29 Choosing ancestors: the primary education

syllabuses in Buenos Aires, Argentina,

between 1975 and 1990
IRINA PODGORNY

Argentinos?—Hasta donde
ydesde cuando, bueno es
darse cuenta de ello.
(Sarmiento [1882] 1915, p. 63)

Introduction

As many authors (e.g. Rockwell 1982) have pointed out, everyday life in
schools is not a literal translation from the curriculum; classes do not follow
faithfully its subjects and goals. But no one can deny the relevance of the
syllabus for understanding school policies. From an archaeological point
of view, curricula can be seen as monuments or artefacts of the ideals which
schools attempt to impose. In Argentina, this means three systems of ideas
from three different political groups—the first in 1975 by the justicialist’
democratic government; the second in 1980 by the military dictatorship;
and the last in 1985/6 by the ‘radical’ democratic government. My goal is
to analyse the inner logic of these schemes through their documents and to
compare the system of ideas which each of them establishes.
My case study for the first section of this chapter is the primary education
system of the Province of Buenos Aires; it is the largest in the country, with
1,298,079 children from 6 to 12 years (Tedesco & Carciofi 1987, plate 18;
data from the 1980 National Census), i.e. 50 per cent of school-children in
the country, and it has a high degree of bureaucratic complexity and a
teaching body in much disarray (Podgorny 1990). The educational
syllabuses were written in the Ministry of Education of the Province of
Buenos Aires by a curricular department.
In the second part of this chapter I present the results of ethnographic
research conducted in primary schools in two municipalities of Gran
Buenos Aires (see Podgorny 1990; Podgorny & Perez n.d.) after the
introduction of the latest syllabus. These data were obtained through
 CHOOSING ANCESTORS: BUENOS AIRES 409

quantitative and qualitative techniques (surveys, interviews, participant

and ethnographic observation of school class situations) between 1987 and
1989.

Social studies/sciences

The 1975 curriculum

In the 1975 curriculum, social studies, taught as one of the natural sciences
starting in grade 4 (i.e., when children are 9), has two main themes: (a) a
geographical determinism, linking the particular development and
character of society with its natural surroundings; and (b) a concept of
nationalism that was suggested was actually inherent in the land and its
people before the nation of Argentina was created as a political entity.
The geographical determinism first appears in a study of ‘ways of living
to show the constant relationship between man and environment’ (Ediciones
‘La Obra’ 1975, p. 3, emphasis added). The ‘Native people’ are the first
group examined in the study of this relationship. In the fifth grade, the text
states that ‘the ways of living of the aboriginal tribes are a consequence of
their interaction with the environment’ (Ediciones ‘La Obra’ 1975, p. 7).
Aboriginal people are not mentioned again, but in the sixth grade this
geographical vision is broadened to include a new category: the ‘American
Man’, who is said to be ‘influenced by the geographical environment
through time’ (Ediciones ‘La Obra’ 1975, p. 12). In the seventh grade such
determinism is extended to other countries, establishing a sort of implicit
law which operates in all past and present societies, i.e., that their origin
and function are determined by nature and environment.
It is clear from this programme that the teaching of history is strongly
connected to geography, and indeed, the natural roots of nationalism is a
significant leitmotiv of the curriculum. In this syllabus the Argentinian
nation is an entity that has always existed, rooted in nature and common
origins. Unfortunately, however, aboriginal people have only a temporary
place in this nation. European conquest was ‘occupation’ and the territories
not yet occupied by white Europeans were ‘empty spaces’ (Ediciones ‘La
Obra’ 1975, p. 8). Native people were treated as living here only temporarily
at the eve of the conquest.
The minor place of aborigines is further emphasized in the treatment of
world history. In the seventh grade (12-year-olds), Europe and Asia are
considered as the source of the first cultures, i.e. the Greek—Latin European
heritage and Christendom, and the successors of this legacy are Spain and
its descendants, the Hispanic-American countries. In this scheme, the
conquest of America is studied in terms of its Christian mission.
One can therefore conclude from reading this syllabus that: (a) the first
humans and cultures were in Asia and Europe; (b) the conquest of America,
Africa and the Pacific islands by Europeans was a natural movement of
people to new spaces; (c) these spaces were regarded as ‘empty’ (previous
410 I.PODGORNY

inhabitants of these regions are ignored here, although they are quoted in
other parts of the curriculum). The real world is limited in space and time
to this chain of development.

The 1980 curriculum

In 1980 the social sciences curriculum changed the contents of each grade.
The curriculum established that children under 12 ‘are not capable of
understanding time and space’, but it does not deny the teaching of the
‘historic sense’ for the shaping of the ‘national sense and consciousness’
(Ediciones Siemens Ocampo 1980, p. 1) for the later understanding of history.
This curriculum explicitly criticizes the environmental determinism so
important in the previous syllabus as an ‘erroneous point of view…the
intelligence and will of man are the true guides of the development of
society’. At the same time it denies the utility of ‘geohistoric problems’, i.e.
the way that the 1975 curriculum structured the teaching of subjects. On
the contrary, history is defined as the people’s collective memory, needed
for understanding the present and for moving into the future, as well as for
preserving society as a national culture (Ediciones Siemens Ocampo 1980,
p. 2). The cultural values which are supported are those of the Hispanic
heritage and so historic description is based on great men, great events and
meaningful places, with an assumption that the nation existed previous to
its constitution.
Because of this concept of nation and history, the time period within
which aborigines are studied is brief. A long history is only recognized for
Europe. For America the time starts with the contact between Natives and
conquerors, as a sort of a spark which opened the doors of history to the
Native peoples of this continent. As a result, Native people are treated as
supporting players in the beginning of the national drama. In the fourth
grade, Native peoples of Buenos Aires Province are mentioned in the
history of its settlement, and the coverage in the fifth grade includes the
struggles between the conquerors and the Indians, the cultures and peoples
who inhabited the plains of Buenos Aires when the Spaniards arrived and
the main indigenous peoples of the Argentinian population. From the sixth
grade on, however, they are treated only in the introduction to historical
topics. The assumption throughout the curriculum is of a sort of ‘national
fate’ which guides the course of the country despite obstacles and
impediments and of one culture and one national tradition, of which both
are uniform and homogeneous units. The children are taught that
nationalism grows firm and in the right direction thanks to the action of
great men who capture this national essence in their works.
Hence, in the seventh grade, the founding of Argentina is seen as a
European phenomenon:

the European culture spread out in America, establishing morals,

traditions and ways of living, which involve conceiving Man as a
spiritual and transcendent being and the World as humanist and
 CHOOSING ANCESTORS: BUENOS AIRES 411

Christian. The result of this is the grandeur of being Argentinian

assuming as the basis of society freedom, democracy, labour and
property, and the preservation of national security.
(Ediciones Siemens Ocamp 1980, p. 14)

In summary, the 1980 syllabus treats historical studies as distinct from

geography. Mankind is conceived in terms of its human essence and with a
teleology that is bound up with great men and nationalism. The Native
peoples are given a place simply to introduce the Conquest.
The 1985/6 syllabuses
In November 1985 the new democratic government of the Province of
Buenos Aires published the draft of the new educational syllabus and the
definitive version was published a year later. This final version has been in
use since 1987 (Dirección General de Escuelas 1986).
The main goals of the social science and natural science areas are the
same: to ‘apply spatial, temporal, and causal concepts in cultural and
natural processes’ (Dirección General de Escuelas 1985, 1986), assuming
that in both nature and society the same kind of relationships exist, and
that the differences between social and natural sciences are only in their
object of study.
But a comparison of the two documents (draft and definitive version)
reveal that some changes were made in the short time between them. The
general structure and goals of the syllabus remain as they had been
conceived in 1985, but the whole of the social science area was changed.
In 1985, the social-historic diversity of the world is emphasized, as shown
by subjects conceived as the ‘great themes’ of American history: the origins
of man in the Americas, the culture of Native people in prehispanic times,
the contact situation and the European possession of the land. In 1986,
however, the understanding of human essence, as it appears in national
culture, is the point of departure to knowledge of other times and peoples
(Podgorny In Press).
In spite of this shift to an ahistorical approach, consistent with the
original (1975) curricula, anthropological and archaeological
‘organisational structures’, are subjects defined in terms of social entities.
These subjects are set out in the following order: family, school, town, local
communities, locality, province, regional configurations, aboriginal
communities, Argentinian society, and Latin American societies.
The structure ‘aboriginal communities’ is defined as follows: ‘Native or
original groups, bearers of different cultures, now very few, marginalized
and without real integration in the national society’ (Dirección General de
Escuelas 1986, p. 122).
Although it is not made explicit, the order in which such structures are
presented is the order in which they are taught. They progress from local to
general levels, the last section being concerned with the history and the
territory of America. This sense of order is violated, however, by the
412 I.PODGORNY

treatment of ‘aboriginal communities’—and this break in the logic betrays

the fact that this subject is regarded as different from the others in the social
panorama. By its position, this subject should be more comprehensive than
‘regional configurations’ and less so than ‘Argentinian society’—but
whereas the others are progressive steps to the building of an ‘us’ (the Latin
American peoples), the ‘aboriginal communities’ are part of an ‘other’.
This presentation of ‘aboriginal communities’ is accomplished in two
ways: (1) as a descriptive feature of other subjects, and (2) as an isolated
subject. In the first instance, the presence or absence of aborigines is one of
the features used in describing the specific ‘province’ or ‘locality’ (as in the
1975 and 1980 curricula). In the second, ‘aboriginal communities’ are
presented as an autonomous entity, part of the historical development of
Argentinian society—in contrast to other groups, which are described in
terms of how they function and their present traits. The ‘aboriginal
communities’ history is for the period ‘peopling of the Americas to our
present days’; archaeology is presented as the way of recovering this past
(Podgorny 1990, p. 187).
Native peoples are therefore not presented in the totality of facts of the
national history. They only participate in events related to the consolidation
of boundaries (Dirección General de Escuelas 1986, pp. 128–36).
The curriculum was supported by several information brochures about
Native peoples; these brochures reveal clearly how they were conceived in
Argentinian society. In the brochure about aboriginal inhabitants of the
Province of Buenos Aires (Dirección de Ensernanza Primaria 1986), for
example, addressed to educationalists from Superintendents to school-
teachers, refers to ‘rethinking possible ways of going back to the ways of
living different from our own, considering the others,…coming near to the
peoples whose descendants still inhabit our land’ (Dirección General de
Escuelas, circular no. 74). It is clear to whom the underlined terms refer.
The treatment of Native peoples in this curriculum is therefore an
advance on previous ones in that aboriginal people are treated as the
original inhabitants, but, as in the earlier curricula, they are isolated from
‘national history’. The prehispanic past is regarded as self-evident and is
treated as a novelty. As a result of the exclusion of Native peoples from
participating in the national history discourse and from the logic of the
organizational structure, they are marginalized, placed in the same category
as their prehispanic ancestors (Podgorny in Press).
As to the historical vision of Argentina as a Latin American and
multicultural/multilingual country, this curriculum establishes clear co-
descent relationships with the other American countries since their common
origins at least 12,000 years ago. The descent is linked in the first place with
the indigenous roots and secondarily with the Spanish and Europeans. The
children of the primary schools of Buenos Aires finish their courses with a
world whose boundaries are the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean and the Bravo
river of Mexico.
 CHOOSING ANCESTORS: BUENOS AIRES 413

Discussion of results
Although there are clear differences between the curricula, there are several
common traits. First, aboriginal communities are presented as a sort of
‘national prehistory’ from a non-indigenous point of view, and Native
people are not included in discussions of ‘national history’. Second, history
is conceived as the search for antecedents that are rooted in the very nature
of the land and its people.
In the 1975 curriculum, nationalism is an assumption and each historic
event is an indication of its existence. It assumes that there is such a thing
as ‘Argentinian-ness’ which persists although the population has changed
historically (from the Hispano-American to the workers). It also assumes
that the spirit of the nation existed prior to its constitution. Given that this
curriculum considers each nation as having a single culture, the logic that
results is one in which aboriginal peoples are placed together as a unit
contemporary with the European conquest, following which they
disappear, subsumed under the national tradition: the aboriginals become
Argentinian.
In 1980, a uniform national culture or consciousness is also an
assumption. National culture is an essence which appears in the work of
the ‘great men’, and that, like the country itself, pre-dates the constitution
of the Argentinian nation. A Spanish legacy is overestimated and Christian
values are among the more frequent topics of the syllabus. Native peoples
are considered in the same way as in 1975, although care is taken to
emphasize the positive attitude of the Spanish missionaries and conquerors
towards them.
Finally, in 1985/6, the nation is presented as a multicultural entity
including aboriginal and Negro slave communities. The Argentinian
lineage is an Indo-American one, although contemporary Argentina is also
presented as inherent, in seminal form, in the past.

Current ideas about the past among Argentinian teachers

In attempting to develop a teaching programme that contains a more realistic
treatment of the social diversity of the nation, it is important to know what
relationship exists between the received knowledge promulgated through
the curricula and the attitudes and practices of teachers employed to pass
this knowledge on to the younger generations. The relatively rapid shifts
in the focus and content of Argentinian curricula provide an interesting
comparison between what a curriculum idealizes and what is actually
taught in schools.
In 1989 we (Podgorny & Pérez n.d.) interviewed primary-school teachers
in order to survey the current perspective of their teaching. Our assumption
was that they would not have uniform points of view. The interviews
focused on the teaching of history and the teaching of social sciences, as
well as on the presentation of aboriginal societies in the new curriculum.
414 I.PODGORNY

Their comments were analysed taking into consideration the main themes
and contradictions which occurred in the answers.
The results of these interviews revealed two ways of considering reality
in the ‘social sciences’ : the first excludes the children from active
participation in the educational process, whereas the second takes the
wishes of the children into account.

The teachers who exclude children

The first group considers that history and social sciences are located in
museums and libraries—part of a cultural network from which they believe
their pupils are socially excluded. Unfortunately, social science discourse
never takes this ‘reality’ into consideration—the subject of social research
is abstract, unobtainable, subjective and impossible to test. In contrast, this
group finds the natural sciences easy to teach and experience—even outside
an educational context. One of the teachers states:

Perhaps I prefer natural sciences because there you don’t find

contradictions, you don’t ask yourself whether you exist or not. In
natural sciences, things are as they are. In social sciences I ask myself
‘What am I teaching?’ My own child reads a lot and he tells me things
at odds with what I have always thought.

This group of teachers assumes that their world is different from that of
their pupils and, in consequence, the problems of the teaching of history
are rooted in a world of conflicting codes and a lack of mutual
understanding. Indeed, the gulf between teacher and pupil is regarded as
inevitable, as history is conceived of as a discourse of changing subjects,
which can only be understood by those who know how to sort out the
different versions, i.e. those in elite cultural networks who study books. In
contrast, the teachers do not regard the natural world as a problematic
subject because they think that it is perceived in the same way by all social
classes.

The teachers who include children

The second group of teachers teach from the same world as the child. Their
identification with the children is not based on common origins, however,
but on the common goals they share for the future. Unlike the first group,
they do not regard history and social sciences as particularly problematic
fields of teaching.
One teacher refers to history as follows:

I am very interested in history. I think there are two mankinds, one of

the oppressed and the other of the oppressors. The first wants life, the
second power, and history is a mirror of this. I like so much that song
by nebbia… ‘Si la historia la escriben los que ganan eso quiere decir
 CHOOSING ANCESTORS: BUENOS AIRES 415

que hay otra historia, la verdadera historia, quien quiera oir que oiga’
[If history is written by winners, that means there is another history,
the true history; you who want to listen, please hear this song].
(Teacher of fifth B grade)

These teachers believe that the aim of education is not to fix a single version
of history in the minds of children, but to teach children how to analyse
different points of view in order to find out which is the best. Neither
mentioned the ‘national’ past, however, although one did disagree with
the idea of a national folklore. They consider family and mankind, with
special reference to the oppressed, as the appropriate levels of analysis—
and social structures—within which children have to recognize themselves.
Teaching about the past: an unfortunate convergence of attitudes
When it comes to interpreting the past, however, the differences between
these groups dissolve. Both groups mentioned the same resources: research
guides, time lines (chronological structures), and handbooks. These kinds
of resources are promoted through teachers’ meetings and they are widely
accepted, at least publicly. And both groups agreed that the ‘time line’, a
method of representing history in a chronological chart, was the best way
of solving the problems involved in the teaching of temporal succession.
They concurred in the belief that it is not possible to understand time and
to teach it without reference to a geometric representation.
This conception of time reflects a fundamental problem with teaching
about the past that can be directly connected to the conceptions of time and
history present in the various Argentinian curricula. The use of the ‘time
line’ portrays time as space, with the facts of the past following one another
in a linear and progressive fashion. This suggests a lack of historicity,
evident not only in the presentation of the indigenous past but also in the
tendency to transform history into a closed system of certain facts with a
persistent relation to two associated ideals: an immanent sense of nation
and its inevitable progress, bound up in the character of the landscape.
Indeed, the temporality mainly mentioned at school is that of the school
almanac, i.e. patriotic and liturgical dates connected with the cycle of school
rituals. Other times, such as those of the past and present of the aboriginal
peoples, are far away from primary education—history reduced to
geography: ‘They [the Indians] are still close to their origins, and we can
not deny that they provide an easy way of teaching geography’ (Teacher of
fifth B grade).

Conclusion
This chapter has considered one of the most difficult problems facing
contemporary education about archaeology and the past in Argentina. Since
the nineteenth century it has been widely believed that the behaviour of a
whole society can easily be shaped and controlled through education and
416 I.PODGORNY

other means of ideological reinforcement. The teaching of history and the

other aspects of the past have been important in this process in order to
promote the concept of ‘national identity’, which is seen as an important
ideological tool. As this chapter has shown, however, the past in Argentina
is anything but unified, as it has been shaped according to the ideological
and social aims of the government in power. Each military and democratic
government has had its own economic and political projects and it has
implemented them, as a matter of routine, in the field of education.
Argentinian educational policies have therefore been preoccupied with
overturning policies promoted by previous governments. Indeed, ‘national
identity’ has changed its roots as often as the Head of the Ministry of
Education has changed: a ‘national identity’ focused on workers and the
Third World was first replaced by the notion of a closed Argentinian society
without any ancestors beyond those connected with the Christian essence
and then, finally, transformed into a more broadly focused concept, linking
Argentina with other Latin American countries and, for the first time,
presenting Native peoples’ history in its own temporal framework.
Unfortunately, each attempt at creating a unified, ‘national’ culture has
largely failed to consider what is so obvious in the present, the social and
economic diversity—and inequalities—of Argentinian society. These
ideological changes have therefore had a considerable impact on individual
teachers, as they are confronted with the problem of translating abstract
ideals into realities for students who may not, for social or economic
reasons, fit into the scope of the national vision. After seeing how the
Ministry of Education has spent time and money in continually modifying
the ways of presenting history, some teachers react against these
impositions, developing their own social position and ideological stance.
All that this individual action accomplishes, however, is the dilution of
constructive criticism of the curriculum and, hence, the perpetuation of the
historical legacy of the system as a whole, with its outdated means of
representing the complexity of the past. If we want an educational system
that better reflects our cultural heritage and provides hope for the future,
we must look beneath idealized national identities and cultures to people
in their actual social, political and historical contexts and create educational
curricula that are more in keeping with the daily lives of teachers and their
students.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my advisors Lic. Marfa Rosa Neufeld and Drs Gustavo
Politis and Guillermo Ranea for their constant help, as well as Marta
Colombo, Melida Dalla Valle and Beatriz Simonchini for their help in finding
a copy of the 1980 curriculum. I also thank Pablo Ben for his comments
with regard to the translation of the Spanish and original version of this
paper.
 CHOOSING ANCESTORS: BUENOS AIRES 417

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