I have always been attracted by the booklets of Pedro Poveda on his educational project to found an “Institución Católica de Enseñanza” (Catholic Institution of Teaching). I was impressed by his desire to make "credible" his proposal to join the efforts and wills of teachers towards a common action: raise an educational movement and create institutions that would support this endeavor, establishing networks of mutual help in the professional work of educators.

In the 70s, this thought was accepted by a majority of teachers in Spain. It is the time of the great movements of pedagogical renewal, of believing in education as a transforming force of our social reality.

But the picture has changed substantially. Although global reports strive to present education as a key element of the "world resolutions" (King and Schneider, 1991), the aim is not merely instrumental and utilitarian but it is "aimed at the full realization of the human being, in all his wealth "(Delors, 1996). Teachers, in general, go through a dark and critical period in their professional development and teacher discomfort is a reality in many of our educational institutions.

Hargreaves expressively summarizes this situation at the end of his work Professorship, culture and Postmodernism:

"Teachers know that their work is changing, just like the world in which they operate. To the extent that the current structures and cultures of teaching are left as is, the task of responding to these complex changes and accelerate them away from isolation will only create a greater overload, intensification, guilt, uncertainty, cynicism, and massive abandonment. " (Haargreaves, 1996, p. 287).

I wanted to stress "away from isolation" because none of the suggested changes at the structural and cultural level in the field of education (or in any social field) are possible to perform in isolation. Knowledge is always a collective work of a human group.

And here is where I want to place the educational proposal from Poveda to educators. His context is very different from ours. The languages ​​and the needs are very different, too. Also, reflection and study on the professional development of teachers has been enriched by indubitable contributions worldwide and in our country. Moreover, the need to identify the professional fields of educators has grown dramatically. Professional development in non-formal education is a path that is strongly affirmed, not without difficulties. So why do I still believe in the validity of his proposal?

Throughout these months, I have been reading slowly texts from Poveda as well as the action taken by him. I think Pedro Poveda initiated a dialogue with educators that still continues.

The look

He looked at the reality of his time and told them about it. He invited them to look at it, to understand their needs, their expectations, their potential, their shortcomings, the forces of social, cultural and political action that moved them. But he also invited them to discover the depth of the mystery that gives meaning to life, transcending everyday reality without isolating it. This reflective capacity that we discover in Poveda is born out of the careful observation and commitment to reality, comprehensive and dynamic.

Today, he again invites us to look with sympathy at the world but also at our own reality –at the processes and people, institutions and life and discover their demands. How does the context affect educators? What are the forces, the potential for change that can occur within the current sociocultural processes?

The educator as protagonist of change

From this perspective, attentive to the reality of his time, projects emerged. And he offered to educators those projects of educational change. He counted on educators to build them. He thought of them to develop the projects. He believed they would not only be able to implement them but to project, dream together, build a culture of solidarity, where social groups hitherto excluded from it, would find a place. Thus they would be protagonists of change.

Today, again we need to understand ourselves as educators, strengthen our personal and professional recognition, strengthen our identity and the traits that define it.

We need to know ourselves capable of projecting a valid education for our students, immersed in a world characterized by fragility and fragmentation of socialization processes, traditionally linked to family and school. How can we talk to these generations, so different from ours?

The formation and action of educators as a community service experience

And Pedro Poveda started by doing. When in the last years of his life, he goes over his own history, he explains why he decided to take that step. "I invited everyone. Since no one undertook the implementation of the project, I started the first Academy as a means of giving shape to the idea. " (Poveda, 1935, cit. By Velázquez, 1987, p. 22.)

True to himself, Poveda, without giving up the project, starts a modest, concrete realization to give shape through this experience to his initial idea. But he was not alone in the way. No educational project is done alone. He began by inviting others to an action that required mutual support, solidarity, and teacher training. Since the proposal did not focus merely on a new curricular offering or a new methodology, but aspired to contribute, in a modest but real manner, to social transformation, the action he invited to was oriented to trigger learning processes, educational climates that would give rise to a new culture.

Today, since the educational field has expanded its action arena, the offer of Poveda suggests a way to introduce ourselves to them, if what we wish is to collaborate in the social reconstruction of our world. How can we create a culture of collaboration in our institutions? How can we work, within our everyday life, the research of our own practice, the training of professionals and educational action? How can we weave there a new style of relationship that allows us to make us better people, without closing ourselves in the comfortable niche of friends, but opening ourselves to the elements of an extraordinarily complex and violent world, which many times closes its borders to immigrants and at the same time is learning to navigate the information superhighway? How can we move forward in solidarity, knowing that we need each other in an interdependent world?

These are some of the concerns that guide our reflection on the educational proposal of Poveda for educators today.

(To read the full article download the attachment, in Spanish, at the bottom of this page).

In Atreverse a educar. Congreso de Pedagogía, Pedro Poveda educador. Vol. 2. Narcea Ed. Madrid 1998MARGARITA BARTOLOMÉ PINO
University of Barcelona
In Atreverse a educar. Congreso de Pedagogía, Pedro Poveda educador. Vol. 2.  Narcea Ed. Madrid 1998