Ideas, values and knowledge of Republican elites who built and founded nation free and secular university in the early twentieth century in Colombia

Abstract

This article examines the history of the mentalities of the intellectual elites in the historical period between 1886 and 1930, that motivated in their political exercise in the radical liberal essence and the visions of nature and the society since the masonry, they answered with the creation of the Free and Lay University, to the installation of the structure of the confessional State and motivated to the consolidation structures of the dependency of the Catholic Church in the orientation of the Public Education. Among these institutions, we find the Externado University of Colombia, the Republican University and the Free University. The ideas of positivism, the values of the nationality committed to liberty, the right to free expression, with the tolerance of diverse thought and the knowledge of Law, Engineering, Medicine, Arts, Business flow into a context of civil-military confrontations that bled the nation by the end of the XIX century, convert some liberal intellectuals into promoters of a peace and living together gesture with respect to the scientific knowledge and ideological and political currents that renovate the old conceptions of the authoritarian and hierarchic state. In the argumentations of the actors and interests, we find the sources of the inspiration and free teaching, in search of science in the form of the model of the free University in Berlin, founded by Guillermo Humboldt. The influence of the Catholic Church through the encyclicals, with the political participation of the priests and prelates, creates the conditions to give a more laic, autonomous response, in search of ideals of commitment with the formation of a State – Nation more inclusive, more effective in the development of productive forces an the installation of a model of industrial and commercial development that allows the international insertion of Colombia. The teaching of science, techniques and industrial models, will allow the development and emergence of educational and university institutions that will forge the formation of direction squares and elites of power in the fields of Public and Private Administration. The school of Mines of Medellin is strengthened, the National University of Colombia includes the lecture room of Tropical Medicine, the universities Externado and Republican will offer the courses of formation that will bring out the Professors and students of great profile and influence in the National Politics of the beginning of the XX Century in Colombia. The mentalities of Rafael Uribe, of Benjamin Herrera, of Nicolas Pinzon, among many, will set the objectives to initiate the civility in the environment of democracy and respect for free thought.