De la vara al metro: La recepción del Sistema Métrico Decimal en la escuela española del siglo XIX

Abstract

Throughout the nineteenth century society witnessed the introduction of the universal metric system in many European countries, including Spain. That system was being built since the end of the previous century, detached from the unsystematic set of old measurement units and procedures in many cases current since the Middle Ages. This was required by the rationalist mentality of the Enlightenment, its scientific and technical developments, the rise of commerce and communications, and other factors. All of them were impelled by a series of values that were linked to the idea of progress while encouraging the construction of national educational systems.
Thus, schools started to play an important role in the assimilation, by the society as a whole, of new measures that would profoundly change their behaviour habits. This process of receiving the metric system had to be long and winding, and its study highlights the many and varied factors that shaped the evolution of the educational institutions and society that supported it.