Metropolitan University of Educational Sciences

The Metropolitan University of Educational Sciences (Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación (UMCE), is a public and traditional university located in the commune of Ñuñoa, Chile. It is the fourth oldest university in the country, founded in 1889 as college of the University of Chile. Ignacio Domeyko, scientist and professor of the National Institute José Miguel Carrera, manifests for the first time -during one year of 1842- the need to change the education system in Chile, inspired by the models that are being implemented in Europe where it was starting to develop a new science: pedagogy. At that time, Domeyko was a young immigrant in the university lessons around his homeland, particularly in Paris, France, he gave a lot of knowledge that was not limited to the natural sciences, if it was not an innovation in ideas for the organization that did not find education in this country, and that motivated him to start a slow but significant intellectual work. The proposal of the Polish-nationalized Chilean teacher was that a normal school was created similar to the one he had known by the hand of the French philosopher Victor Cousin. In this project, use a dozen of the laws that were granted from the liberal government of Francisco Antonio Pinto and Diaz de la Puente to the National Institute in 1829, students from all over the country, settle in a special department of the prominent lyceum for two years, reviewing the studies that have already been taught in their schools, and then specialize in the area they are most interested in for another two years at the university. Diego Barros Arana, philosopher and historian, assumes the rector of the National Institute between 1863 and 1872. Noticing from the outset the lack of preparation of Chilean teaching staff, he also realized that even under the direction of this institution, which had the best national teachers (among them the professors Amunátegui, Vendel-Heyl, Lobeck, Pizarro) 14, the teaching was rough and did not have the didactics that he considered necessary.