Faria de Vasconcelos and the New Education in Natural Sciences

Abstract

Adolphe Ferrière says the School at Bierges-les-Wavre, founded by the Portuguese educator Faria de Vasconcelos, in 1912, fulfilled 28 of the 30 programmatic points of the New Education movement. Thus, the figure of Faria de Vasconcelos is established as a pillar of this movement of pedagogical renewal that swept the educational panorama like a hurricane in the Western world in the first quarter of the 20th century. In this article, we review a handbook that Faria de Vasconcelos produced in 1919 when he was director of the Normal School at Sucre in Bolivia. It is a guide to train teachers to teach natural sciences. To prepare this handbook, Faria de Vasconcelos reviews the best material that had been written in the field of science education in Europe and in the USA and selectively retains what best suits his pedagogical convictions, characterised by his firm commitment to the ideas of his friends and co-religionists at the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute.