HIstory of the Education

Around the middle of the XIXeth century, liberals and conservatives used education as a political banner. Through their conception of education centered on the order of morals and though polemics about the freedom of teaching, central problems like federalism and centralism, press freedom and religious liberties were debated. These problems could
also be pinpointed in the tensions between the country and the city, the national and the foreign, what was permitted and what was not, what should be written and what should
be read. The book, as a center of action in the closed literate society, was a fundamental part of social action. The way in which reading processes were thought gave the book a specific
function in public and private everyday life.
This paper explains the different representations of the book that were current from 1840 to 1880 (the only period of a federal government in Colombian history). Starting from cultural history, it sets forth several subjects and problems in which the history of the book merges with the history of education, identifying the different forms of gaining
access to reading as a way to participate in the construction of social practices and gestures, which are should be recognized by history.