La primera educación en Castilla y León a mediados del siglo XIX a través de Diccionario de Madoz

Abstract

Although significantly better than in many other Spanish regions, primary education in mid-nineteenth-century Castilla y León suffered a range of limitations: a lack of schools, above all in rural areas; limited assistance, with marked provincial differences, often conditioned by gender and domestic opposition to schooling; a poorly trained and woefully funded teaching cadre; and old-fashioned methodologies that tended to entrench backward-looking mentalities. Despite the educational ideals long espoused by the early liberal movement, in Madoz’s Dictionary we observe a depressing situation that would still take decades to modernise and develop into one of the pillars of regional social-economic advance.