Lorenzo Luzuriaga Medina (1889-1959) was a Spanish teacher and pedagogue, he also took sides in politics in favor of education. In addition, he was one of the main activists for the establishment in Spain of the New School movement that was against traditional teaching.
Luzuriaga developed his work focused on the advancement of education in his country, and in the struggle to establish innovation and renewal in the educational system. One of his most outstanding works was The Unified School, which tried to couple to a perhaps divided society.
A good part of the literary, pedagogical and intellectual work of Lorenzo Luzuriaga took place in exile. That was because, like many Spanish intellectuals, he felt threatened after the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936, of those years was his title History of public education.
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Lorenzo Luzuriaga was born on October 29, 1889 in the city of Valdepeñas. It is known that he came from a family of teachers and pedagogues; his father, two of his brothers and his uncles practiced the profession, so being an educator was intuitive. His father was named Santiago Luzuriaga and his mother Ángeles Medina.
Lorenzo Luzuriaga's first years of education were in Valdepeñas. After the death of his father, the economic situation of the family became difficult, so he moved with his family to Aravaca, where he completed his primary education. There the family managed to stabilize a little.
In 1908 he began to study at the Instituto Libre de Enseñanza, where he was taught by the pedagogue and philosopher Francisco Giner de los Ríos. Later he studied at the Higher School of Teaching, there he was a disciple of José Ortega y Gasset, who greatly influenced his vocation..
Luzuriaga met María Luisa Navarro Margati while she studied at the Escuela Superior de Magisterio. After a time of courtship, they married in 1912. As a result of love, two children were born: Jorge and Isabel Luzuriaga Navarro.
After graduating as a teacher and inspector of primary education, Luzuriaga was awarded a scholarship by the Board for the Expansion of Studies in 1913. He left for Germany for two years, and took various studies and courses on education and pedagogy at universities such as Berlin and Jena.
When he returned to Spain, Lorenzo joined the projects of the League of Political Education association, as well as the activities carried out by the New School movement. During that time he also worked at the National Pedagogical Museum as secretary and inspector..
Lorenzo Luzuriaga's activities in relation to education and its systematization were extended to the printed media. He wrote for magazines like Spain, and from 1917, until 1921, he wrote a column called Pedagogy and public instruction in the liberal newspaper Sun.
The constant concern of the pedagogue for a change in education, led him to create the Pedagogy Magazine, in 1922. It served as a space and a platform for educators, both Spanish and from other countries, to present their educational ideas from a progressive perspective.
Lorenzo Luzuriaga left Spain in 1939, due to the consequences of the Spanish Civil War. First he arrived in Great Britain, then he went to Argentina, and in the city of Tucumán he served as a professor at its main university..
In 1944 he moved to Buenos Aires and joined the publishing industry. He also translated several works by the American pedagogue John Dewey, and also began working in the newspaper The nation, where he published both educational topics, such as his position on the education of the Franco regime.
The last years of Luzuriaga's life were of intense activity. While he was in Buenos Aires he participated in the creation of several magazines such as Reality, together with the also Spanish and writer Francisco Ayala. Starting in 1954, and for a year, he served as a university professor in Venezuela.
Once again installed in the Argentine capital, the Spanish pedagogue assumed the chair of educational history at the University of Buenos Aires. He had the opportunity to return to Spain in 1956 for a short time. Three years later he died in Argentina, on July 23.
The works of Lorenzo Luzuriaga were oriented towards educational themes, therefore, they do not keep a literary style as such. However, his ideas were expressed through a clear and precise language, with the intention that the contents were understood by a majority. This is clearly logical, since the purpose was teaching.
His writings were structured in prose, under the themes related to everything concerning education and pedagogy. The main contents were about innovation in the educational curriculum, and that the student body had the initiative to learn by themselves.
- Primary education in Spain (1915). He wrote it with the collaboration of the Spanish pedagogue Manuel Cossío.
- Documents for the school history of Spain (1916-1917). It was a two-volume edition.
- Teacher preparation (1918).
- Illiteracy in Spain (1919).
- Essays of pedagogy and public instruction (1920).Primary education in the Spanish-American republics (1921).
- The unified school (1922).
- New schools (1923).
- Rehearsal and reform schools (1924).
- Active schools (1925).
- The new education. Two editions, the first in 1927 and the second in 1942.
- Concept and development of the new education (1928).
- Bases for a preliminary draft of the Law of Public Instruction inspired by the idea of the single school (1931).
- Ideas for a constitutional reform of public education (1931).
- The unique school (1931).
- The new public school (1931).
- Contemporary pedagogy (1942).
- Argentine primary and secondary education compared to other countries (1942).
- Education reform (1945).
- History of public education (1946).
- Pedagogy (1950).
- Pedagogy dictionary (1950).
- History of education and pedagogy (1950).
- Pedagogical anthology (1956).
- The Free Institution of Teaching and education in Spain (1958).
- Social and political pedagogy (1954). Reissued in 1961.
- The education of our time (Posthumous edition 1961).
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