The Great Red Downfall. Grounds for Extending Secondary Education in Spain (1953-1961)

Abstract

Spanish secondary education underwent a significant change in the 1950s. There was an effective break with the dual teaching model, which meant that boys and girls from working families, who had little income, were allowed to access high school. Until then, they had been practically banned from it. The educational authorities  conferred so much prominence to this policy that it came to have its own name: the Extension of Middle School policy. This paper aims to analyze the discourse that supported and made such policy explicit. To that end, we have found statements, andinaugural speeches, of the officials of the Ministry of Education. These statements and positions, barely studied until now, shaped the official discourse that launched this policy. After their analysis, we have identified several arguments that can be grouped under the following categories: economic, social, territorial, and political. Among them, there are some remarkable explicit references to the usefulness of extending high education to the working sectors to overcome fear and the great red downfall of the bourgeois living in the big cities. For this reason, the Extension of Middle School policy, promoted by a sector of the Francoist regime and with undeniable educational and social consequences, must be considered a prominent element of the cultural model which was sympathetic with the losers of the Civil War.