The Institución Libre de Enseñanza: History and Legacy

The Institución Libre de Enseñanza: A History

The Institución Libre de Enseñanza (ILE) was founded in 1876 by professors from the Universidad Central de Madrid (Francisco Giner de los Ríos, Gumersindo Azcárate, Teodoro Sainz Rueda, and Nicolás Salmerón, among others). They defended academic freedom and refused to adjust their teaching to any official dogma in religion, politics, or morals. Giner de los Ríos stood out as a key figure.

The ILE was a moral regeneration project that remained consistent throughout its 60 years of existence: it aimed to create a "new man," capable of confronting the moral situation of the country and overcoming it, as well as fostering a new model to enhance individual and collective life, making it more rational, ethical, and humane.

Early institutionalist principles included free lessons, compulsory schooling, gender equality in education, and the abolition of official textbooks. These principles were subsequently incorporated into the educational reform of 1931.

Because it was contrary to official dogma, the ILE had to develop its educational work outside the state, creating a private educational institution. This secular university began offering teachings and later extended to primary and secondary education.

From 1881, teachers trained within the ILE joined its teaching staff, solidifying and giving continuity to the project. Manuel Bartolomé Cossío succeeded Giner as the head of the institution.

With Spain's 44% illiteracy rate, it was necessary to remedy the educational deficiencies of the population. This led to the rise and development of so-called "educational missions," responsible for disseminating general culture, modern educational guidance, and education throughout Spain, especially in rural areas. These missions offered library services, town museums, cinema, choirs, and theater, complete with music and puppet shows.

The Civil War in 1936 and the subsequent proscription of the institution, with the confiscation of its property, marked a long hiatus for its activities in Spain. However, the project continued to be encouraged through the work done in various countries by exiled Institucionistas.

Francisco Giner de los Ríos: Ideology

• Krausismo: Advocated academic tolerance and academic freedom, as opposed to dogmatism, which places more importance on the object than the subject. Julián Sanz del Río was the foremost popularizer of Krausismo in Spain.
• German Philosophy:
  • Hegel's Sense of Unity: Reality is the unity of essence and existence.
  • Schelling's Synthesis of Nature and Spirit: Schelling spiritualized nature, making it subjective and activating the unconscious mind.
  • Kant's Idealism: Human knowledge can only refer to phenomena, not things in themselves.
• Wundt: Started scientific psychology with the founding of the first scientific psychology laboratory in Leipzig in 1879. Giner seized psychological analysis.
• Rousseau: He postulated that children should be free to express their energies to develop their special talents.
• Pestalozzi: His maxim was to adapt the teaching method to the natural development of the child.
• Froebel: Founder of the Kindergarten, and supporter of motivation and awakening the interest of students.

The ILE fostered not only intelligence but also nature, artistic sensibility, and physical strength. In this sense, Giner noted: "The school system should serve not only intelligence but to educate the whole man." His battle cry was freedom of education, understood not simply as academic freedom (the central problem of instucionalistas) but as an extension to the freedom of students and the educational system in general. Academic freedom is meaningless without the latter, and Giner was convinced of the crucial role of civil society in education outside the Church and State. He postulated a secular upbringing, but with strong respect, and favored the inter-theological expansion of schooling for women, with the ILE being the first institution in Spain that introduced coeducation.