Between State and Private Education: the Ideological Dilemma of Argentine Progressive Jews (1955-1995)

Abstract

This article reconstructs a political-educational dilemma that plagued the progressive Argentine Jews of the Yiddisher Kultur Farband (YKUF), or Federation of Jewish Cultural Entities (from now on, «the Ykufists»), between 1955 and 1995. Ideologically close to the Communists, they defended the secular, gratuitous and compulsory education principles embodied in Law 1420 (1884), and the postulates of autonomy, co-government and freedom of University Reform (1918). In 1958, faced with the «secular or free» conflict, which polarized the citizenship between those who defended a private-confessional education and those who advocated the exclusiveness of a secular state education, the Ykufists actively demonstrated their affinity with the latter. Parallel to this, they supported a network of idiomatic schools in Yiddish (shules), founded by immigrants, which played a «complementary» role. These shules declined towards the 1960s. To save them, they had to be turned into full-time private schools, but that would go against their principles in favour of a public and egalitarian education. At the 9th YKUF Congress in 1968, delegates from all over the country voted to continue with the shules for as long as possible, but not to compete with the state school. However, two decades later, in the nineties, YKUF was happy for a private secular school to be opened in one of its institutions; what social and political transformations generated this change? How did they manage to reconcile a discourse in favour of state education and then green light a private school? Based on extensive research, this article analyses, in light of the national and international context, the educational dilemmas of this progressive Jewish group, which identified with the Argentine middle classes.