La educación en la Antioquia decimonónica. Un análisis sociohistórico sobre su situación, vicisitudes y logros

Abstract

The main goal of this article is analyzing the vicissitudes and political, economic, and social factors that affected the creation and projection process of public education in the province of Antioquia (Colombia) in the 19th century. For that purpose, we describe the existing social and political conditions while simultaneously contrasting them with the educational projects that the national and provincial authorities fostered at that time and with the diagnoses that several opinion-makers gave about the status of that endeavor. By doing this, we were able to identify and conclude that, even though the promoters of this enterprise constantly stated their genuine interest in instituting, promoting, and projecting public education in the province, its completion depended not only on their will to bring it to fruition, but on the existing material and social conditions. In this regard, we would like to emphasize that, although the economic and tax scarcity in the first decades of the century did not favor the promotion of education, the change in those conditions seemed to considerably benefit its takeoff in the second half of the 19th century.