Francisco Giner de los Ríos was a Spanish writer, educator, and philosopher. He became the most influential exponent of krausism, a liberal educational and philosophical movement prominent in Spain during the 19th century, emphasizing the development of the individual and based on the teachings of the German philosopher Karl Krause.
Background
Francisco Giner de los Ríos was born on October 10, 1839, in Ronda, Andalucia. Some sources say that Francisco was born in November. He was the son of Francisco Giner de la Fuente and Bernarda de los Ríos Rosas. Due to his father's position as a government employee, the family traveled around the country.
Education
Francisco Giner de los Ríos started to study at the Colegio de Santo Tomás in 1848. Then, in 1851 he studied at the Instituto de Alicante and got there a Bachelor of Philosophy in 1852. Francisco learned law and philosophy at the University of Barcelona and Granada. He graduated from the University of Granada, where he got a degree in law. Also, Francisco attended the University of Madrid. He got there a doctorate in law and international law in 1863.
Career
Francisco Giner de los Ríos was a man of diverse interests; this is evident in his books as they deal with subjects of art, education, law, literature, religion, and sociology. Francisco was not content, however, simply to write books to expound his ideas. He moved from the philosophical to the practical realm by founding the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, a private non-denominational school. Through this deed, Francisco Giner de Los Ríos became "the guiding spirit of the educational and intellectual renaissance of modern Spain." His school had a far-reaching influence. The students and teachers of the Institución included figures such as Leopoldo Alas, Ortega y Gasset, Américo Castro, Federico García Lorca, Antonio Machado, Joaquín Costa, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí, Gregorio Marañon, and Miguel de Unamuno.
During his university studies, Francisco was able to develop his interests in the fields of painting and music. He began his writing career by publishing his first literary and political articles in the magazine Meridional. In 1863 the author moved to Madrid to complete his doctoral studies and became acquainted with Julián Sanz del Río.
In 1868 Francisco Giner de los Ríos became a law professor and served as the department chair at the University of Madrid. He held these positions for more than thirty years. His career was interrupted in 1875, however, when he imprisoned for protesting against the restoration government's intervention in the academic freedom of public education. Francisco was released a year later, and he emerged with the determination to found a school free of political, religious, or philosophical constraints that would contribute toward "the general progress of education."
Francisco Giner de los Río accomplished this goal in the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, which quickly gained national and international renown. The school was initially conceived as a center for university-level studies but soon expanded into primary and secondary schools. Schooling took place not only in the classroom but also in art museums and the natural world. Exams based upon rote memorization of facts and traditional textbooks were not a part of this educational system. Instead, "independent study and free-thinking" were encouraged in both male and female students.
In 1881 Francisco Giner de los Ríos was reinstated in his position at the University of Madrid, but he continued to work at the Institución Libre de Enseñanza and writing. Although his books about pedagogy, literature, sociology, and religion are high contributions to the Spanish intellectual world, perhaps his most influential work is Resumen de filosofía del derecho, which describes the philosophy of law.
Estudios de Literatura y arte, published in 1876, discusses the topics of epic poetry, music as an expression of esthetics, the basic principles of literature, and which genre of poetry was most appropriate for that time. Estudios filosóficos y religiosos investigates Francisco's ideas about the Spanish Church, Catholics and the contemporary spirit, comparative psychology, and the scientific doctrine. In Filosofía y sociología, the author speaks about the history of Plato's methodology of thought, Marx and Engel's so-called historical materialism, and nature and the human spirit.
Religion
Francisco Giner de los Ríos supported a German philosopher, Karl Krause's ideas, that God is neither the physical world, nor is He exclusively separated from it, but that this divine being contained the world in Himself and, at the same time, transcends it. Those ideas would influence Francisco's deeds and thoughts throughout the remainder of his lifetime.
Politics
Francisco Giner de los Ríos actively campaigned against the government for its efforts to suppress academic freedom.
Views
From the founding of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza to the end of his days, Francisco Giner de los Ríos devoted himself wholeheartedly to putting into practice the educational ideas on which the institution based: training people who would be useful to society but above all people capable of embracing an ideal, coeducation and explicit recognition of women's equal status to men, and rationalism, academic freedom, freedom of research, free choice of texts and abolishment of exams based on learning by rote.