating for reform through various academies and publications.

Educational Reforms and the Creation of Institutions in the Colonial Period of Rio de la Plata

Pedro Servin and Juan Alcina were appointed to lead the Nautical Academy and the Royal Consulate through a competition, marking a turning point in educational leadership.

The creation of the School of Geometry, Perspective, Architecture, and Drawing highlighted the importance of drawing in the development of mechanical trades.

The new institutions, established between 1798 and 1810, shared a common focus on the principle of utility, emphasizing the service of knowledge to the economy and society, while facing growing concerns about the direction of education for young people.