Discipline and school controls in Cuba from the perspective of science (1880-1898)

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to analyze the pedagogical approaches related to discipline and school controls, based on the contributions of different branches of science that, with varying degrees of development, contributed to perfecting the teacher’s management of behaviors in Cuban educational institutions. The text is structured according to the influence of those disciplines of greatest relevance in the field of pedagogy related to conduct and regulation of order in school institutions; both from sociology, as well as from
the contributions of psychology -still in its infancy-, physiology, hygiene and, of course, from the pedagogical techniques themselves conceived at the time. In each section, we can see the different ways of conceiving the nature of children’s corporeality, not as an immutable element, but as a historical construction conditioned by different economic, political, social and cultural contexts. The content is set between the 1880s, coinciding with the failure of the first war of liberation in Cuba, and the beginning of a period of intense debate on the subject, and the end of Spanish domination in 1898.