Decree of June 4, 1875, regulating professional instruction.

Decree of June 4, 1875, regulating professional instruction.

[From the “Gaceta de Madrid,” June 5, 1875.]

preamble.

Sire: Upon the initiation, in the decrees of July 29 and September 29, 1874, of the re-organization of the public studies, without prejudice thereby to the liberty of instruction, the government of that epoch announced its purpose to give validity to those studies which might have been privately pursued by means of a series of examinations which it did not eventually determine, and great has been the public expectation and continual the incitations and the inquiries addressed to the minister of fomento with respect to that important matter. The moment has at length arrived for satisfying this desire, maintaining, as the government of Your Majesty solemnly has offered to do in previous documents, the concurrence of private studies side by side with the official courses, without prejudice to the guarantees and proofs of fitness which it is indispensable to require in order that all the titles conferred by the state may have the same value and inspire equal confidence in the public. With this object the undersigned minister, aided by the efficient and intelligent co-operation of the council of public instruction, has studied the two principal points of the examinations and literary exercises to which are to be submitted those students who, having pursued private studies, seek to obtain academical, degrees, and of the organization of the juries before which those examinations are to take place, and has the honor to-day to submit to the superior judgment of Your Majesty the result of his labor.

In that which concerns the organization of the tribunals, in view of the difficulty of finding the large number of persons competent for the discharge of a mission of such importance which would be necessary, the undersigned believes it expedient to adopt in-this instance the criterion which has prevailed in the existing regulations for competitive examinations for professorships, proposing that the said tribunals shall operate only in Madrid when treating of the proofs of aptitude for obtaining degrees and titles in the several faculties and in the superior or professional school, and in the capital of the university district wherein there may be faculties or chairs of letters and sciences pertaining to the object of the examination, when treating of the degrees of bachelor and of titles of professional specialties. It has also appeared just to give participation in the juries in almost equal proportion to the official professors and to the representatives of private instruction, provided, however, that the latter possess an academical diploma guaranteeing their fitness for so difficult a charge. Unofficial instruction may in this manner have access to the juries, and the government proposes to give attention to it in proportion to the development and importance which it is steadily acquiring, exercising to the benefit of its directors and professors of the several faculties the free choice which is reserved to it in the proportion fixed in the present decree. In that which concerns the proofs of sufficiency which ought to be exacted of the applicants, it has seemed wisest to divide them into two classes: partial and analytical with respect to the courses of study of each group, concrete and synthetical for the academical degrees and for titles of professional specialties. The applicants, therefore, will have to submit themselves in the first place to examination upon courses of study, and after having obtained approbation in all of those courses, to the exercises corresponding to the respective degrees sought. All these acts shall be public, and the lessons upon which the questions of the judges are to be based shall be drawn by lot, conformably with the method adopted for official examinations by the decree of May 14. The qualifications required ought also to be equal to those which govern official instruction. And lastly, assuming the great difficulty which exists in the way of holding permanent tribunals, the examinations for giving validity to private studies shall be limited to two epochs of the year, distinct from those designated for the schools of the state.

Such, sire, are the bases upon which it has appeared to the government of Your Majesty fitting to found a genuine and profitable innovation in the legislation of public instruction, without the prejudices for society in general and for the students in particular which were inseparable from the system of absolute liberty. Without full confidence of having attained this end, but assured of having endeavored to do so, and of having taken the first step in a path which may lead to important and solid advancements, the undersigned has now the high honor of submitting to Your Majesty the following project of a decree.

Sire, at the royal feet of Your Majesty,

The minister of fomento,