Normalism, Social Education, and Educational Manuals. The Paths to Legitimacy of the Normalist Luis C. Infante (Lima, 1905-1950)

Abstract

This research examines the figure of the normalista —the teacher trained in normal schools— as an intellectual, using Luis C. Infante as a case study. It analyzes how the teaching profession and educational renewal operated as mechanisms of intellectual and professional legitimization within a context of increasing social demand and expectation surrounding education. Drawing on pedagogical journals and the author’s published works, the study reconstructs the normalista field and its discursive configuration. It argues that the Peruvian normalista did not constitute an anomaly of modernity but was instead part of an emerging group of educational reformers in the first half of the twentieth century.