SPAIN AWAKES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 281, 26 November 1932, Page 7 (Supplement)

SPAIN AWAKES.

NEW EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.

A COLOSSAL TASK.

ABSORBS FOURTH OF NATIONAL BUDGET.

(By JAIME MENENDEZ.)

MADRID, October 20. Spain has undertaken the colossal task of changing in a few years the work of centuries of indolence and abandon. For the first time in its history, at least on such a large scale, the Spanish Government is thinking in terms of the future to make the country a part of the civilised world. Perhaps the largest and by far the most important share in this tremendous job falls on Don Fernando de los Rios, Secretary of Education of the Republican Government.

In the second Budget of the Republic, appropriations for the Department of Education jump from 208,000,000 pesetas in the last Budget of the monarchy, to 330,000,000. ( Beside this, a new loan of 400,000,000 pesetas will be issued, in yearly amounts of 50,000,000, exclusively to create new schools. To each new school, the municipalities must contribute at least 25 per cent of the sums advanced by the Government. All told between 20 and 25 per cent of the National Budget is devoted to education, compared with 5 to 8 per cent during the Monarchy. When the Republican regime came into power there were in Spain about 42,000 schools, for a ' population of over 22,000,000. This number is to be doubled in eight or ten years. Up to now, 7000 new elementary schools have been opened and another 3000 will be opened before the end of the year. Twenty Thousand New Schools.

Much also is being done in the field of higher education. Over twenty new institutions—high schools —already have been opened, and a similar number of special schools, industrial and agricultural. The programme for the next five years envisages an additional 20,000 schools.

Important as this aspect of the cultural transformation of Spain is, it has another significant side. With poverty prevailing in most communities the activities of the existing school cantines and school colonies will be enlarged, and children are to be taken care of on a scale never known to Spanish history. In Madrid alone, over 1,000,000 pesetas have been spent thus far this year in meals for poor children, and more than 7000 have been sent to health resorts and camps.

The Government also seeks to change the teachers as well as the curriculum. To this end, and in order to fill 3000 new positions, the Secretary of Education opened a cursillo or short vocational course of three months' duration that was attended by 16,000 graduates of teachers' training schools. Still in the field of elementary education new and novel experiments—for Spain, at least—are being made in other directions. A number of pedagogical missions already are traversing the country, bringing to the people the most rudimentary elements .of education. They are going from place to place, with movies, radios, phonographs, 'etc., to make education interesting and entertaining. With them are also travelling theatrical groups, recruited in the universities, musical ensembles and choral societies.

An International University. These missions are opening circulating libraries with amazing rapidity. Over 800 have already been created and are functioning with efficiency. In the field of higher education specialised and well-equipped libraries and laboratories, engineering schools, etc., will function side by Bide with the universities.

The confiscation of the properties of the Jesuit Order has given tremendous impetus to this programme. Many of the colleges of the Jesuits were housed in great buildings especially adapted for the purpose. Hence the rapidity with which the new programme is being carried out. Of special importance for fo'reign students and professors, particularly American, is the International University that will be opened next year in the magnificent palace of La Magdalena, in Santander (Northern Spain). This palace, the gift of the city of Santander to former King Alfonso, is one of the

most magnificent buildings in Spain. It is located on a beautiful peninsula at the entrance to the port. It is now being reconditioned and prepared, so that by next summer students and professors may study there. This university will be governed by an international board of professors, and its. student body also will be international. It will be perhaps the first truly international university in the world. This is part of an ambitious programme of educational interchange that will make it possible for students and professors from other countries to come to Spain and students arid professors of Spain to go to other countries.

Democracy's Vital Need. Don Fernando de los Rios is the guiding genius of this vast programme. In the field of university education it is his ambition to transplant to the Spanish scene the result of much progress and development reached in the United State?, for whose universities he has sincere admiration.

j The wider perspective he received when he was exchange professor at Columbia University he desires also for other Spanish professors, and hopes a reciproi cal exchange of professors will come into being. "Democracy cannot exist without a high level of general education," Senor de los Rios says, "and de.mocracy is what we want for Spain. Hence the efforts and sacrifices that we gladly make, in this direction."

He admits that his programme resulted from a varied and extensive study of educational progress made in the United States.—N.A.N.A.