Lyceum Education and the New Socioeconomic Realities Emerging from the Post-War (1945-1968)

Abstract

The economic reconstruction of the European continent, as regards the capitalist bloc, combined policies for consolidating representative democracy through the European Recovery Programme (the Marshall Plan) and the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC). These policies resulted in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with its liberal rationale of fostering economic competitiveness using technology and a belief in the good of development. A central role in this development was played by education, with its basis in the theory of human capital. In this period, Portugal recognized the need to reposition itself internationally, at the same time making thorough internal changes. The growing role of the state in ideological control made it possible to exact a contribution to economic development from education. Education planning policies were implemented in conjunction with economic planning and development, centred around the training of qualified human resources, the valorisation of school capital, and making use of technical support from international organisations. In this polarised context, how did the goals attributed to lyceum education and its curricular structure develop? What were the objectives of the so-called Preparatory Cycle of Secondary Education (Ciclo Preparatório do Ensino Secundário - CPES). A panoply of written sources has been called upon and submitted to documentary analysis using the critical method in order to answer these questions. In a certain way, they sum up the resolution of ideas and the polarity of positions on the burning question and the creation of the CPES, and the attention dedicated, at least rhetorically, to vocational guidance.