HISTORY OF THE RURAL SCHOOL

In order to fully delve into the study of a rural school, we must first analyze and study
the history and all the stages experienced by rural schools, in order to better understand
the current organization and what it could have.

 Rural school past

We are going to begin to tell the story from the Moyano law, since the teaching prior to
this law in rural schools was terrible, due to the little attention that the State paid to
them.

- FROM THE MOYANO LAW (1857) UNTIL 1939

With the beginning of the Moyano Law came the beginning of new changes for the
school. The main change was the determination that in each town of 500 inhabitants
there should be two public schools, one for boys and one for girls, even if it was
incomplete.

After a few years, the situation did not improve much due to the lack of interest of the
administrations, which is why Macías Picavea a few years later concluded that:
“Primary education is abandoned; 68% of the population is illiterate; The teachers are
horribly trained and reduced to the condition of beggars…”

In general, this time was not very productive because the content, the material, the
training of the teachers, etc. were scarce, even the native language is considered
uneducated.

With the arrival of Primo de Rivera the situation became worse, since teachers and
content were subjected to close ideological control, further impoverishing the poor
quality of teaching and subordinating it to the dictatorship and its ideals.

When the dictatorship ended, a great effort was made to create 1,000 school positions
per year, in such a way that the number of schools increased, but these increased
especially in urban areas, while in rural areas they remained scarce with poorly paid
teachers. and poorly prepared.
With the arrival of the Republic, education in Spain improved significantly because the
Republic defended that people could not be ignorant, but rather that they should have
their own ideals and be literate, which is why the Republic defended that the only way
to achieve that It was through school. Thanks to this, the Pedagogical Missions were
created, which were responsible for disseminating general culture, modern teacher
education and citizenship education in villages, towns and places, with special attention
to the spiritual interests of the rural population. As a result, more than 50,000 unitary
schools were created.

There were other aspects of the Moyano Law that also had repercussions on degrees,
salaries, compatibility, etc. of the teaching staff.

Regarding the qualification, it was agreed that to be a teacher you had to be 20 years old
and have the corresponding title, however those who ran incomplete elementary schools
and nursery schools were exempt from this law, in which the teachers would be
assistants or interns supervised by school teachers. complete. This had quite an impact,
since the children in rural schools were the ones who had to suffer from these teachers
without qualifications, since the majority of rural schools were incomplete.

On the other hand, it is also worth highlighting the salaries of teachers. These were paid
based on the number of students in the school, and in addition the salary was in the
hands of the city council, so the rural teachers were barely paid, hence Mariano del
Valle said: “Teachers are dying of hunger.”

This had its consequences and was that teachers had to look for other jobs. This was
possible thanks to the support of the master role.

As a conclusion to this stage we can say that it is the first law that takes rural schools
into account, although the teachers in these schools had no training and also charged
based on the students they had, so they had to look for jobs compatible with theirs.

- FROM THE POST-WAR (1939) TO THE GENERAL

EDUCATION LAW (LGE) OF 1970

When the Civil War ended, D. José Ibáñez Martín held the position of Minister of
Education and thereby established a new educational model that was characterized by:
 a) Influence of ideology as a factor of social inculcation and disciplinarization.
b) Centralism and authoritarianism.
c) Dismantling of the republican educational work.
d) The presence and influence of the Church in teaching and the educational system
stands out.

Later, two stabilization plans were also reflected, reflecting the lack of classrooms,
reduced compulsory schooling, the low remuneration of teachers and their rural
dispersion, as well as the insufficiency of pedagogical material.

This led to the construction of national schools oriented towards the graduated
organization of teaching, which produced the gap in unitary schools. Furthermore, the
law regarding teachers in incomplete schools was not changed, so they continued
without any training.

- FROM THE LGE (1970) TO THE ROYAL DECREE OF

COMPENSATORY EDUCATION (1983)

The General Education Law is the immediate antecedent to our educational system.
This law arose as a consequence of the highly ideological regime that existed.
Quantitative and qualitative differences are beginning to be seen in addition to a great
lack of equal opportunities, which is why this law attempts to remedy these deficiencies,
to do so it considers education as a public service, and schooling is increased from 6 to
14 years of age.

One of the articles of this law required all schools to have at least one unit of each
course, so those schools that did not comply had to be closed. This accelerated the
closure of many unitary schools and the opening of regional centers. This is how the
rural exodus became more dynamic since many children ended up emigrating from the
towns and living in the cities or larger towns where their center was located.

In these thirteen years, rural schools suffered several ups and downs that can be
summarized in four moments:

1º) Unitary, mixed and graduated schools decrease due to school concentrations.
Creation of regional centers and home schools.
 2º) There is a stoppage in which new positions are not created due to budgetary
insufficiency and social opposition to the concentrations.

3º) an extraordinary item of 40,000 million pesetas is approved to create new

complete centers

4º) A break returns, except in some exceptional places, due to the budget cut for the
state school.

This law was very negative for rural schools and that is why a large movement of
parents and teachers was created in defense of these centers, but this law brought with it
the oblivion of rural schools and the rise of regional schools. But let's look closely at the
advantages and disadvantages of each to see if they were so bad.

 Rural schools
o Advantages:
 Of an instructive-training nature:
Greater administrative and professional autonomy in the instructional
process; simplicity of the organizational structure; extracurricular
activities are easier; greater enthusiasm is detected in carrying out school
activities; There is greater contact with nature that can be used as a
teaching resource. Since there are few students, individualized teaching is
possible; Parent participation is more frequent by establishing closer
relationships between them and the teachers; permanent control, no
bureaucratic control is required to know the center; easy governance due
to the small number; greater flexibility in academic schedules; greater
emphasis on the relationship between school learning and life outside the
educational center.
 Of a social nature:
There is no school transportation, they are the only focus of culture in the
town and the most important; feeling of belonging to a community;
respect between student and teacher that derives from a good mutual
knowledge, the student's personal and academic self-concept tends to be
more positive; fewer behavioral problems.
o Disadvantages:
 Of an instructive-training nature:
 Absence of early childhood education as such, physical-human and
cultural isolation of teachers and students; decontextualization of
programs, inappropriate textbooks, markedly urban culture...; inadequate
initial teacher training; existence of several levels in the same class,
added difficulty to the lack of specific preparation of teachers for this
type of schools; excessive mobility of the teacher due to lack of stimuli.
It prevents the formation of stable teams and leads to professional
burnout; It requires a great effort from the teacher to set up the entire
instructional system for all levels and courses; There is a limitation in the
teacher, both in the mastery of all subjects and in their methodology; The
permanence of the teacher-student relationship can have a very strong
impact on performance when there are errors on the part of the teacher or
incompatibility between the two; school buildings have installation
deficiencies; Help for their teachers is scarce, the existence of few
students at the same level can see their experiences with other classmates
of the same age reduced and impoverished.
 Of a social nature:
Lack of social services; lack of a minimum cultural infrastructure,
destroying their own identity by replacing their native culture with the
supposedly better urban one; If the teacher is missing, the students stay at
home due to lack of a substitute; school absenteeism, very poor family-
cultural environment; When they finish their compulsory studies, a few
continue studying in the regional centers and the vast majority go to
agricultural work.

 School rallies
o Advantages:
 Of an instructive-training nature:
Better facilities, more resources; have specialist teachers in different
areas; There is better quality of teaching as a result of the greater number
of specialists, the field of children's personal relationships and their
socialization are expanded. Greater coexistence; As the teacher is
grouped there is the possibility of working as a team.
  Of a social nature:
Compulsory schooling is facilitated; use of the school cafeteria, as long
as it is used well; profitable for the state.
o Disadvantages:
 Of an instructive-training nature:
Poor teacher preparation. You have to work with diverse cultures; the
school contents are urban culture; young children were left without
preschool; discrimination and rejection of children from rural
environments; distorted influence exerted on children by two contrasting
cultural models: urban school and urban family; Going from one to
several teachers can be dangerous for the child. He loses the most direct
and familiar contact; The tutorial relationship of parents with their
children's teacher is not easy, nor is their participation in the life of the
center.
 Of a social nature:
Danger of school transportation. Early mornings; Children spend all day
outside their homes and the schedule does not leave them time to play;
contribute to depopulation. The town of origin of the child ends up being
old. When the school closes, the town dies and disappears; the child is
decontextualized from his environment. He is uprooted from his
environment; The native culture of the place is lost. The medium of
origin is devalued; The economic costs of concentrations are high,
contrary to what was previously reflected as advantageous.

After exposing the advantages and disadvantages of the two schools, we must ask
ourselves if the regional schools were really advantageous and to do so we are going to
analyze each of their advantages:

- Better facilities. Due to the large investment that had to be made, the facilities
that were created were inadequate and in poor condition, since there was not
enough money.
- Specialist teaching staff. On the one hand it is an advantage, but this
specialization was introduced in the 6th year of EGB when the children were
between 12 and 14 years old and we must question whether the introduction of
 the specialization is really good at such an early age. Also, are the teachers really
specialists?
- Better quality of teaching and preparation of students. It is assumed that a single
teacher cannot teach all subjects and that is why they specialize, but many
investigations have shown that the level in rural schools was not lower but more
effective and productive.
- Wider circle of personal relationships. Several investigations have shown that
children's best friends are their cousins or boys from the town where they come
from. The circle is only expanded in those cases in which there are no children
in the town of this age.
- Economic savings. The savings consisted of the teachers' salaries, since by
increasing the ratio of students per teacher, fewer teachers were needed;
however, the concentration generated its own expenses with free transportation
and school cafeterias, reaching the conclusion that it did not They were more
profitable.

In general, all this did not bring anything good for rural schools, but on the contrary, it
made them worse, and in addition, regional schools were not as advantageous as they
were sold. There were several reasons why rural schools failed, among them not
respecting the population unit and constructing the law following technocratic criteria
and with economic advantages.

The consequences of this policy can be seen in the results of many investigations, which
conclude that rural schools have been abandoned. Among other conclusions, the
uprooting and detriment of the student and the environment, the poor training of
teachers, the devaluation of the native culture and the contemplation of the school zone
as a new organizational structure that overcomes the restricted vision of each teacher in
each school stand out.