Punishment in Elementary schools in the 19th century –Progress towards humanization or stagnation?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present and analyze the presence of punishments in the Mexican nineteenth-century elementary school from some primary and secondary sources. The starting point was to have been able to collect, over many years of historical research, various archive documents that showed, in one way or another, the presence of punishments in schools. A series of questions gave rise to my concerns and the aspects to be addressed: What was the origin of the punishment in the classroom? What were the objectives of the punishments? Did the parents accept the punishments that the teachers applied to their children? If the above is affirmative, what type of punishments did the authorities and parents allow and which ones did not? Was there any norm that regulated the application of punishments between the last years of the 18th century and the first two-thirds of the 19th century? If any, what kind of sanctions were imposed on teachers who violated the established limits? Finally, can we think that the activity of nineteenth-century teachers was truly humanized over the years by incorporating alternatives such as prizes into their practices, or was this supposed awareness only discursive and not always practical? The findings were interesting and the theoretical references of the social history of education (Lockhart, 1972; Tanck, 1976) allowed us to recognize the richness of the everyday processes experienced by ordinary people (teachers, students, and parents), who lived the vicissitudes of daily school life. The document closes with reflections on what is narrated, offering the possibility of rethinking the subsistence of punishment and consequences in current times.