Dewey in Argentina: Tradition, intention, and situation in the production of a selective reading

From the 1910s on, Argentinean educators looked repeatedly at Dewey’s work in search for models of educational reform. However, his undisputed reputation as a major thinker contrasted with a very selective view of his work and a weak reception in institutional terms. In fact, substantial parts of his scholarship were marginalized, in a selective reading that produced a de-politicized version of Dewey as an educational reformer. The multiple relationships between “democracy” and “education” or “schooling” opened up by Dewey’s thought were reduced in Argentina to a peculiar “didactics,” in a movement that reflected the intellectual and political trajectories of the supporters of the New Education Movement. In this chapter, working through translations, articles and comments on Dewey’s work, we will will focus on understanding the range of alternative readings that were available at a particular time, and the contexts of debate in which they became possible. The liberal and Catholic traditions of reading foreign references and models will be put together with the struggles that organized political oppositions in the period considered, and with the particularly heated climate (first democratically elected government, military dictatorships, Perón’s election) that marked these years and that tainted Dewey’s reception in Argentina.