School populations: The students of the Junta de Caridad in Puebla during the first half of the 19th century

Abstract

The approach to childhood has usually been carried out from social history, generating the concept of infancy, which has hardly been attended to by researchers, even at various times the reconstruction of children´s social participation has been mixed and in some cases diluted in the rescue of institutional stories, because the sources provide biased access to children’s culture, since their actions and words were rarely captured to be seen by future generations. The epistemology of schooling has opened new veins of research based on cultural history. The present investigation seeks to unravel the society and history of the school populations belonging to the schools of the Junta de Caridad –Charity Board– located in the city of Puebla during the first half of the 19th century. The written traces of male and female students are rescued through their student lists and school notebooks, highlighting the fluctuating historical-social context in which instruction was developed, where the constant tension between the Mitre and the city council generated a series of public policies that influenced the curriculum, with the Lancastrian method being the point of union between both institutions, because this educational proposal brought together the social values of both parties for the teaching of the first letters. This paper shows, at first, the efforts to unravel the educational history that has been followed from two parameters: starting from childhood and school populations, to later establish the educational context of the city of Puebla in the first half of the 19th century, where the women’s school belonging to the Charity Board was developed, and finally the notebooks of the male and female students of the schools run by said Board are delved into.