Last Friday the Encinas Congress closed in its fifth edition. Spill Magisterial organizes this academic event every two years since 2006, in order to provide useful pedagogical tools for education professionals. More than 800 professors from Lima and the provinces participated in the dozens of lectures, seminars, round tables and workshops that took place between February 17 and 21. This International Congress on Education bears the name of one of the emblematic figures of the national educational process. The educational thought of José Antonio Encinas , honored through the name of our popular International Congress, is today more relevant than ever. Let's see why:
The composition within the social structures of Peru has not changed much since the time of the Peruvian educator José Antonio Encinas (1888-1958). For this reason his thought is still valid today, 56 years after his death.
Reality is something very complex and dependent on many factors, some of which can be influenced by human activity and others that are outside the range of action of those involved. This fact was understood very clearly by this promoter of educational reforms in Peru in the first half of the 20th century.
In the thought about education that he promoted José Antonio Encinas , the indigenous issue played a central role. According to Encinas, it was essential to understand the indigenous from his human dimension in order to develop an educational system that could help him unfold all his potential. The indigenous, like every human being, lives, grows, perceives and socializes within a reality that he apprehends and internalizes in the process of developing his personality.
The essential idea in the educational thought of José Antonio Encinas argued that the most appropriate way to integrate the indigenous into the common social life of the country is to understand their daily individual, economic and social reality in order to create and adapt a system of educational methods that go hand in hand with this reality. . Encinas thought that it is not of much benefit to try to instruct the indigenous with teaching procedures elaborated for other individuals from a very different social community.
The historical context in which José Antonio Encinas elaborates its postulations on education, it is a context in which several groups of society advocated for the vindication of the indigenous group as a social group as valuable as the others that formed the social structures of Peru in the first half of the 20th century.
The notable educator from Puno believed that it was possible to use the school as an animated and alive space in order to introduce it into the child's educational process and thus change the way in which that the infant learns to perceive and deal with his environment. This change in the worldview of the indigenous would manage to change the formation of his personality in a way that he felt part of a whole and not an isolated and exploited element.
Encinas thought that the school should not be circumscribed to the role of an entity that only helps the individual to learn to read and write, but that in addition to fulfilling this function, the school he had to assume a role that would help improve the social environment of the indigenous. This environment is closely related to the improvement of the conditions in which the indigenous practice the central task of their life in community, agriculture. In this way, the native would feel that through the education provided by the educational system, more specifically the schools, he would be able to shape his own destiny, an essential component in the life of any social group.
The nature of Encinas' thought undoubtedly sought to lay the foundations that would make a change possible for a time horizon that went beyond the immediate one. The promotion of a reorganization that assigned a more active role to the indigenous community was a fundamental component of the educational reforms proposed by Encinas.
Most of the ideas of this influential Peruvian thinker were not limited to endorsing the welfare nature of most state programs and proposals, but rather sought to make the individual, indigenous in in this case, an individual capable of taking destiny into his own hands to give it the form that seems best to him.
In order to achieve the goals of this inclusive educational system, it would be necessary to train teachers who are aware, sensitive and perceptive regarding the social ethnic origin of each child, teachers capable of penetrating the complex structure of human thought from this base, guide the student in their educational training. The type of school that would train these teachers was known as a social school model to be developed with the aim of achieving the expected changes.
Encinas' approach was, without a doubt, ahead of his time. His vision of optimal education proposed the creation of schools that would be integral trainers of children, that is, educational centers with a holistic perspective of all the activities that are part of the life of the individual within his environment and social context:work, distraction, way of relating socially, cultural customs, worldview, geographic location, etc.
In today's Peru, the problem that Encinas exposed has practically not changed. The proposal of a type of school that forms individuals in an integral way and that makes children, men aware of their origin, occupation, reality and feelings, continues to be a prevailing proposal and a pending task.