Religious obligations in primary education: conflicts between teachers and parish priests (1838-1931)

Abstract

Schoolteachers and clergy share the education of the schooled infancy since centuries ago. In the case of Spain, both professionals were obliged to establish mutual understanding and collaboration to teach catholic doctrine in the school schedule, describing the normative how the teacher should proceed regarding religious instruction and moral in the infancy and how the parson should inspect this aspect in the school. The links between Catholic Church and State, as well as the control both exerted during the configuration of the educative system affected the teaching performance. Since religion is an individual and social phenomenon, we address the reasons given to control the performance of the school teaching profession between 1838 and 1931, using as sources the state and ecclesiastic normative, the local and professional press, the ecclesiastic newsletters, the administrative documentation, the memoirs and the biographies.