El projecte educatiu de la Segona República té una llarga gestació que arrenca amb
la creació de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza (ILE), fundada el 1876 per Francisco
Giner de los Ríos, després de la restauració monàrquica. La ILE s'incorpora, en un
sentit ampli, en el moviment frobelià que en aquells moments impregnava el pensament
de la majoria dels pedagogs laics europeus. El deixeble més important de Giner,
Manuel B. Cossío, va prendre contacte directe amb aquests corrents de pensament el
1880, en el Congrés Internacional d'Ensenyament de Brussel·les, en què va poder
valorar l'impacte que produïen en diversos països europeus les noves idees pedagògiques,
especialment a França i Bèlgica. L'assistència de diversos professors de la ILE als
congressos europeus que es dugueren a terme entre 1880 i 1889 els implica en un
moviment que els serviria per reflexionar sobre les innovacions educatives que desitjaven
dur endavant i per començar a assajar-les i establir relacions amb alguns dels seus
protagonistes, entre els quals destaquem en aquest article Ferdinand Buisson i James
Guillaume. Així mateix, el desenvolupament de la idea d'escola «única» com a resum
d'un ideal educatiu civil compartit i allunyat dels dogmes es difongué aviat per
Espanya gràcies als esforços d'un altre educador, Lorenzo Luzuriaga, ben connectat
amb l'escola nova, que el 1918 va aconseguir que els socialistes assumissin aquesta idea
en el seu programa d'instrucció pública. A partir de 1911, un conjunt significatiu de mestres van començar a viatjar per Europa i a difondre un model d'educació en llibertat,
actiu i laic, que van intentar desenvolupar plenament en la Segona República.The educational philosophy pursued by the Spanish Second Republic was not
improvised in 1931. Like the republican project itself, its development can be traced
back to the fall of the First Republic in 1874, which by squashing the influence of the
Krausist ideal of social reform, and the Krausist challenge to monolithic Catholic
dogma, spurred the creation of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza (ILE) by Francisco
Giner de los Ríos in 1876.
The aims of the ILE adhered broadly to the Fröbelian movement that at that
time impregnated the thought of the majority of non-ecclesiastical European educationalists.
When Manuel B. Cossío, Giners principal disciple, attended the
International Teaching Congress held in Brussels in 1880, he entered into direct
contact with this movement and was able to appreciate the impact of its ideas in
Belgium, France and other European countries. Cossío and other ILE teachers who
attended other European teaching congresses between 1880 and 1889 established
links with Ferdinand Buisson, James Guillaume and others, and became the chief
representatives of the Fröbelian movement in Spain, where in planning the educational
innovations that they began to experiment with in their school in Madrid they were mindful of the reforms carried out by Ferry in France and Humbéeck in
Belgium.
A generation later, a further influx of educational ideas and experience from
abroad was promoted by the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios (in the creation of
which Giner had played a significant role), which in 1911 organized the first of a
series of visits to France and Belgium by primary school teachers; and a few years later
Lorenzo Luzuriaga, a product of the ILE who had joined the Escuela Nueva of Núñez
de Arenas following 2 years in Germany, was promoting the concept of the «single
school» as the expression of a broadly shared, dogma-free educational ideal. By 1918,
when this concept was incorporated in the socialist programme, awareness of the
promise inherent in a model of independent, active, non-ecclesiastical education was
gradually spreading throughout Spain, and this model was to play a conspicuous part
in the social achievements of the Second Republic
