Democracy, pedagogical renewal and rural territory: the Valencian district agricultural school 'La Serranía' ; Democracia, renovación pedagógica y territorio rural: la escuela agrícola comarcal valenciana 'La Serranía'

Abstract

The emergence in France of the Maisons familiales d'apprentissage rural in the 30s included active pedagogy and co-management in agricultural vocational training. This proposal will guide the cooperative experiences of the Valencian district agricultural schools that will be set up in Spain in recent years of the Franco dictatorship and will develop during the political transition towards democracy, in order to meet the demand for better training and cultural capitalisation of the countryside. These include the situation in the rural population of Chulilla (Valencia), which we are dealing with in this article and which tested educational actions for democratic management and pedagogical renewal. The analysis and study of this brief but significant experience of the history of Valencian education shows us how an educational community can build a critical school by practising freedom and at the same time maintain its roots. Using oral sources, we have been able to recover from the memory of its stakeholders, part of the history of this cooperative rural education initiative, analysing both the pedagogical budgets on which it was based (active methodology, alternation, co-management, democracy, comprehensive training, etc.) and its development in everyday practice. The emergence in France of the Maisons familiales d'apprentissage rural in the 1930s bought the inclusion of active pedagogy and Codetermination to agricultural professional education. This approach impeded the experiments in cooperating of the Valencian Comarcal Agricultural Schools that were created in Spain during the last years of France's dictatorship, and that they were further developed during the political transition to democracy, in order to meet the demand for improved education and cultural capitalisation of the Countryside. Among these experiences, it is worth noting that of the rural population of Chulilla (Valencia the subject of the following study as it is the implementation of educational practices based on democratic management and ...