Vol.8, number 18 May - August 2003 THEMATIC RESEARCH pp. 479-502

Teaching in during the Ancient Regime (18th century) The Peripheral Example of Grand Canary Island of the Fraud of the Enlightenment for Popular Education

∗ MANUEL FERRAZ LORENZO

Abstract:

This paper is the heuristic result of analyzing and interpreting the difficulties of the Canarian peripheral society during the 18th century. Attention is centered especially on the educational proposals that favored the instruction and culture of the Enlightenment. We have proven how the established educational guidelines had little to do with that widely expressed idea of public happiness. Nor did those guidelines become—or even attempt to become—a mechanism of social weakening of the system of absolutism and its network of privileges; instead, they served as an anchor for the emerging political scheme and the new standards and values of the end of the 1700s. From the time of the creation and protection of schools by the Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País de Gran Canaria (“Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country of Grand Canary”), the ideological thrust was more propitious for spreading the despotic royal policy of the moment to all social sectors. The Canary Islands, and in particular Grand Canary, considered “adjacent islands”, became an example of weak, ephemeral, and especially unsuccessful eighteenth-century reformism, in terms of the education the people were to receive.

Key words: 18th century, Canary Islands, popular education, Economic Societies, fraud.

[...] No one is unaware that just as the glory, the prosperity and the duration of States depend on the customs of the Nations that comprise them, the happiness and health of Peoples consist of the care in educating youth, and even the infancy of their individuals [...] Everyone complains of the poor education given to the tender shoots. All know that in the current plan of education there is a multitude of vices that grow with age, and whose effects become evident over time in the Courts, the Classrooms, the handling of businesses and in all trade of civil and political life. Thus, without pausing on these two points, I shall externalize my reflections as they occur [...] (Joseph Clavijo y Fajardo, “El Pensador”, 1763).

The sciences, the amiable sciences, which in Europe have raised this Century above all the most enlightened centuries of Greek and Roman antiquity, are still foreign to the Fortunatae Insulae. V.S. is the Government of

∗ Head Professor of Theory and History of Education, Centro Superior de Educación, Edificio Central, Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife. C/ Molinos de Agua, Urb. La Quinta, Edif. 1, Pa 5, 2C, 38207 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain. E-MAIL: [email protected]

a Country that still lives in the ill-fated 10th and 11th centuries, without having to do so. From their first notions, the letters offer V.S. a quite melancholic and humiliating sight. Who knows how to write correctly? The officials of the pen themselves, the teachers themselves (I tremble to say), the graduates and professional literate are absolutely unaware of the most trivial elements of Castilian orthography, and being so, who will teach us to write well? (Joseph Viera y Clavijo, “El Síndico Personero”, 1764).

Although the 17th century in Spain has been described in generalized form as “decadent” and “unfortunate”—fundamentally because of its failures in political, military and financial matters—the 18th century has been characterized as a century of “reforms” and “prosperity” in practically all spheres (including of course the cultural sphere) in the wake of the reign of Charles III. Although it seems evident that objective reasons for these expressions are not lacking (given that factors of a varied nature, difficult to see on some occasions and imprecise to delimit on others, have interlaced to place this virtual dividing line between two supposedly opposite perceptions), it is no less certain that the object of study, the dynamics of events and the social phenomena and processes that have occurred, have remained imperturbable through what we could call the normalizing/absolutist quietism that, in a strict sense, spread over both centuries. A situation that, as we all know, would be shaken only timidly and at very concrete moments by the pressure of the nascent industrial, and especially commercial bourgeoisie, in almost permanent connivance with the rest of the sectors of the landholding oligarchy, which was already foretelling the fracture of the pre-Enlightenment monarchy and the emergence of a proto-liberal State.1

This initial warning, which attempts to prevent Manichaean simplifications in the prolific historical dialectic we are trying to develop, also aids us in situating the coordinates on which we shall center this article, temporarily constricted to the period of glory and enlightened optimism of the royal reforms that propelled the creation of the Reales Sociedades Económicas de Amigos del País (RSEAP)(“Royal Economic Societies of Friends of the Country”).

In spite of the general introductory caution set forth—which has no interest other than to install the thematic and methodological framework on which we shall move—our purpose is much more modest. The present article will be dedicated to the study of one of these societies, concretely the society established in , Grand Canary Island, in order to add to the mosaic of the Canary Islands we began at another time with the analysis of the economic society of Tenerife.2 The most unique aspects of this society, and above all, its educational profiles, will become our center of attention; first, however, we must make a timely reference to the insular precedents of this formative, instructive and indoctrinating subject.

Antecedents of Education on Grand Canary Island

On islands where the dominant social tasks were performed by farmer workers, laborers, artisans and servants, in addition to employees under military jurisdiction,3 the learning of reading and writing must not have been very common or apparently very useful. The island of Canaria, the name given in ancient times to Grand Canary Island, was a clear example of this almost generalized lack of concern for activities related to subjects’ education, instruction or simply learning, just as in all societies during the long duration of the Ancient Regime of absolutism.4 Only the work of the religious orders mitigated, in part, the effects of cerebral famine, with the pernicious consequences of subservience and falsity caused by such work, due to its understanding of education as the purification of corrupt, besieged souls in weak, perishable bodies profoundly subject to the emergent passions of evil.5

Without going back too far in time, to avoid crossing over our established chronological margins, we could affirm that one of the first schools created in the city of Las Palmas with certain systematicness and rigor was founded by the . The inquisitor and canon of the cathedral church, Andrés Romero y Suárez, in a public document dated May 15, 1696 and others that followed,6 offered a lifetime annuity of 200, a hacienda of 600 acres with figs trees included, in Jinámar, and the houses on the property under the condition that the Jesuits use them to teach the natives literacy. And so it happened, because on January 1 of the following year, and “with the founder’s inexpressible pleasure”, as Viera y Clavijo comments, classes were opened in grammar and literacy.

This school continued until the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, although it was necessary to wait two years for the to emit a royal edict for the founding of two free grammar schools (also called royal schools, and somewhat later, public schools) in the city’s Vegueta and Triana barrios. According to the documentation consulted, they were under the supervision of the regent of the Audiencia and had been granted the funds from the old bequest of the inquisitor, Romero Suárez, in addition to forty pesos for leasing the building and five reales per month from the most prosperous parents “to compensate the laborious work of teaching and due to the increased prices of all basic items.”7

It seems, although perhaps an over assumption, that while the teacher at Vegueta remained loyal to the scholastic ideas of the moment, the teacher at Triana adapted to the emerging pre- Enlightenment current, and proposed the use of certain Jansenistic beliefs in his school as a basis for improving education.8 Of any means, let us not deceive ourselves: in addition to faulty learning in reading and writing in both schools, as correctly pointed out by A. Millares Torres, educational techniques and methodologies were quite deficient in these two centers of capital city learning, according to the eloquent testimony presented by Domingo José Navarro, who expressed, powerless and disillusioned, that “school hours were an inferno of whimpers, clamor and cries.”9

In the rest of the Island, things were still much worse in terms of the difficulties encountered in creating and consolidating any type of teaching establishment. In fact, the only town that had even a minimally equipped school was Telde. It was opened as a foundation in 1737 by Pedro Manrique Alvarado with funding from Diego López Montañer; to begin functioning, the teacher was provided with a house that had a hall for teaching, and 160 pesos per year earned from various pieces of property:

According to said foundation, [the teacher] is obligated to teach during the accustomed morning and afternoon hours, not only grammar school, up to writing and counting, but also Latin. At present he has no pupil dedicated to this last subject: those in elementary school are twenty. This school needs much reform. To this end it seems convenient to declare this teacher exempt from the responsibility of Latin, and even to prohibit him from voluntarily teaching Latin in school hours, during which he must employ all morning and afternoon time, and is obligated strictly to do so, in following the convenient method of teaching as prescribed.10

These schools (in addition to the numerous parish and convent schools dispersed throughout the rest of the municipalities and in existence since the time of the conquest, or the benefices, as in the case of Agüimes, where a school was founded by the cantor of the Caracas cathedral in 1748 “with the responsibility of teaching literacy morning and afternoon, for which he notifies his closest relatives, or in their absence, the poorest native of the town”11) were the buttresses of teaching reading, writing, arithmetic and especially the absolute and unquestionable truths of Christian doctrine.

Let us recall that in the entire social setting we have described, the Island’s population at the end of the 18th century was 49,445 inhabitants, as shown by the census of Floridablanca; of these, almost ten thousand inhabitants were under sixteen years of age, yet only 153 were accounted for as students (0.3%). Of greater interest to note is that none of the described employment lists the profession of grammar school teacher, friend or preceptor of Grammar.12

The bases were established, therefore, for immediately promoting the studies the Island required through general policies and particular strategies designed by the RSEAP, according to the political demands and economic and social conditions soon to appear. In addition to attempting to discard “inert” knowledge—a well-intentioned principle far from being real or actually carried out in practice—its members would try to “profile” the content, methods, order and organization of the most useful and beneficial knowledge, to promote from the Canary Islands the “Prevention directed to grammar school teachers” that had been experienced with notable success in some schools in the kingdom’s capital.13

Educational Projects and Actions of the RSEAPC

To prevent folly, nonchalance and slowness in different spheres of knowledge, the Societies in general, and that of Grand Canary in particular, were dedicated even before their definitive approval to taking opportune measures. In this manner, by attempting to respond to the most compelling problems of the times, especially in agriculture, industry and the economy, education became a matter of priority.

The quotes used at the beginning of this article, from two of the most significant thinkers of the Enlightenment on the Canary Islands, say it all by demonstrating existing needs: useful education, the promotion of the arts, the education of citizens, the search for new methodologies, etc. were to be some of the elements to mark a change in pitch from the past, although never in a desire to perforate or replace previous ideas.

The first reference we have of the implication of Grand Canary’s Economic Society on the island’s educational problems appears in its founding statutes, dated February 25, 1777, on the request of Juan Bautista Servera, Bishop of the Canary Islands.14 We must point out, before continuing, that the Economic Society of Canaria or Grand Canary was the first in the archipelago to request authorization from the Council of Castile for its establishment (with respect to the economic societies from the rest of the State, it was number 10, and at the time its statutes were approved, it was in position number 12).15 Concretely, the document’s sections 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14, with an epigraph reading “Regarding the printed accounts of the Society: of the Library, of the commission; of the prizes; and of the Patriotic Schools”16 demonstrated the preponderance of instructional activities. Yet it is also true that the extremely realistic footnote that immediately follows permits a glimpse of the existing difficulties, especially those relative to the lack of funding for attending to a facet such as the education of the disadvantaged sectors of society:

All contained in these sections, the Society accepts by its own Constitution, to provide with regard to all its points, on condition that the penury of the Country is less, and the funds and devices of the Society are sufficient, which it would procure with complete solicitude.

With these indications, the “patriotic” work of the Society began, according to the idea of favoring industry and the trades contained originally in the Discurso sobre el fomento de la industria popular of 1774 and in the Discurso sobre la educación popular de los artesanos y su fomento of 1775, both written by the versatile Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes. Referred to in the content of the Statutes was the need to create grammar schools that, in addition to promoting the education and instruction of youth, would provide knowledge of apparatuses, drawing, yarns, etc.. They represented on paper, in the case of Grand Canary, the desire expressed by the Treasurer of the Council of Castile for the entire kingdom.

In the absence of the Society’s original documents—which seem to have disappeared in the 19th century as a consequence of the fire that destroyed the Casas Consistoriales in 1842, where the Economic Society kept its files—we shall follow the footsteps of Viera y Clavijo17 to analyze, explain and evaluate the activities carried out in education, knowing that, just as in the case of other economic societies, the purpose of the schools created in the city of Las Palmas responded to a triple desire, at times more formal than real: moral and religious training, the obtainment of happiness and individual and collective well-being, and technical and economic training.18

Educational Model Aimed at the Training of Orphans

Although we are sure of the constant interest in promoting the education of the noble children on the islands, as in the case of other Societies, Viera y Clavijo makes no type of reference to the fact. He does address, however, the attempts to favor the education of poverty-stricken children who pertained to the broad spectrum of the population lacking in family and social protection, commonly known as orphans or foundlings. As an expression of the royalist policy promoted by Carlos III—understood as the doctrine that defended the privileges or prerogatives of the State with regard to the Church, which during the reign of the monarch of the Enlightenment obtained concessions as important as the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767— a Royal Seal was received in the Economic Society’s offices from the Supreme Council of Castile, requiring this patriotic body to take responsibility for the protectorship of orphans, extremely neglected at the time by the municipal government.

As a rapid consequence of this communication, two protectorships were established: one for the barrio of Vegueta and the populations of Telde, Agüimes, Tirajana, and la Vega; and another for the barrio of Triana and the locations of San Lorenzo, Arucas, Firgas, Teror, Moya, Guía, Galdar, Agaete, la Aldea, Artenara and Tejeda. In charge of the first zone was José de Matos, and of the second, Cipriano Avilés. As recorded by Viera y Clavijo:

[…] the principal aims of these commissioners were to register orphans, invalids and the needy in the city and places, providing them with some sort of comfort, help or teaching, informing the Society how much they had done and what they needed from it to perform such a pious act.19

Our thinker of the Enlightenment analyzes the situation correctly but does reach the bottom of the question: as we shall indicate below, it was not a pious activity that was to be carried out by the protectorships, but an activity of a social nature. The children, mistaken for vagrants and hoodlums, annoyed and disturbed the passersby, and were an obstacle to the decorum and decency of the “large” population groups. In the early 1780s, it was looked upon with favor for the girls to enter decent homes as servants, and the boys to work on fishing boats. But it was also affirmed that in spite of all, numerous orphans remained “roving through the streets with notorious danger.”20

Just as shown in the registry presented by Mr. Avilés, dated March 15, 1784, forty-five orphans had been placed in honorable homes and in the workshops of maestros in arts and crafts. Because of the great interest in integrating these youth into society, even the bishop of the diocese and member of merit of the Royal Society, Antonio de la Plaza, proposed offering, one year later, a prize of 25 to the document best explaining “the easiest manner to give a useful purpose and occupation to so many young people of both sexes seen loafing in the streets.”

As a consequence of the above, the protectories were increased from two to eighteen (three for each of the six zones into which the city of Las Palmas was divided). It was necessary to register each child or young person found, with a designation of age, gender, occupation, means of subsistence, and “also to carry out as planned their instruction; the supervision of grammar schools and friends’ schools to eliminate abuses, increase schools, provide them with primers, catechisms, paper, pens, etc.”

The same instructions were followed by the magistrate who, on the request of the Economic Society, published an edict dated April 1, 1786, obligating all heads of household, tutors and guardians to send their children and wards to the schools established for such effect, to artisans’ workshops, domestic service, fishing trades or other places of assistance within fifteen days, “otherwise they would be attached to the protectories, which would assign them in spite of the aversion of the corresponding heads of household and other tutors.”21 Out of the actions taken, emphasis should be placed on the creation of two patriotic schools of free learning dedicated to “the tasks appropriate for the gender”, one in Triana and another in Vegueta. The first had twenty-five girls, and the second, fifty-five. The same activity was carried out in the barrio of San José, where thirty boys and fifty-four girls attended. Reading was taught there, and the girls (only the girls, it seems) did some type of sewing.

But in spite of these proposals, at the end of the same decade, the 1780s, a degree of disorganization began to be perceived in the professional, educational and integrating activities planned by the Royal Economic Society, up to leaving the schools “almost completely empty and abandoned, the workshops of the trades without apprentices, the houses without servants and the streets full of poor and idle boys and girls, all because of the protectories’ not being to use the constraint of jail when they resist education.”22 The requirement, however, was not accepted by the new magistrate and dissipated all doubts about the imposing and punitive nature of the educational proposals, which had very little altruism and were excessively subject to strong mechanisms of control by dominant social groups.

Outside of this motive and due to others, not even the prizes aimed at favoring the purchase of clothing and shoes to encourage enrollment would produce the desired effects. With sizeable limitations in attendance and the enormous precariousness of their economic funding, the schools stayed open in the two neighborhoods of the city where the teachers collected two pesos per month for teaching the children who, in addition to being poor orphans, were also required to respect a will that from every point of view was foreign to their usual habits. To protect these children, the patriotic schools would become one piece more of the prolific policy of the Enlightenment—plagued with edicts, norms and ordinances—and destined less to training happy individuals for society than to cleaning the streets of bums, beggars, prostitutes, pimps and thieves.23

Patriotic Grammar Schools

In addition to teaching orphans, consideration was given to the possibility of educating others who needed to acquire minimum knowledge for their adequate “political and religious” development in society. Let us see the following affirmation expressed by Viera:

Since good education is alone in preparing useful citizens for the State, it was naturally viewed by the Economic Society as one of the first objects of its institute, especially when Canaria was seen to be in a piteous situation. The public schools are the workshop of youth. Reading correctly, writing with good character and spelling, learning the catechism with intelligence and the rudiments of Christian doctrine, speaking properly, becoming accustomed to good manners and inclinations, such should be the fruits of political and religious teaching, which if they err or pervert, decide for all times the fortune of men and of peoples.24

In the presumed absence of any novelties in the Economic Society of Grand Canary, given its adherence to the guidelines established by Campomanes for all the Societies in the rest of the State,25 one of the first measures was the naming of teachers, friends, protectors and guardians.

While the role of teachers seemed to be key—teaching to the degree permitted by their limited knowledge and meager salaries—the role of protectors and guardians had a different aspect, although complementary to that of teachers: to supervise the progress of teaching (as reliable members of the Economic Society) and to act on certain occasions as sponsors, by covering the expenses of the school in their charge. Their function consisted basically of distributing catechisms and primers, visiting the places of learning a few times a week and on random days, ensuring the compliance of teachers, the attendance of pupils, and “the cause that may influence a lack of progress, reporting their observances to the Society so that it may supply a remedy, if possible.”26

To facilitate education, new school books were also available. Two years before the founding of the Economic Society of Tenerife, the Society of Las Palmas believed it convenient to request at least two copies of the book by Pedro Díaz Morante—illustrated by Francisco Javier Palomares—Arte de escribir, first published in 1776. During the session of February 9, 1778, it was decided that the two teachers should have the book in their classes, “urging them to attempt to follow it and offering pleasure and prizes to pupils who provide proof of having taken the fullest advantage.”27 As a political instrument that carried multiple codes of meaning, school books were always a means of socialization at the service of the established authorities to centralize, uniform and systematize certain practices and ideas, behind the protective veil that assumed the most benevolent expression of “popularizing” teaching.

Beginning at that time, the knowledge gained from school manuals28 to make disjointed calligraphy presentable and to opt for awarding prizes to the most advanced pupils—including in this formation of habits the students from the Escuela de Teror founded by the presbyter, Domingo Navarro, in 1790—became the most outstanding and repeated of pedagogical stimuli. The teacher of Triana, Francisco Capiró, as well as that of Vegueta, Miguel de Marcelino,29 dedicated themselves completely to these activities, always with notable results in the pages of calligraphy delivered to Society members. The prizes awarded to the most outstanding (and submissive) students were silver medals and belt buckles, hosiery, silk handkerchiefs and pen points.

However, in spite of such progress, the criticism of stagnation in teaching, rather than diminishing, persisted. Let us see the following account:

The Censor wished to warn the Society, at its meeting on December 4 [1786], that these schools did not dedicate the care and precision required by good teaching, for which reason a commission was formed to investigate with more thoroughness and procure the best remedy.30

Although we know nothing more of this particular event due to the absence of necessary information, it seems that not all sectors of society agreed with the work performed by the teachers nor by their immediate supervisors. It is also true that the neglect, the frivolity of the authorities of the times, the insufficient funding and the generalized lack of interest of the Economic Societies at the end of the century, most likely determined scholastic carelessness and the damages caused to the process as well as the results of learning. Such a matter most certainly was not unimportant for the wide economic, patriotic and social reforms projected some years later.

Studies of Drawing and Mathematics

Six years after receiving a circular order from the Supreme Council of Castile, which requested a response from the Economic Society with its opinion on the creation of a school for Art and Drawing, the utensils and models from Madrid arrived to found it. That same year, 1787, the commissioners were named for preparing the furnishings and the supply of necessary material, which would be sent by the Real Academia de San Fernando in Madrid. In addition, a room from the old San Martín hospital was requested from the Ecclesiastical Chapter in order to install the offices. Thanks to this activation of resources, the school had 70 students and the protection of the monarch, insistently requested from Grand Canary.

Soon afterwards, on August 31, 1788, the Economic Society was presented with the regulations of behavior to be followed by students, which once more confirmed that compliance and discipline would be the most highly esteemed virtues. Only lacking was the distribution of prizes, considered to be a priority, as in other teaching, for stimulating the young people’s attendance and interest. With all correctly arranged, the teaching of this subject enjoyed the approval of the Economic Society and its director, Bishop Antonio de la Plaza, in spite of the displeasure arising from his transfer to the diocese of Cádiz in 1790. The transcendence of these teachings for island society was soon demonstrated, as shown in the following quote from A. Millares Torres:

The Economic Society, desirous of complying with the principal objective of its institute, strove to foment instruction due to its efforts to create and sustain a free drawing academy, where the artisan found models to copy, and the artist a stimulus for awakening and developing his genius.”31

With respect to the study of mathematics, events occurred differently. Let us see what happened: one year and a half after Domingo Romero de Medina unsuccessfully requested the implementation of the study of mathematics in the Lagunera Economic Society, ensuring his competent training in this subject to contribute to “purifying Royal intentions to the benefit of practice and the Native Country,”32 he requested the creation of these studies from the Economic Society of Las Palmas at the meeting held on November 27, 1786.

Although the Economic Society of Tenerife rejected the offer due to a lack of means of financing, the reasons that led its counterpart in Grand Canary to reject the project were of a different nature. “Not having any news of the sufficiency of this subject, a commission was formed to investigate and determine as it deemed fit, the only result of this investigation was the disillusion that this Romero boasted of what he did not know, and that some drawings he had presented to the Society were very old and used.”33

Such ineptitude—real or attributed, we do not know—was compensated for by the talent of Antonio Conesa, captain of the corps of engineers and highly praised volunteer professor at the Conciliar Seminary. In 1788, the Economic Society covered the necessary expenses so that he could offer classes in arithmetic, equations, algebra, etc.. Only the establishment of prizes was lacking, on this occasion in the form of geographical maps and set of maps, among other honors.

These studies, which had met with the unconditional approval of the Society, began to languish when Conesa was transferred to Tenerife, in spite of having left one of his most advanced students in charge of the group.

Higher Learning

This epigraph should not be omitted, more because it serves as a complement to the initiatives theorized and planned by the Society, than because of its practical results—which were nonexistent due to the rivalry maintained by the dominant sectors of the two most influential islands in the archipelago.

The date that originated this legitimate claim was February 9, 1784, the day that the board of the Royal Economic Society wrote the request to the king to establish professorships in law, cannons, medicine, surgery and navigation. All this was to be carried out with the property of the extinct Society of Jesus “in order that these natives, poor and clever, may study professions without leaving the country, being useful for the nation and finding gainful employment within.”34

Almost two years later, on December 19, 1785, the petition would be reiterated and would receive a response from the Court within a few weeks, requesting new data to study the position with care. It seems that even the magistrate of the Supreme Council of Castile “had opined very favorably on the mentioned pretension” of expanding the professorships and creating a complete university. But in August it became known that the report sent from Grand Canary had not satisfied the Council; not even the court presence of Agustín Ricardo Madan, permanent deputy of the cathedral chapter in Madrid, and of José Clavijo y Fajardo, an influential thinker of the Enlightenment from the Canaries then filling important posts in the Royal Cabinet of Natural History, served to persuade the monarch. Nor was attention paid to the proposal to convert the Conciliar Seminary—created in 1777 to satisfy the educational needs of the secular clergy35—into a university.

The minister from Tenerife, Antonio Porlier, and other outstanding politicians, tilted the scales in favor of their island, which as of March 11, 1792, had—although only on official documents for the moment—a center of higher learning at La Laguna, with the same privileges, exemptions and prerogatives as the other universities in the kingdom.36 The result was the dissipation of an initiative that had originated in Las Palmas—with very direct action from the members of the city’s Royal Economic Society—but taken full advantage of by the most powerful and prominent groups in Tenerife.

Conclusions

As we have made evident, the educational proposals of the Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País de Canaria (“Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country of Grand Canary”) left a positive balance, in spite of its budgetary limitations and its enormous favoring of the dominant minority sectors of Grand Canary’s society. In fact, during its first stage, which chronologically encompasses the years from 1777 to 1808, almost 70% of its members were part of the clergy and the military, a clear reference to the sectorial interests they were willing to defend.37

A battery of possible solutions presented with sincerity to regulate studies and demonstrate the most advanced methodologies served to satisfy the economic, political and social needs defined by power. With this idea, the object was to right society in moral terms in an era of pondered and limited changes that were not to affect the hierarchical absolutism of previous years. We must be aware that simultaneous to these reforms and in order to mitigate their possible adverse effects, the boards of Christian Doctrine had been created by Bishop Juan de Herrera, with the intention of offering new vigor to the shabby parish schools still open in various sections of the islands, by facilitating their maintenance and attracting the poorest students.38

As a result, we dare to state that the Enlightenment, viewed as a whole, was an illusion of refined and decadent life evoked with exquisite sensitivity and new aims; history and fiction, reason and sentiments capable of offering not only social mutation but also a particular conception of the individual, in which education was a synonym of training or domesticating for preservation. The practice cannot be understood, therefore, as an altruistic, magnanimous and disinterested task, but as an anchor for the emerging political scheme and the new norms and values of the end of the 18th century—which would be reclaimed by the liberal reformers of the 19th century through principles such as centralization, state diffusion of learning, secularization,39 free education and uniformity.

For this reason we believe it has been worthwhile to study the past to discover the point at which the first step was taken, that short but sure step to replace the ultramontane speculative theology of convent learning that originated in the ratio studiorum of the Jesuits, with the useful and less fanatic light of reason arising from Jansenistic settings. A transformation that, as we all know, was greatly delayed in time and was plagued by ornamentation, formality and symbolism, but that could be turned to by the educated and by the free thinkers, in spite of the high doses of injustice, persecution and social violence from which they suffered at certain times. Millares Torres, with his clear prose, has summarized with authority the meaning of the end of the century for the island:

Thus was the aspect offered in general by Grand Canary at the conclusion of the eighteenth century: intellectual and material backwardness in all fields of the sphere of human activity, but precursory signs of progress that announced a more agreeable future. These signs were more evident in foreign trade, which increased each day, putting the archipelago in contact with Europe, and breaking, as it may, the barricade that the Atlantic has interposed between those countries, center of civilization, and these isolated rocks...40

Notes

1 See in this regard, among many others, the already classic works by the following authors: Anes Álvarez, Gonzalo (1979). El Antiguo Régimen: Los borbones. Madrid: Alianza Universidad; Domínguez Ortiz, Antonio (1976). Sociedad y Estado en el siglo XVIII español, Barcelona: Ariel; Sarrailh, Jean (1985). La España ilustrada de la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII, Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica (first edition in French, 1954).

2 Ferraz Lorenzo, Manuel (at press) “La educación en Tenerife durante el Antiguo Régimen (s. XVIII): entre el estatismo preilustrado y el pseudorreformismo borbónico”, in Revista de Educación, núm. 331, Ministerio de Educación y Cultura. 3 Instituto Nacional de Estadística (1986). Censo de 1787 “Floridablanca”. Las Palmas, (facsímil), Madrid, p. 589. 4 The expression in Spanish, “Antiguo Régimen estamental”, of French origin, designated the economic, political and social conditions in effect in the European states during the era of absolutism (17th and 18th centuries) and especially during the period of hegemony of the Bourbons in Spanish, up through a large part of the 19th century. 5 Such was the understanding of the 19th-century writer, Gregorio Chill: “On Grand Canary, just as on the other islands, there was no homogeneity of studies and the different monastic schools did all possible to predominate, and to attain this result they employed the most reprobate means, forging falsehoods, miracles and prerogatives that detracted greatly from the mission they were called to complete. In addition, it was not usually merit that they guaranteed with diplomas, by providing circumstances under which a person could worthily fulfill his entrusted duties; rather, that which was valued was the individual position, low adulation or that meekness produced by crass ignorance...” Chill Naranjo, Gregorio (1872). Progresos de la Ilustración en Gran Canaria, fundación del Seminario Conciliar de la Concepción y demás establecimientos literarios, unpublished manuscript.

6 There seem to have been two more: one on August 21, 1699, and another on July 31, 1700. See: Suárez Falcón, José (1920). Historial de los establecimientos de enseñanza de Las Palmas, Tipografía del Diario Buenos Aires, p. 17.

7 See Darias Montesino, Elisa (1934) Ojeada histórica sobre la cultura en las Islas Canarias. Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Librería y Tipografía Católica, pp. 74 and 75; Padilla y Padilla, Pablo (1874). Memoria leída el 29 de abril de 1874 en el solemne acto de distribución de Premios a los alumnos de las Escuelas de Instrucción Primaria, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Imprenta de la Verdad, pp. 3 and 4; Viera y Clavijo, Joseph (1783). Noticias de la Historia General de las Islas Canarias, tomo IV, Madrid: Imprenta de Blas Román (exact reproduction, Goya Ediciones, Introduction and notes by Alejandro Cioranescu, 1982, tomo II, pp. 817 and ss.). 8 Millares Torres, Agustín (1874). Historia de la Inquisición en Las Islas Canarias, Editorial Benchomo (exact reproduction, Canarias, 1981, pp. 68 y 69); y VV.AA. (1991). Canarias y Carlos III, Las Palmas: Ediciones del Insular de Gran Canaria, p. 131. Jansenism was a religious movement, critical of scholastic theology with regard to grace, free will and predestination. In addition, it was energetically combated by the Jesuits and by some popes, although it had notable defenders such as the philosopher and mathematician, Pascal. Its influence spread throughout Europe and to many areas in Latin America. 9 Véase Millares Torres, Agustín (1860). Historia de la Gran Canaria, Las Palmas: Imprenta de M. Collina, p. 132; Navarro, Domingo José (1998). Recuerdos de un noventón. Memorias de lo que fue la ciudad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria al principio del siglo (XIX) y de los usos y costumbres de sus habitantes, Las Palmas: Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria, p. 115. The author continued with the following account, worthy of consideration: “What occurred in the school of Triana was the reflection, somewhat attenuated, of Vegueta and even of the first year of Latin at the Seminar, where the slapping and whipping of naked bodies were dispensed. Not even with these punishments were the implacable teachers satisfied: they made their pupils cross their arms and hold heavy rulers in their hands and went so far (it seems impossible) to send them to the street entrance with a paper miter and apron on which they had painted toads and snakes in imitation of the inquisitorial sanbenitos. The result of these cruel punishments was that the children abhorred school, they fled from it, feigned illness, lost modesty and feelings of dignity; they became liars, hypocrites, avengers and cowards.”. 10 Informe de la Económica de Canaria sobre escuelas. Archivo de la Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País de Tenerife (ARSEAPT), tomo 130. This report was sent in 1804, to the president, regent and judges of the Real Audiencia de Canaria. 11 Idem. 12 We do not know if they really did not exist or if they were not included in the statistics; it does seem clear, however, that they were less valued (or at least less important in the overall computation of professions) than priests, sacristans, scribes, servants, etc.. The only teachers listed pertained to the council seminary and they were four. See Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Censo de 1787 “Floridablanca”..., p. 620 and previous censuses. It is useful to clarify that a grammar school teacher taught the basics of reading and writing; the friend was the female version of the teacher although she centered her teaching fundamentally on Christian doctrine and embroidery (sometimes she did not even know how to read and write); the preceptor of grammar taught Latin, and was therefore equivalent to a teacher of higher education. 13 Let us note that around this time a document had been edited that contained the fundamental guidelines for making teaching more effective: distribution of class hours, vacations, holidays, prizes, punishment, fields of instruction, etc.. The heading stated the following: “Having witnessed the Most Excellent Count de Fernannuñez the Examinations of the grammar schools of the Royal Site of San Ildefonso held the past year of 1787, of which notice was given in the Gazette of Tuesday, October 2 [...] and having believed D. Juan Rubio in the usefulness of giving his young students some methodic instruction to that they could have present at all times the maxims and rules he communicated to him during his stay at that Site, he wrote and gave them on his departure the following Prevenciones, which are published now on the judgment that they may be no less useful for other teachers of grammar schools in the Kingdom, and that they will be worthy of persons truly interested in education.” Cfr. Prevención dirigida a los maestros de primeras letras (1788). Madrid: Imprenta Real, 41 pp. 14 Establecimiento y Constituciones de la Sociedad Económica de los Amigos del Paíz de esta Ciudad Rl. de Las Palmas de la Ysla de Canaria, para promover y excitar los tres utilíssimos ramos de agricultura, artes, e industria en beneficio del público.

15 Anes Álvarez, Gonzalo (1969). Economía e Ilustración en la España del siglo XVIII, Madrid: Ariel, pp. 26 and ss. 16 Patriotic schools, as we shall explain at a later point in the document, were those entrusted with strengthening the role of the State through education, by praising the King and the religious dogmas imposed by the ecclesiastic powers. 17 Viera y Clavijo, Joseph (1981). Extracto de las Actas de la Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País de Las Palmas (1777-1790). Las Palmas: RSEAPLP (the original manuscript dates from 1791, just one year after having become the director of the Economic Society). We shall also base our research and analysis on the following publications: Boletín de la Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Desde enero de 1862 hasta noviembre de 1870, Las Palmas: Imprenta de “La Verdad”; García del Rosario, Cristóbal (1981). Historia de la Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País de Las Palmas (1776-1990). Excma. Mancomunidad de Cabildos de Las Palmas, Plan cultural; García del Rosario, Cristóbal (2001). La Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País de Gran Canaria 1776-2001, 225 aniversario de su fundación, Las Palmas de G.C.; y VV.AA. (2001). Estudios y ponencias sobre la Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País de Gran Canaria, 225 aniversario de la RSEAPGC, Las Palmas. 18 Negrín Fajardo, Olegario (1984). Ilustración y educación. La Sociedad Económica Matritense. Madrid: Editora Nacional, p. 29; y (1987). La educación popular en la España de la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII. Las actividades educativas de la Sociedad Económica Matritense de Amigos del País, Madrid: UNED. 19 Viera y Clavijo, Joseph, Extracto de las Actas..., p. 136. 20 This idea is corroborated by Professor Julia Varela, in an excellent paper published a few years ago on the same topic. Cfr. “La Educación Ilustrada o como fabricar sujetos dóciles y útiles”, in VV.AA.: (1988). “La educación en la Ilustración española”, in Revista de Educación, Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, Madrid, pp. 245-274. 21 Viera y Clavijo, Joseph, Extracto de las Actas..., p. 139. 22 Ibid, p. 142. Italics are ours. 23 In this respect see the article by Monzón Perdomo, María Eugenia. (1994). La pobreza en Canarias en el Antiguo Régimen, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Ediciones del Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria. 24 Viera y Clavijo, Joseph, Extracto de las Actas de la Real Sociedad..., p. 122. 25 “[...] the initiatives originate in Madrid and the orders will only be carried out in the Canaries”, proclaimed Cioranescu, Alejandro (1977). “La Ilustración Canaria”, in Millares Torres, Agustín, Historia general de las Islas Canarias, tomo IV Edirca, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, p. 191. 26 In the absence of the documents of the Real Sociedad Económica de Las Palmas, we have consulted those of the Sociedad Económica Lagunera (ARSEAPT). See, among others, the document dated November 9, 1793. To discover with greater precision and thoroughness the true events of the school day during this era, consult the work of Professor Bethencourt Massieu, Antonio (1987). “Una jornada escolar en Las Palmas de Gran Canaria en 1775”, in Boletín Millares Carlo, vol. V, núms. 9-10, diciembre, UNED- Centro Asociado de Las Palmas, pp. 141-154; and by the same author (1999) La enseñanza primaria en Canarias durante el Antiguo Régimen, UNED-Centro Asociado de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria; to study aspects of the curriculum, also see, Santana Pérez, Juan Manuel (1995). “Contenidos en la enseñanza canaria del siglo XVIII”, in VV.AA. Homenaje a Antonio de Bethencourt Massieu, Las Palmas: Ediciones del Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria, vol. III, pp. 449-473. 27 Viera y Clavijo, Joseph: ob. cit., p. 122. 28 Let us emphasize the idea that in addition to the book by Morante y Palomares, in 1787 a request was sent to Madrid for various copies of Ortografía from the Academia Española, and in 1790, a few dozen of the work entitled Elementos de Gramática castellana, Ortografía y Urbanidad by Father Delgado, teacher at Escuelas Pías. 29 Who would die soon later, in 1782, and would be replaced by Pedro Carros. 30 Viera y Clavijo, Joseph, ob. cit., p. 125. 31 Millares Torres, Agustín: Historia de la Gran Canaria..., p. 122.

32 ARSEAPT, Legajo 3 (22/3). Industrias. 33 Viera y Clavijo, Joseph, ob. cit., p. 129. 34 Ibid., p. 130. 35 Hernández Corrales, Alejandra (1997). El Seminario Conciliar del Archipiélago Canario. Estudio histórico pedagógico, Barcelona. 36 Cfr. Escobedo y González-Alberú, José (1928). La Universidad de Canarias. Apuntes para su Historia desde su primera fundación en 1701 hasta el presente, Madrid; Núñez Muñoz, María Fé (coord.) (1998). Historia de la Universidad de La Laguna, tomo I, Tenerife: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de La Laguna; Rodríguez Moure, José (1953). Historia de las Universidades Canarias. Tenerife: Instituto de Estudios Canarios,. 37 García del Rosario, Cristóbal, Historia de la Real Sociedad..., p. 82. 38 Let us recall, in this sense, the words of P. Burke when he affirmed that: “In Spain, as in other places, reformers really obtained much less than they had wanted. However, they also attained more than they wanted, because the reform movement had very important consequences, which the reformers had not proposed or simply had not expected. The most evident was to widen the separation between small and large traditions [...] The reforms affected the educated minority more quickly and profoundly than the rest of society, which separated them more and more from popular traditions...”. Burke, Meter (1996). La cultura popular en la Europa moderna, Madrid: Alianza Universidad, pp. 342 (first edition in English, 1978). 39 Among the recommendations the Economic Society of Grand Canary made to the Audiencia de Canarias, in 1804, was one that was outstanding for its originality: “1.- That in the parish or hermitage of each Town where there are Schools, a small box shall be put, closed with two keys with a sign denoting that it is for collecting alms for such a School. The parish priest shall have one of these keys, and the Teacher the other, and it will be opened by both when deemed opportune, and the collections will be used with careful and prudent discretion for the objectives indicated in favor of the School, with attention to greatest need and usefulness. A zealous parish priest can be of much influence in inclining the piety of the faithful towards this work of charity that brings incalculable advantages.” 40 Millares Torres, Agustín, Historia de la Gran Canaria..., p. 146.

Article Received: December 22, 2002 Accepted: March 11, 2003