Yo aconsejaría a los maestros, que sueñan con grandes ideales, que comiencen por estas cosas, pequeñas si se quiere, pero que no son más que estos ideales que tanto apreciamos… A propósito de una comunicación inédita (1909) de Juan Bardina

Abstract

The present paper is an exercise in pedagogical archeology that rescues a relevant document for the history of Catalan pedagogy, and by extension, Chilean pedagogy, given the fact that Bardina resided in Chile for many years. We begin by presenting a paper, unpublished until now, that Juan Bardina presented in the Primary Teaching Conference of Barcelona (1909) and in which he summarizes what he considered to be the new education (the “stimulating pedagogy”, in his own words). We provide a brief biography of the author and some notes about his thought and pedagogical work, in order to contextualize, analyze and, where necessary, clarify the paper’s content. In it Bardina leaves traces of his filo-Americanism and his agreement with the postulates of Spencer about the philosophy of evolutionism. Finally, the reader will find the transcription of the paper, published for the first time.