Oldal 30 [30]
MODERNIZATION, MIGRATION AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE ARGENTINE CASE, 1870-1945
clearly inspired by the French experience (laws of both countries are in fact
contemporary), according to which school should be a mechanism of national
unification. The Prussian model was also significant: according to Liliana
Bertoni, the emergence of a patriotic liturgy in the 1880s in primary schools
portrays the essentialist idea of Argentine nationality."
Criticism against ethnic education began in 1881 with Domingo Sarmiento’s
articles about Italian schools and increased during the whole decade. The
main argument was that the schools of Italian associations had become a
mechanism of Italian identity, eventually useful for the colonial ambitions of
the Italian state.
The Primary Education Law was completed by centralized organs such as
the National Education Council in 1880, the massive foundation of public
schools and other significant laws that imposed the mandatory use of Spanish
language in primary schools (the project of Nicolas Avellaneda in 1896) and
the presence of Argentine teachers in ethnic schools (1917). According to
immigrant leaders and foreign diplomats, it was impossible to compete with
public education. Besides, students of ethnic schools belonged to the high
social classes of each community, while the middle and poor classes sent their
children to free Argentine schools.
These policies had clear effects on immigrant children. By 1904, for
example, public schools monopolized 95% of the educational offer in Buenos
Aires. The situation was quite similar in the rest of the country. This explains
why the proportion of illiterates (14-year-olds and above) was reduced from
64.6% and 78.1% in 1869 to 12.1% and 15.2% in 1947, for males and females
respectively.
Finally, the patriotic liturgy became deeper and more intense after the
arrival of José Maria Ramos Mejia in the National Education Council in 1908.
The growing influence of nationalism was characterized by a valorization of the
Spanish legacy, powerfully denied by the liberal elites during the second half of
the 19" century.
In the illustrative terms of Eugene Weber’s book, “Peasants into French”, the
education system opened the way to pass from Europeans into Argentinians
and from peasants into city dwellers.”
A similar function was accomplished by the mandatory military service
in 1901 (law 4.031 or the Richieri Law), which had a central role in the
nationalization of immigrant children born after 1885. Even more, despite
their elitist features, during the 1920s and 1930s a significant proportion
Lilia Ana Bertoni: Patriotas, cosmopolitas y nacionalistas. La construccién de la
nacionalidad argentina a fines del siglo XIX, Buenos Aires, Fondo de Cultura Econémica,
2001.
17 Eugen Weber: Peasants into Frenchmen. The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914,
Stanford University Press, 1976.
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