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Rómulo de Carvalho’s Humanistic Chemistry Syllabus in the 1948 Portuguese Liceal Reform

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Abstract

This paper scrutinizes the contribution of Rómulo de Carvalho to the development of the Portuguese science curriculum, arguing that it was critically informed by his lifetime inclination to the humanities. It focuses on a particular historical event: the 1948 chemistry programme for the secondary school ‘Liceus’. The paper briefly reviews the educational situation during Salazarism, and how Carvalho and others worked against Salazar’s anti-liberal idealism. The concept of humanistic science education is also reviewed. The article provides a general overview of Carvalho’s activities in poetry, the history of science, and in education, and argues that the work of this multifaceted man was geared towards the need for context and meaningfulness in ordinary human life. In 1948, a shift in chemistry teaching is identified, from one that is less meaningful to students’ everyday lives to one that is more humanistic in nature. This shift, introduced by Carvalho, brought about radical measures such as the controversial suppression of chemical equations and concepts. The article also provides an account of Carvalho’s rationale for such changes and concludes with a discussion of the significance of the reform for Carvalho and for Portuguese science education.

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Notes

  1. The reform happened in 1947, but the new programmes were only introduced in 1948.

  2. Carvalho directed the Gazeta de Física, which aimed “to contribute actively to the development and elevation of physics studies in Portugal”, “to clarify the real position of the physics intervention in modern life to a vaster public”, and to “promote in everybody, including industrials, a greater interest for the ‘profession’ of physicist” (Gibert 1946, p.1). He also directed the journal Palestra, which aimed at being pedagogically useful to the whole community of liceal teachers, especially trainee teachers.

  3. “Automatized” is meant as a teaching style where students blindly repeat concepts, names, sentences, etc., which they are unable to grasp the meaning of.

  4. It can be claimed that regardless of the teaching style, some kind of meaning is always communicated. By “meaningless education”, it is meant the kind of education which is not particularly interested in peoples’ ordinary lives or everyday phenomena; therefore perhaps less relevant to the majority of secondary students.

  5. Although technical, automatized, and meaningless education may overlap in terms of characteristics, I am not suggesting they are synonymous. Nevertheless they are still opposed to the ideal of a liberal education.

  6. Carvalho has left a large archive with information about his personal and professional life, including a great amount of letters he received with comments about his works. His personal papers are now located at the Portuguese National Library in Lisbon.

  7. This may be an exaggeration. Considering Carvalho’s knowledge about foreign educational publications, it is likely Carvalho wrote his chemistry programme with their virtual support. Nevertheless, this cannot be guaranteed since by 1948 Carvalho had not published any pedagogical work in regards to teaching chemistry (either content or methodology).

  8. During a certain period of the Salazarist regime, it was compulsory for some teachers to write up a report with details of their professional activities. The content was diverse, but it still constitutes a rich historical consulting source. There are only three of Carvalho’s reports available. One refers to the 1934–1935 period and the others to the 1948–1949 and 1949–1950 academic years.

  9. In the literature, “Lessons on Common Things” are described as oral lessons illustrated by apparatus, models, and experiments. Although scientific knowledge was communicated, their objective was not to foster future scientists. “Lessons on Common Things” were also seen as those which could provide useful knowledge, help pupils understand the surrounding world, help them in performing their professional activities (Layton 1973, pp. 24–27), and should constitute elementary science in so far as they helped pupils “to observe some of the facts of nature upon which natural science is founded” (Jenkins 1979, pp. 38–39).

  10. Certainly cognition is an overloaded concept. Nonetheless, I used this term for I believe everyone agrees it is somehow generally linked with people’s learning process, which encompasses motivation, teaching settings, content, etc.

  11. The text, found in the section “Notes and Correspondence”, is not an academic article but a personal opinion of the referred teacher on how chemical equations should be taught in the general science course which precedes the teaching of symbol equations.

  12. He exemplified:

    \( {\text{mercury}}\,{\text{oxide}}\mathop{\longrightarrow}\limits^{\text{heat}}{\text{mercury}} + {\text{oxygen}}\,{\text{and}}\,{\text{potassium}}\,{\text{chlorate}}\mathop{\longrightarrow}\limits^{\text{heat}}{\text{potassium}}\,{\text{chloride}} + {\text{oxygen}} \).

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  1. University of Leeds, Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK

    Arthur Galamba

  2. New University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Arthur Galamba

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Galamba, A. Rómulo de Carvalho’s Humanistic Chemistry Syllabus in the 1948 Portuguese Liceal Reform. Sci & Educ 22, 1519–1536 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-012-9488-y

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