A critical look at the Spanish University of 1970s: The editorial analysis of Didascalia Magazine (1970-1975)

Abstract

The educational innovation magazine Didascalia, which began in the 1970s, sharing a birth certificate with the new Spanish Education Law, was a pioneering publication and unjustly forgotten by recent historiography. Not only did the most powerful and influential figures of Spanish psychopedagogy, education and applied psychology pass through its pages, but it also tried to become a guide for a necessary psychoeducational renewal, a professional dissemination tool, and inspiration for new projects. Methodologically, the work adheres to historical research techniques and follows an approach of documentary analysis focused preferably on the study of the editorial line of the publication, as well as on the historical and normative development of the application of the educational reform of the time in the university context. The reality of the Spanish University and its management was confronted with the feelings of the professionals of the moment. It is shown that many of the problems still in force in this matter, such as that of access to the University, are long-term issues that have never been satisfactorily resolved due to the internal contradictions with which they were initially created and regulated. Didascalia was a unique publication. He dedicated space to all sorts of topics with an renewed rigor, trying to become the first publication entirely devoted to information and updating of the educational professional, a fact that often led him to confront the ministerial authorities of the end General Franco’s Regime. In its pages, the burning and complex situation of the Spanish University had its own space, especially in relation to access to university studies, which came to highlight the difficulties of the system to be managed efficiently, and which already anticipates other later problems.