The following text was originally published in Prospects:the quarterly review of comparative education (Paris,

UNESCO: International Bureau of Education), vol. XXIV, no. 3/4, 1994, p. 487–500.
©UNESCO:International Bureau of Education, 2000
This document may be reproduced free of charge as long as acknowledgement is made of the source.

DOMINGO FAUSTINO
1
SARMIENTO
(1811–88)
Héctor Félix Bravo2

The origins of his views on education

Domingo Sarmiento’s socially oriented education may, without a doubt, be traced back to the
adverse circumstances that hampered his own education and the disastrous situation prevailing in
Argentina as a result of economic and cultural deprivation. His reading and travel for study
purposes exposed him to theories that strengthened those views.
It is not my intention here to make an exhaustive list of the authors who inspired
Sarmiento’s thinking, still less to indicate how much influence each one had. Suffice it to say that
those authors included Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Condorcet, Leroux, Guizot,
Cousin and others who came in the wake of the Enlightenment, encyclopédisme and romanticism.
However, we are bound to stress that the ideas put forward by Condorcet on the state’s duty to
provide each and every individual with education to ensure full spiritual, political, economic and
social development through effective de facto equality and the institutionalization of secularism, and
those of Guizot, the main proponent in France of mass education which should be free of charge
and allow freedom of conscience, made a very important contribution to the educational theory and
practice of the ‘Schoolmaster of America’. His humanitarian views were also largely influenced by
the ideas of Horace Mann, the reformer from Massachusetts, who promoted universal education—
compulsory, non-sectarian and free—that sought to encourage civic virtues and social efficiency.
But the observations made during his study tours exerted the strongest influence on the
development of Sarmiento’s educational philosophy. This is borne out by the fact that the ideas he
defends in De la educación popular [On Popular Education]—reporting on his tours of inspection
from 1845 to 1847—encapsulate the themes developed and repeated subsequently during his
lengthy career as a journalist and teacher. During his stay in Europe, which encompassed visits to
France, Prussia, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and England, he was able to learn about and assess new
educational methods and procedures, interesting experiments in special education, advanced
teacher-training institutions and modern systems of school organization. His two visits to the
United States gave him an opportunity for direct contact with a highly progressive education
movement, which was influenced to a great extent by Pestalozzian ideas and accordingly had its
roots deep in the community.

Civilization and public education

Barbarism and despotism, with ignorance, poverty, anarchy and fanaticism in their train, were in
Sarmiento’s view Argentina’s legacy of social ills. He explained the origin of these evils in
demographic terms, approaching the problem from two different angles. The explanation he gave in
Facundo (Civilización y barbarie: vida de Juan Facundo Quiroga [Civilization and Barbarism:

1
The Life of Juan Facundo Quiroga]) is quantitative—depopulation, but in Conflicto y armonías de
las razas en América [Racial Conflict and Harmony in America], qualitative—the formation of
ethnic groups.
The wilderness, whose beauty was revealed by Argentine Romantic writers, was one of
Sarmiento’s images in his social projections. Desolation, which is opposed to positive political
relations, economic interests and cultural stimuli, was the symbol of ignorance and anarchy. As
Guerrero (1945) neatly put it: ‘Sarmiento realized that the wilderness was full of barbarism.’ There
is no doubt today that the dialectical approach of Civilización y barbarie led, inter alia, to one
serious error: it sought to explain Argentine civil strife in absolute terms, as the countryside rising
up against the cities, and saw the military leaders as products of the rural environment. We know
that they were city men; but we also know that they recruited horsemen from the countryside to
fight their political battles. Viewing the issue in relative terms, however, we can agree with
Sarmiento that the urban civilization existed in contrast to the barbarism of the countryside; for
even though the military, the clergy and the academics were those who promoted anarchy, they
found their troops of mounted rebels among the wanderers in the desert.
His book Conflicto y armonías de las razas en América explains the origin of social evils
from an ethnic point of view. In that book, Sarmiento claims that the ignorance of the mass of the
people, political anarchy (with its attendant corruption of democratic institutions), slow economic
development and cultural deprivation all stem from two factors: the Spanish legacy and
miscegenation with indigenous peoples. To prove his point, he compares the results of Spanish
colonization with those of English colonization. The difference in development between Latin
America and North America is, in Sarmiento’s opinion, the result of a difference of civilization and,
more importantly, the result of discrepancies in economic development between Spain and
England, which were reproduced in their respective American colonies.
The second part of the book asserts the moral superiority of the Protestant over the
Catholic world, a superiority that he claims derives from the importance of free thinking and greater
cultivation of personal dignity in the Protestant world, which fulfilled the necessary conditions for
free institutions and democratic systems to flourish. Fortunately, however, those evils are not
irremediable, and he recommends three solutions: European immigration, work and public
education—the most important of those being education.
With the passion of an apostle and the conviction of a visionary, he proclaimed the absolute
value of education. In Análisis de las cartillas, silabarios y otros métodos de lectura [Analysis of
Primers, Readers and Other Methods of Reading], which he published in Chile in 1842 in his
capacity as director of the teacher-training college, he claimed: ‘Primary education is the measure
of a people’s civilization.’ But it was in De la educación popular that he presented, for the first
time in specific terms, his full programme of civilization through education. In his later work,
admittedly, he did no more than elaborate on and repeat—with a teacher’s insistence—the ideas
defended in the 1848 report. Civilization could not be the preserve of a few. It required each citizen
to be suitably trained to discharge the functions incumbent upon him or her in the Republic. The
word ‘civilization’, that was included in the dictionary of the French Academy in 1798 and in that
of the Royal Spanish Academy in 1822, is not used by Sarmiento—as some believe—in a strictly
materialistic sense, or in the unique modern sense of ‘mastery over technology’.
A man of action, an achiever and a builder, Sarmiento worked and fought to put his
doctrine into practice, but without detriment to morality and spiritual values. Ample proof of this is
afforded, primarily, by his fundamental interest in educational issues; secondly, by his own life,
which shows him to be a model of lofty thinking; and lastly, by his clear definitions. In Viajes
[Journeys] he wrote:

The greatest number of known truths is merely knowledge as it stands at one period of time; but the civilization of a
people can be characterized only by possession on as large a scale as possible of all the fruits of the earth for use by all

2
intelligent beings, and of all material forces for the convenience, pleasure and moral improvement of the greatest
possible number of individuals.

As we can see, this concept is not coextensive with usefulness. He did not, in fact, distinguish
between civilization and culture, as this distinction belongs to the modern philosophy of culture, but
this confirms rather than contradicts our earlier interpretation.
He conceived of civilization as having the breadth attributed to it by the members of the
Constituent Assembly in 1853, and not in the limited sense with which it was viewed in Argentina
after 1880. To civilize, in Sarmiento’s view, was to make provision for things that would lead to
the prosperity of the country and to progress in all the provinces, such as the introduction of the
legislation and regulations necessary to create a state under the rule of law, the encouragement of
immigration, the building of railways, the occupation of state-owned land, the introduction and
establishment of new industries, the influx of foreign capital, etc. But it also meant attending to the
advancement of culture by organizing public education and guaranteeing the welfare and freedom
of each and every inhabitant, and the sovereignty of the Republic, as stipulated by the Constitution.
Sarmiento was both a man of action and an idealist. He tackled the great task of
transforming the country, gripped as it was by anarchy and barbarism, in the conviction that
progress, built on ethical foundations, would bring happiness to the Argentine people. But, as
Mantovani (1950) pointed out,

Progress cannot be achieved on the basis of reason, as the thinkers of the Enlightenment supposed, nor can it be
imposed from above by governmental decree. It must be the outcome of a process of development over time, whose
main purpose is to educate the people and create new customs; in a nutshell, to civilize the people.

Just as he did not formulate a complete and coherent educational philosophy, Sarmiento refrained
from giving an all-round definition of education. Admittedly, he never set out to found or develop a
system of general education; all his concerns in this field were focused on one specialized area,
namely, the politics of education, or, better still, educational policy. The favourite theme of his
educational theories and books was therefore public education, whose purpose was—in his own
words—‘to train individuals to use their intelligence through basic knowledge of the sciences and
of the fundamental facts that shape the intellect’. We therefore have a concept of public education,
which, combined with other ideas taken from different works, may reasonably be summed up as
follows: the objective of public education is to improve, intellectually, physically and morally, the
largest and poorest class of society, by providing it with training so that it may participate in
cultural progress.
Sarmiento wanted to improve social conditions in the community by means of educational
action, spearheaded by the state. But that educational action, designed primarily to raise intellectual
capacity through science, would benefit the dispossessed or disregarded bulk of the population, and
would no longer be a privilege of the dominant groups. ‘What we need, first of all, is to become
civilized: not the 200 individuals who attend classes, but the 200,000 who do not even go to
school.’ This was the basis of Sarmiento’s passion for primary schooling, which he called ‘mass
education’, ‘national education’ or ‘general education’.

Democracy and mass education

To grasp the full extent of Sarmiento’s educational philosophy, we must take account of the state
of education during his lifetime and even during the colonial period.
At the time of publication of De la educación popular (which, for reasons given earlier, I
shall use as a point of comparison), universal primary education was far from being a reality in any
part of the world, much less a generally accepted idea. Only in Prussia and cities in the eastern and
southern United States was democratic education considered to be an obligation for the state and

3
for the people. The conditions of peace and social progress required for this kind of work did not
exist in the Latin American nations that had just emerged from the wars of independence to plunge
immediately into the chaos of civil strife and tyranny.
This disparity could not continue much longer without seriously endangering the
institutional, economic and social development of the nation. With the clear vision of a statesman
aware of the full importance of this fearsome problem, he fought valiantly to impose social justice.
The United States spurred him on to his great decision and provided him with evidence to support
his arguments.
A republican and democratic system of government requires a well-informed citizenry,
without class distinctions, which means that all citizens should be granted equality of opportunity.
Sarmiento showed that he perfectly understood this concept—upheld subsequently by the Supreme
Court of Argentina in many rulings, as the criterion of equality before the law—when he wrote:

The equality proclaimed by our institutions is not—as certain people absurdly seem to think—some illusory equality
of education and ability among all concerned, nor is it the equal distribution of property; it merely implies that the law
does not distinguish one person from another, leaving this up to nature and fate: it means that the aim of all
institutions should be the moral, intellectual and physical improvement of the largest and poorest social class.

His ideas, which won him enormous prestige as the ‘Schoolmaster of America’, were without any
doubt progressive for his time, but some of them no longer stand up to scrutiny today. No
democratic education is conceivable nowadays which fails to take into consideration the solutions
that special education and social welfare can provide. In particular, it is indispensable to remove
disparities caused by deprived socio-cultural backgrounds and detrimental to intellectual
development, which presupposes that the economic and social situation of backward communities
must be improved.
Sarmiento’s great concern, his greatest passion in life, was to educate the people, all the
inhabitants of Argentina, raise their spiritual and economic levels and thus secure the development
of a free and sovereign nation. Mass education was the heart and soul of his work and was the title
of his most widely read, and probably his favourite, book, De la educación popular. His
assessment of the situation in the most progressive countries visited led him to write that ‘there is in
the Christian world, albeit in scattered corners, a comprehensive system of mass education which
starts in the cradle, gets under way in the nursery, continues at primary school and is rounded off by
reading, which encompasses all human existence’.
This programme of renewal could be implemented through primary education, which
Sarmiento also called ‘general education’. In a profoundly revolutionary manner, he advocated
education open to all without discrimination as to race, sex, economic status, social rank, political
views or religious beliefs. He was a pioneer in the struggle for non-sectarian education, or
education free of all religious dogma or segregation on similar grounds. Sarmiento devoted his life
to the development of this form of education. He wrote memorable pages to give wider currency to
this idea. In 1856, he submitted to the University Council of Chile a report on general education. A
century later, it would make worthwhile reading for all who are unaware of the influence of public
education on industry and on the general growth of national prosperity. With equal dedication, he
launched the Anales de la educación común [Chronicle of Communal Education] in Buenos Aires,
in 1858, a periodical to promote an educational philosophy based substantially on the French
‘mixed-ability teaching’ movement, achieving positive results which outstripped the latter.
In keeping with the medieval tradition inherited from Spain and Italy, public education in
Argentina up to Sarmiento’s time was characterized by the predominance of university or higher
education over primary education. The author of Educar al soberano [Educating the Leader]
reacted against this situation, opting to follow the examples of the United States and Prussia. He
advocated the democratic rather than the aristocratic system, upholding the principles valued at the

4
time: ‘primary schooling for all; fee-paying secondary schooling for those who can afford it;
university for those who want it’. He considered, and rightly so, that universities should be like
cornices crowning the edifice of public education, with primary schools as the supporting columns.
The real culture and civilization of a people could not reside in a few hundred privileged persons on
the one hand and the ignorant, dispossessed masses on the other. This irksome inequality stood out
in the review of the public education budget, as may be seen from a letter to Rojas Paul:

The Congress of the Argentine Republic allocates 100,000 pesos to schools in which 400,000 children are to be
educated, and 280,000 pesos to fee-paying secondary schools where only 1,500 are to be educated, and no one knows
why these latter children are given so much more than the others.

Sarmiento understood what the most pressing educational need was. It was necessary to teach the
masses to read rather than launch sophisticated cultural and specialized projects. For that reason he
said:

I do not regard education above the primary level as being a means of civilization. It is primary education that
civilizes and develops the people’s moral fibre. All peoples have always had their learned elders and sages, without
being civilized. Primary schools are therefore the very basis of civilization.

No one studying Sarmiento’s educational policy in a dispassionate manner could infer from the
opinions quoted above that he was against higher education. They are merely the fruit of a
particular political and social outlook and of innovative views on the position of the university in
Argentina.

Secular education

Sarmiento considered that education in Argentina should be secular. Factors on which social
progress depended, cultural factors and the requirements of democratic and republican systems of
government made this a necessity. Hence his impassioned and often virulent campaign for secular
education, waged in the El Nacional newspaper first of all on the occasion of the 1882 Congress
on Education and then during the debates in parliament on the bill that became law two years later.
Of course, this attitude does not imply atheism or that he was opposed to religion as a
supreme ideal. Proof of his Christian views and respect for religion is to be found in various
educational actions such as the distribution to Chilean schoolchildren of La conciencia de un niño
[The Child’s Conscience] (a book containing Catholic teaching and prayers) and La vida de
Jesucristo [The Life of Jesus Christ] (an explanatory account of the Gospels), and recurrent
examples to be found in La escuela sin la religión de mi mujer [School without My Wife’s
Religion] and many other books. But the great Sarmiento never tried to confuse anyone by using
the term ‘Christian’ in the limited sense of a person professing the Catholic religion. On the
contrary, his position on the subject was perfectly clear. He honoured Jesus Christ and praised the
doctrine of the Protestant Church which espoused the principles of tolerance, freedom and social
progress while combating religious education and Catholic theology in the interests of modern
science and national progress.
Another aspect of his arguments in defence of secular education was based on the sound
legal foundations of existing law. Interpreting correctly the clauses of the Constitution, and having
amassed plentiful constitutional precedents, he ably defended the need for secular education. On
this subject, he wrote ‘La escuela ultrapampeana’ [approximating to The Veritable Pampas School]
and many articles published in Volume XLVII of his Obras [Works]. Secularism, characteristic of
the Argentine school system and based on the principles of the 1853 Constitution, is a sign of
freedom, while the doctrine that seeks to impose religious education in public schools is anti-
freedom. Furthermore, as the mixed system promotes the development of private institutes,

5
whether denominational or not, parents can exercise their right to choose the type of education that
they prefer for their children. Obviously, state secular education is not a means of forming
dogmatic, conformist attitudes, still less of creating élites that facilitate the activities of certain
power groups.

Teacher training

With apostolic ardour, Sarmiento, who became a teacher while he was still an adolescent at a time
when the profession was viewed with disdain, preached about the social usefulness and supreme
importance of the teaching profession. He was convinced that the schoolteacher was the person
working most actively for the nation’s advancement.
He was the founding director of the training college for primary-school teachers in Chile
(the first establishment of its kind in South America and also one of the first in the world), while in
Argentina he promoted teacher training as being in the national interest and set up the teacher-
training courses and establishments that were essential to his civilization programme.
His action for the advancement of the teaching profession was supplemented by the
organization of vacation courses for schoolteachers, the first of which was held in 1854, under his
guidance, in Santiago, Chile. He launched the Monitor de la escuela [The School Monitor] in
Santiago in 1852 and, in Buenos Aires, in 1858, the Anales de la educación común, which he
edited as head of the Schools Department. These publications marked the beginning of the
educational press in South America.

Other achievements

The opening of public libraries was inspired by similar democratic principles, as he considered that
education would be impossible without libraries. ‘Civilization in [Latin] America is to be achieved
by linking schools to books’, he said. For that reason, he created mobile public libraries and never
faltered in this endeavour, although he knew that some of them met with a sorry fate.
As it was necessary to remedy, if only in part, previous governments’ neglect of education,
Sarmiento promoted evening classes for adults and schools for soldiers. Similarly, he took the view
that the state and landowners had an obligation to set aside two hours of the working day for
labourers and workers to receive instruction.
His social policy programme aimed to set up state nurseries—such as the ones that had
won his admiration in France—educational saving banks and schools for the handicapped and
mentally retarded. He put his ideas into practice when he became President of the Republic. Thus,
winning the hard battle against all types of adversity, he implemented his plan to help the people
through education. He founded five national secondary schools and several different types of
technical establishment at different levels, each paying due regard to the economic needs of the
region. He set up teaching farms for agricultural experimentation. He promoted scientific research
with leading institutions such as the Academies, the Faculty of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences
of the University of Córdoba and the Astronomical Observatory also in Córdoba, and arranged for
the services of scientists from the United States and Germany to be supplied under contract. He
increased the number of advisory bodies and laboratories for the purposes of educational renewal;
and set up museums. He founded the military and naval academies, thereby improving cultural and
technical standards in those professions. He allocated funds for the establishment of seminaries, and
took the decision to organize the country’s first educational census. The list could continue.

6
Women’s education

Until the middle of the last century, most women in Argentina had led sedentary, not to say
vegetative, lives cloistered in their homes dedicated exclusively, at best, to domestic work. They
were therefore cut off from cultural affairs, a situation exacerbated by strict religious observance
and aggressive ignorance. It was therefore obvious that as long as women remained in this social
situation civilization would stop at the front door of the family home.
The influence of women on the development of the Latin American nations was an issue of
great concern to the ‘Schoolmaster’, as evidenced by the foundation in 1938 of the Colegio Santa
Rosa, a boardingschool for girls, in San Juan. When he became President of the Republic, one of
his first deeds was to set up training colleges for women teachers. The involvement of women in
educational work meant that the home, the school and society were united in the same civilizing
task. Thus a great battle for intellectual freedom was won.
To borrow Abraham Lincoln’s famous words, Sarmiento did more than anyone else to
introduce ‘education of the people, by the people and for the people’ into Argentina:
Education of the people: he considered that education was a social function and argued against
certain theological and political principles that held sway in a society still strongly attached
to class distinctions and the teachings of the Church. Implicit in that idea were the right and
duty of the people to be educated, in a situation of equality of opportunity, and the
corresponding obligation of the state to make provision for meeting that need in keeping
with the principle of freedom of education, in the republican and democratic sense.
Education by the people: he campaigned for greater involvement of the people in the
administration, inspection and general running of education. He considered that school
inspection bodies should be set up, composed of people’s committees, university rectors or
their deputies, municipal authorities and a technical representative of central government, in
order to improve education and promote it in every community.
Education for the people: Sarmiento’s educational philosophy was based on a lofty conception of
human nature. He believed equally strongly in the system of government adopted in 1810,
whose effective continuation depended directly on the development of mass education.
‘The word “democracy” is a sick joke’, he claimed, ‘when the government defers or
neglects its task of training upright and intelligent citizens.’

Development and national education

The national challenge of the century in which he lived was to organize on new lines a people that
had recently gained its independence. This meant phasing out antiquated institutions and customs
based on privilege, political corruption and obscurantism, and thereby strengthening human rights
and promoting general wellbeing by encouraging social responsibility and the spirit of nationhood.
Sarmiento’s major task was therefore to root out individualism and other social ills as a sine qua
non for the development of a strong national consciousness. However, this community ideal that he
set out to achieve—after his predecessors, one after the other, had failed—was not an unattainable
dream, but a feasible undertaking. Sarmiento was not disappointed, as Moreno and Rivadavia were,
regarding the issue of national sentiment; this was because he had his finger on the people’s pulse.
Accordingly, instead of applying abstract models that could not be adapted to the society’s specific
characteristics, and with the inspiration of a prophetic mind, he gradually built up the nation out of
mud bricks moulded with his own hands, fashioned from the living reality of his own time and
place.
Sarmiento saw the problems of development and how they were linked to the formation of
national awareness in terms of these questions, which are still burning issues today. He expressed

7
his views in several books, including De la educación popular and in greater detail on the subject
of development in his Educación común (Memoria) [Report on Communal Education], submitted
to the University Council of Chile in 1856, in which he contends that national primary education is
a necessary condition of industrial development, since there is no doubt that it promotes better
habits, raises moral standards and, in the long term, contributes to general prosperity. He
considered that a country’s future depended on social development, and more particularly on
education.
The country’s wide open spaces, sparsely populated in spite of its potential wealth,
contributed fundamentally to isolation and barbarism. The wilderness therefore seemed to be both
the cause and the expression of a primitive life-style, hostile to useful work and to any sign of social
progress. But, Sarmiento considered: ‘The pampas are not, as some claim, doomed to providing
fodder for animals, for in a few years’ time, here and throughout Argentina, they should become
the home of free hard-working and happy people.’ To make this prediction come true, it was
necessary not only to populate the wilderness, but also to change the system of land tenure by
combating the latifundia (large ranches), the source of extreme poverty, ignorance and tyranny.
Agrarian reform was therefore a basic theme of his civilizing programme. Following in Rivadavia’s
footsteps, although using different methods, he embarked on the difficult venture of dividing up the
land as the sole means of populating the open spaces, increasing output and making educational
assistance work.
Unfortunately, such an ambitious venture could not succeed, owing to opposition from a
combination of unsavoury vested interests whose resistance was then, as it is now, insurmountable.
Sarmiento’s views in this regard therefore have the force of a lasting injunction to present and
future generations to ensure that social development is achieved through agrarian reform and
education.
Earlier, we saw that the lines of action recommended by Sarmiento for tackling the
country’s social ills were public education, work and immigration from Europe. This last was to
lead to the regeneration of the initial Spanish-indigenous stock, and to a salutary assimilation of the
culture and productivity of the more civilized European nations.
It did not, however, escape his keen intelligence that the much desired immigration might
cause traditional society to be replaced by an artificial society, in which

those people whose intellectual and industrial capabilities have not been prepared by education for the driving force of
progress and change that will occur in society will gradually fall to the lowest levels of the society; thousands of
parents who today enjoy an advantageous social position may thus be forewarned that the activities and the greater
purchasing power of the new arrivals may, within a relatively short time, cause their children to fall to the lowest
classes of society.

This remedy for Argentine social ills therefore posed at the same time the serious problem of the
possible loss of the national character. We shall now see how this new danger was avoided by mass
education, introduced by Sarmiento.
He called primary education ‘national education’ because the greatness and the future of
the country, and the safeguarding of traditional values, depended on as much education as possible
being given to the greatest number of citizens within the shortest possible time, through the
simultaneous efforts of the state and parents. That was his reason for preferring this level of
education to higher education. Of course, it did not blind him to the merits of secondary and higher
education in developing general prosperity through the raising of the people’s moral standards. But
primary education provided by the state for every child of school age, without discrimination on
social, economic, political or religious grounds, was the strongest guarantee of national unity.

8
Harbinger of social education

On occasion, Sarmiento claimed to be a socialist. Obviously, he used the word ‘socialism’ as

opposed to individualism as he believed in social progress based on intellectual freedom.
It would be more correct to say that, while making no systematic claim to do so, Sarmiento
formulated an education policy of a social character, foreshadowing the educational theories whose
philosophical foundations were laid by Durkheim and Natorp. He saw education as a dynamic force
acting on society and changing it in all its aspects. Basically, he considered that its task was to give
a structure to democracy. Education was the people’s right and, at the same time, it was a duty
incumbent on the state and on society. Its objectives were to raise the level of instruction of all
individuals trained for social functions, eradicate tyranny and ensure equality. These are the main
lines of emphasis of the policy-based educational theory to be found in De la educación popular
and other books of a complementary character written later. Rather, they amount to an education
policy with a clearly social and progressive bias, set forth in the form of practical rules and concrete
solutions in these books and carried into effect when he became a statesman. Sarmiento’s concern
with educational problems was such that it could certainly not be satisfied merely by giving
currency to his educational views: accordingly, suiting his action to his words, he translated his
ideas into schemes and projects of a truly social character.
The promise he made to Mansilla just before taking up the office of President of the
Republic, namely ‘I promise that I will roll the stone up the mountain’, was fulfilled throughout his
lifetime. Sarmiento worked unremittingly. His books and innovations followed one another in a
steady stream, conquering the indifference or illwill of the ruling class and resistance arising from
the low level of social development. In the field of education, in particular, he struggled to mould
favourable public opinion, on which the success of his efforts depended. The law on universal,
compulsory, free and secular primary education owes its enactment to his tenacity and great gifts of
persuasion. This is how primary education came to boost participation by the community, since the
community saw primary schools as having the greatest economic and social multiplier effects. It
was this widely and passionately held conviction that made it possible for mass education to reach
the level of development that it has attained in Argentina. Sarmiento wrote: ‘General education
comes from the heart of the people in the community, and if they neither nurture nor desire it, it will
always be like a stunted plant, growing on stony ground and unable to propagate itself.’
Warmly supported by the people and by the ceaseless toil of dedicated teachers who owed
their training to him, Sarmiento put into practice his social doctrine, which was established as the
foundation and guarantee of national development. State education in Argentina is the highest
expression of his political design and the most outstanding example of a promise kept by a man
who sought power in order to implement principles that the entire nation shares today. The maxim
implicit in Sarmiento’s education policy is thus a watchword for the people’s representatives: to
govern is to educate.

Notes

1. This article was first published in Prospects, vol. 20, No. 2, 1990.
2. Héctor Félix Bravo (Argentina) Graduate in philosophy, law and education at the University of Buenos Aires.
Former inspector of secondary education, director of educational information at the Ministry of Education, and
head of research at the Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias de la Educación. Member of Parliament and
Chairman of the Education Commission (1963–66). Honorary professor of educational policy and
comparative education at the University of Buenos Aires and member of its Academic Tribunal. Member of
the Governing Board of the Argentine Association of Comparative Education and of the National Academy of
Education. Author of numerous journal articles and publications, including: Sarmineto: pedagogo
social[Sarmineto:social Teacher] and Estudios sarmientinos[Studies on Sarmiento]

9
References and bibliography

Anderson Imbert, E. Genio y figura de Sarmiento [The genius and nature of Sarmiento]. Buenos Aires, EUDEBA,
1967.
Bravo, H. F. Sarmiento: pedagogo social [Sarmiento: A social teacher]. Buenos Aires, EUDEBA, 1965.
Bunge, C. O. Sarmiento. Estudio biográfico y crítico [Sarmiento: Biographical and critical study]. Madrid, Espasa-
Calpe, 1926.
Bunkley, A. W. Vida de Sarmiento [Life of Sarmiento]. Buenos Aires, EUDEBA, 1966.
Cassani, J. E. ‘Doctrinas pedagógicas de Sarmiento’ [Sarmiento’s educational doctrines]. Humanidades
[Humanities], vol. 26. La Plata, National University of La Plata, Faculty of Humanities and Education, 1938.
Fernandez, J. R. Sarmiento. Semblanza e iconografía [Sarmiento: portrait and iconography]. Buenos Aires, Librería
del Colegio, 1936.
Galvez, M. Vida de Sarmiento. El hombre de autoridad [Life of Sarmiento: the man of authority]. Buenos Aires,
Emecé, 1945.
Ghioldi, A. Sarmiento, fundador de la escuela popular [Sarmiento: founder of the popular school]. Buenos Aires,
Asociación Liberal Adelante, Editorial Araunjo, 1944.
Guerra, G. J. Sarmiento. Su vida y sus obras [Sarmiento: His life and his works]. Santiago de Chile, Imprenta
Elzeveriana, 1901.
Guerrero, L. J. ‘Tres temas de filosofía argentina en las entrañas del “Facundo”‘ [Three themes of Argentinian
philosophy found in the ‘Facundo’]. Centenario del ‘Facundo’ [The Centenary of the ‘Facundo’]. La Plata,
National University of La Plata/Imprenta Lópes, 1945.
Ingenieros, J. ‘Las ideas sociológicas de Sarmiento’ [Sarmiento’s sociological ideas]. In: D.F. Sarmiento. Conflicto y
armonías de las razas en América [Racial conflict and harmony in America]. Buenos Aires, La Cultura
Argentina, 1915.
Levene, R. ‘Sarmiento sociólogo de la realidad americana y argentina’ [Sarmiento the sociologist of the American
and Argentinian situation]. Humanidades [Humanities]. vol. XXVI. La Plata, National University of La
Plata, Faculty of Humanities and Education, 1938.
Lugones, L. Historia de Sarmiento [The story of Sarmiento]. Buenos Aires, Comisión Argentina de Fomento
Interamericano, 1945.
Mantovani, J. Epocas y hombres de la educación argentina [Eras and personalities of Argentinian education].
Buenos Aires, El Ateneo, 1950.
——, et al. Sarmiento, educador, sociólogo, escritor, político [Sarmiento: educator, sociologist, writer and
politician]. University of Buenos Aires, Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, 1963.
Martínez Estrada, E. Sarmiento. Buenos Aires, Editorial Argos, 1956.
Ocampo, V., et al. ‘Sarmiento, aproximaciones’ [Sarmiento, Approximations]. Sur (Buenos Aires), July-December
1977.
Orgaz, R. A. Sarmiento y el naturalismo histórico [Sarmiento and historical naturalism]. Córdoba, Imprenta Rossi,
1940.
Palcos, A. Sarmiento. Buenos Aires, El Ateneo, 1938.
Ponce, A. Sarmiento, Constructor de la nueva Argentina [Sarmiento: constructor of the New Argentina]. Bilbao,
Espasa-Calpe, 1932.
Rojas, R. Bibliografía de Sarmiento [Bibliography of Sarmiento]. La Plata/Buenos Aires, National University of La
Plata, Faculty of Law and Social Sciences/Imprenta Coni Hnos., 1911.
——. Noticia preliminar [Preface]. In: D. F. Sarmiento. Educación popular [Popular Education’]. Buenos Aires,
Biblioteca Argentina, Libreria La Facultad, 1915.
——. El profeta de La Pampa. Vida de Sarmiento [The prophet of the Pampas: life of Sarmiento]. Buenos Aires,
Editorial Losada, 1945.
Verdevoye, P. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. Buenos Aires, Plus Ultra, 1988.
Weinberg, F. Las ideas sociales de Sarmiento [Sarmiento’s social ideas]. Buenos Aires, EUDEBA, 1988.

Educational works by Domingo Sarmiento

The works of Sarmiento are contained in the fifty-two volumes of: Obras completas [Complete Works]. Santiago de
Chile and Buenos Aires, 1886-1903. Various researchers have subsequently found other texts by this prolific writer.
The most significant texts on education can be found in Vols. 4, 5, 7, 11, 12, 13, 28, 30, 38, 44, 47 and 48. The index
is contained in Volume 53. The most significant texts are:
De la educación popular [On popular education]. vol. 11. Buenos Aires, 1896.
Educación común (Memoria) [Communal education (Report)]. vol. 12. Buenos Aires, 1896

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Other relevant texts are:
Bibliotecas populares [Popular libraries]. vol. 30. Buenos Aires, 1899.
Educar al soberano [Educating the leader]. vol. 47. Buenos Aires, 1900.
Ideas pedagógicas [Educational ideas]. vol. 28. Buenos Aires, 1899.
Informes sobre educación [Educational reports]. vol. 44. Buenos Aires, 1900.
La escuela ultrapampeana [The veritable pampas school]. vol. 48. Buenos Aires, 1900.
Las escuelas, base de la Prosperidad y de la República en los Estados Unidos [Schools, the foundations of prosperity
and the republic in the United States]. vol. 30. Buenos Aires, 1899.
Ortografía, instrucción pública [Handwriting and public education]. vol. 4: 1841 to 1854. Buenos Aires, 1886.

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