Is It Useful to Revisit the Past? Villalpando Nava, a Twentieth-Century Mexican Educator

Abstract

History is a discipline that influences didactics. Revisiting the past can help us understand the present. Rather than allowing the past to be forgotten, this article seeks to recover it as a means of better understanding contemporary perspectives on education. From this perspective, the present article revisits and analyzes the pedagogical thought of José Manuel Villalpando Nava, a Mexican intellectual whose work held a relevant place in twentieth-century educational debates. The objective is to examine some of his main ideas and explore their possible contribution to understanding different educational phenomena from a historical perspective. The study adopted a qualitative approach based on the review and analysis of his pedagogical work, using concept maps as a tool to organize, relate, and interpret the central categories of his thought. The findings show that Villalpando’s thought reflects a broad relationship between philosophy and pedagogy, is connected to German intellectual traditions, and draws on history to provide a foundation for understanding the development of pedagogical thought.