Teacher Training and the Promise of Social Ascent: The case of Argentina’s Normal Schools, 1871–1881

National normal school training in Argentina was established in 1871 with an explicit promise of social ascent for the children, particularly daughters, of the “humble but hardworking” classes of the interior provinces who completed the schools’ three or four- year programs. Scholarships funded by the central government and distributed by the provinces were created to facilitate the entry of adolescents into a profession that would be supported by generous state salaries and pensions. While scholarships were distributed mostly to the artisan and merchant class for which they were intended, the reduction and delay of scholarship awards, and he declining commitment of governments in the first decade of the tormal schools’ operations to pay teachers salaries commensurate vith their training, were factors that led to the feminization of he profession. Families negotiated and renegotiated the terms tnder which they sent their children to normal schools, mediating letween traditions contrary to public education and the realities of volatile economic marketplace, accepting decreasingly reliable alaries in return for a connection to provincial and national overnments and the rising social esteem of the profession.