From soul to matter: the new Spanish Francoist pedagogy’s plunge into experimental pedagogy and the influence of Raymond Buyse

Abstract

This paper analyses the approach to experimental pedagogy adopted by the new Spanish pedagogy which arose after Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War. To this end, it first outlines the spiritualist and anti-scientific approaches which prevailed in the new pedagogy of the postwar era, before charting the survival, lying beneath this anti-modernist rhetoric, of an experimental tradition linked to certain clergymen. It then shows how the leading pedagogue of Franco’s Spain, Víctor García Hoz, ended up endorsing this school of thought, and analyses the influence in this evolution of the neo-scholasticism of the University of Louvain and the experimental pedagogy developed by Raymond Buyse, who maintained close ties with Spain throughout the 1940s. The paper also focuses on the key role played by Spanish pedagogy in the construction of an international network of Catholic pedagogues. Finally, a number of explanatory hypotheses are presented to explain the paradox posed by this endorsement of the more scientific version of pedagogy by a vehemently Catholic group of academics