Race, science, and nation: The cultural politics of schools in colonial Puerto Rico, 1917--1938

This study examines the multiple ways Puerto Rican teachers in the early twentieth century (1917--1938) conceptualized race and citizenship through the lens of schools and public education. It foregrounds the competing perspectives presented by a range of teachers, local and regional educators, and an assortment of Puerto Rican and U.S. administrators within the Department of Education. It reexamines everyday processes of colonialism in Puerto Rico from the perspective of local actors, in order to deconstruct a traditional narrative based on elite, U.S. colonial voices.; I argue local teachers and educators crafted an alternative schooling project for the "racial" and national regeneration of the Puerto Rican citizenry. The teachers' project represented local appropriations of the post-World War I theory of "modern education" and the particular way they applied a neo-Lamarckian understanding of "racial degeneracy" to the student population. I examine the unique way Puerto Rican teachers adapted the modern education theory to the already existing local concerns over the alleged physical degeneracy of the student body. Teachers applied the modern education theory in combination with a neo-Lamarckian belief in the possibility for "racial" regeneration to debates over illiteracy, delinquency, and disease. In addition, these ideologies informed discussions about the promise of developing physical education, rural education, and home economics courses.; The teachers' national regeneration project provides an alternative understanding of the goals of colonial public education in early twentieth-century Puerto Rico. This study demonstrates the limits of the traditional definition of "Americanization" within Puerto Rican historiography by suggesting ways teachers and other educators re-conceptualized its goals and practices. It also examines the shared ideologies between elite teachers and U.S. colonial administrators that facilitated the reproduction of everyday forms of colonialism. These educators engaged in a conversation that imagined public schools were the primary venue through which to both create citizens and regenerate a "race."...