Continuities and discontinuities in the origins of the institutionalisation of pedagogy in Spain

Resum

This article applies the current international interest in the institutionalisation of pedagogic knowledge to the study of its origins as an academic discipline in Spain. The focus of attention lies in the unexplored issues, the ideological tensions and the recurrent discontinuities that surrounded this process. The starting point is a cryptic reference to the pedagogical seminar in Prague in a report from the Spanish Council on public instruction regarding the appointment of Manuel Bartolom Cosso to take the chair in Higher Pedagogy in the doctoral studies of the Faculty of Philosophy, created at the Central University in Madrid in 1904. The inclusion of pedagogy in Spanish universities made a longstanding wish come true but, as often happens when adapting to new circumstances, it was also the effect of a mutation that added a degree of discontinuity, which in this case was both institutional and doctrinal. The appeal to the seminar in Prague - arguably at the initiative of the Catholic Herbartian Otto Willmann - may then be interpreted not only as a way to justify the pertinence of the theoretical and practical knowledge of education, but also as a nod to placate traditional minds and act as a bridge between tradition and modernity.