Nihil obstat. School science and the making of the Catholic citizen in Colombia

Abstract

Modern languages of education transformed the norms of reason of religion into pedagogical discourses in education. Thus, the making of the modern citizen was not only a result of the insertion of scientific rationality in schools, but also of a hybridization of science and religion in educational discourses. Based on a critical interpretation of biology textbooks published in Colombia between the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, and drawing on a view of textbooks as part of governing technologies, we show that the approach in the textbooks was characterized by natural theology. The latter became part of a discursive technology that hybridized science and the Catholic worldview. We conclude that science in the school curriculum inserted in children more than pure science. Rather, it was an important part of the fabrication of the Catholic citizen.

Keywords: natural theology, textbooks, school science, Catholic citizen, Colombian education.