Alfredo Miguel Aguayo Sánchez

He was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico. He distinguished himself as a pedagogue for more than thirty years. A professor at different levels of education and researcher in aspects of Paidology, he was also an author of articles, treatises, and textbooks. He held numerous public positions, mainly in the field of education. Puerto Rican by birth, he was the grandson of the notable pedagogue of that country: D. Nicolás Aguayo, considered one of the most prominent educators of that island. There he would complete his primary education until the age of thirteen, when his family emigrated to Cuba as a result of his independence-minded ideas.

He graduated with a degree in Law from the University of La Habana during the 1891-92 academic year. He obtained his Doctorate in Pedagogy in 1903, and completed his studies in Philosophy and Letters in 1906.

He fought against the use of scholastic methods in education and worked to ensure recognition of the role of personality and the importance of Child Psychology. He disseminated the most modern currents of his time in the pedagogical field, among which American Pragmatism led by John Dewey stood out.

During 1912 he founded a Laboratory of Paidology at the University of La Habana to carry out physical and psychic measurements of children. He also promoted teacher training through his work as founder and professor of the Summer Normal School. He drafted numerous textbooks for primary education and was the author of treatises on Pedagogy, Psychology, and Didactics, among others. When the University of La Habana was closed during Gerardo Machado's dictatorship, he organized the Pedagogical Academy of La Habana to support the professional development of teachers and educators.

He collaborated in important periodicals of those years, such as the magazines: La Instrucción Primaria, Cuba Pedagógica, Revista de Educación, and Patria, where numerous articles by him appear. He was a very controversial figure, as he was mainly a disseminator of the currents of the time, but with an absence of criticism and without his work standing out for originality. His apolitical stance has also been noted, which kept him removed from the social reality to which he should have become engaged as an educator. Some of his scholars attribute to him an anticommunist position, as well as one opposed to secular education and coeducation.

He developed his teaching work at the Escuela del Círculo de Trabajadores de La Habana (1884), where he became its Director, as well as at the Instituto de San Manuel y San Francisco and at the Colegio La Divina Caridad. He lived in exile in Puerto Rico and the United States between 1895-1897 following the appearance of an independence-minded pamphlet written by his father and attributed to him. He was an official of the School Board of La Habana and Superintendent of Schools during the First American Intervention. From 1903 he was Assistant Professor of Psychology at the School of Pedagogy, and Full Professor of that subject, as well as of History of Pedagogy and School Hygiene, in that Faculty of the University of La Habana, between 1912 and 1914.

From 1913 he was a member of the University Pedagogical Association, which was presided over by pedagogue Luciano Martínez. During Gerardo Machado's dictatorship he was detained on suspicion of subversion. In 1944 he was designated Professor Emeritus of the University of La Habana.

ACTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY:
"Pedagogía." In: Manual o Guía para los exámenes de maestros under the direction of Dr. Carlos de la Torre. Vol. 1. Librería la Moderna Poesía, La Habana, 1904
La Escuela Novísima. Escuela del Porvenir. Imprenta El Avisador Comercial, La Habana, 1909; La Escuela Primaria como debe ser. Imprenta La Propagandista La Habana, 1916
Lecciones de Higiene Escolar. Cultural, La Habana, 1929; Didáctica de la Escuela Nueva. Cultural, La Habana, 1932
Filosofa y nuevas orientaciones de la educación. Cultural, La Habana, 1932
Los cursos de estudios: organización, evaluación y revisión. Cultural, La Habana, 1939
La democracia y su defensa por la educación. Cultural, La Habana, 1941
Ensayos sobre la educación de la postguerra. Cultural, La Habana, 1944.

PASSIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Aguayo, Jorge. Bibliografía de Alfredo M. Aguayo. Cultural. La Habana, 1950
Jesualdo. 177 educadores de América. Pueblos Unidos, Montevideo, 1945
Maza, Piedad. La Ciencia y la Filosofa en la obra educacional del Dr. Alfredo M. Aguayo. Universidad de La Habana, La Habana, 1942.