Carolina Poncet de Cárdenas

Born in Guanabacoa, Havana, on August 13, 1879, she received in her home the ethical legacy of her maternal grandfather José María de Cárdenas Rodríguez (1812-1882), a prose writer and poet, who was in his time one of the principal cultivators of satirical and customs articles in the country.

The education of children occupied a prominent place in this customs writer with the display in his educational messages of norms of individual conscience and civic duty, necessary in a civilized society, as well as bad habits to eliminate.

In Carolina Poncet was notable her humanistic curiosity and the courage to overcome obstacles, traverse paths forbidden to women and the assimilation of encyclopedic knowledge, capable of confronting, personally, a male chauvinist society.

A studious young woman at the end of the nineteenth century, a Cuban advanced for her time in much of the following century, Poncet's work transcended to the present moment through her opening of paths to national culture.

With folkloric investigation in her cultural roots, she inaugurates this science in Cuba, from the first decades of the republic, united to the mastery and characterization of her native language, her pedagogical zeal for correct learning and the love of books and reading.

A Chair of Studies of Orality, dedicated to the development of the specialty of which she is a pioneer, bears the name of Carolina Poncet de Cárdenas, established by ministerial resolution (1999) at the Cuban Institute of Cultural Research Juan Marinello.

Life smiled on Carolina until she was 36 years old, the moment to aspire advantageously to a position at the University of Havana, in February of 1915, when the conservative tribunal hesitated in granting a professorship to someone who had graduated in two university careers, something strange then for her gender.

This provoked a scandal in the press when the tribunal dissolved itself several times, and Poncet's rejection of such indignant discrimination for being a woman, in a letter of resignation to the Secretary of Public Instruction and Fine Arts:

"I have the honor of informing you that having obtained by opposition the professorship of Grammar and Composition, Elocution, Spanish and Cuban Literature at the Normal School for Teachers of Havana, and having achieved the honor of being elected by my colleagues of the Faculty as Director of this Institution, I have resolved to renounce my status as a candidate for the professorship of Auxiliary Professor at the School of Pedagogy of the University of Havana".

Her teaching experience and curriculum backed her ability to hold both professorships and, on the theoretical level, she had already made important contributions, particularly on the teaching of the native language and orthography.

With education divided by sex, Carolina taught primary instruction until 1914 at School number 12 for girls in the capital, after graduating as a teacher at age 18 (1897), and participating in the summer courses organized by Harvard University (1900) for Cuban teachers selected by the Board of Education.

Her book Lessons of Language was approved as a textbook by the Board of Superintendents of Schools of Cuba on October 9, 1905; the previous year she had won a silver medal, with this title, at the Exposition of Saint Louis, Missouri, United States.

In 1909 she obtained the title of Doctor of Pedagogy with the thesis The Teaching of the Native Language, in which she proposes that orthographic rules should be studied practically, little by little and through induction rather than in determined classes. Her study, she affirms, does not imply great effort, but only practice.

This document is contained in the collections of the Center for Pedagogical Documentation of the Enrique José Varona Higher Pedagogical Institute, the main Cuban center of its kind for anniversaries.

Her intellectual prestige was also reinforced when she received, in 1910, the first prize from the Circle of Lawyers of Havana for Biography of Joaquín Lorenzo Luaces and Critical Study of His Works.

The press reported the placement, by her initiative, of a plaque on the house where the poet Luaces (1826-1867) was born and died, on Havana's San Lázaro street, on June 4, 1913, the day of his birth.

The Romance in Cuba constituted the thesis for the Doctorate in Philosophy and Letters (1913); it was awarded that year in the literary contest of the National Academy of Arts and Letters, and published in the Journal of the Faculty of Letters and Sciences (1914).

This turned out to be her fundamental contribution to Cuban folklore, with the compilation and study of the variants of the Spanish romance in Cuba, for which she used among other sources, those obtained through oral transmission.

After the unforeseen event in the 1915 oppositions, the young pedagogue had new successes; during her long life she received various recognitions, among them, Emeritus Professor of the Normal School (1955) and full academic of the Cuban Academy of the Language (1960).

In 1920 and 1921 she made a study tour as a fellow and exchange of experiences in the United States and Europe; she visited Columbia University, the normal schools of Paris, Madrid and Lausanne, and the public schools of Geneva.

She met the famous linguist Ramón Menéndez Pidal (1869-1968) in the Spanish capital, attended one of his courses and established with him a relationship of friendship, collaboration and respect for the rest of their lives.

From her stay in Paris, she wrote a work on methods and procedures for the teaching of the native language in some foreign educational centers.

After her return to Havana, Carolina Poncet became involved in several publications and institutions of great national significance, with outstanding performance.

She was the only woman in the founding and on the board (as a member) of the Society of Cuban Folklore (1923-1930), created by José María Chacón y Calvo and Fernando Ortiz; she was in charge of the literature section and was part of the editorial board of its journal Archives of Folklore.

She also participated, among many others, in the work of the Hispano-Cuban Institution of Culture (1926-1932, 1936-1947) and the Association Friends of the National Library (1938-1957), directed by Ortiz and Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, respectively.

She taught until 1960, when she retired at more than 80 years of age. She died on November 27, 1969 in her home in the Havana municipality of Marianao.

She only failed her commitment to teaching when she was laid off in 1931 by the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado and imprisoned in 1935 for participating in a public demonstration.

Publications

* She published numerous texts, essays and articles in favor of the preparation of teachers and the teaching of the Spanish Language and Literature.
* She was part of the editorial body of the Journal of Public Instruction and directed the journal Lyceum.
* Language for Primary Education.

She remained her entire life dedicated to the formation and improvement of teachers, and to research work.