Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, physical exercise or militarization? 1867-1913

Abstract

UNAM’s high school system, called Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, was founded to provide its students with culture and prepare them for higher degree studies. Since its creation in 1867, it has been under the attacks of some sectors that believed that the pedagogical approaches it had created in order to contribute to the nation’s progress went against traditional education. The conflict to determine educational contents in Preparatoria can be seen in the various reforms made to its curriculum up to 1913, in which priority was given to subjects with scientific content, relegating Humanities, deeming them impractical. However, in what today might be called hidden curriculum, from the beginning of the activities of the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, physical exercises were taught through the subject of Gymnastics, in order for students to develop and improve their body strenght while learning to form ideas and exercising their intellectual faculties. In this paper, a review of the pre-1913 high school curricula is made, emphasizing the teaching of physical and military exercise. It also highlights attempts to implement military discipline, and presents and analyzes the debates surrounding its establishment, as well as the characteristics of this type of instruction in a civilian institution that had been characterized by its attention to the physical, moral, and intellectual education of its students. The comments presented at the end of this work arised from the detailed review of the documents consulted, mainly texts prepared by researchers such as Mílada Bazant, Javier Garciadiego, and Clementina Díaz y de Ovando, among others, as well as compendiums of university legislation, correspondence and official documents from the Fondo de la Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, which is safeguarded by the historical archive of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.