SIMÓN RODRÍGUEZ Y EL COLEGIO DE LATACUNGA

Abstract

Simon Rodríguez, educator and globetrotter, writer and philosopher, misunderstood in his time, ignored today. Venezuelan patriot who had left his country after having committed himself to a conspiracy against the Spanish regime in 1797 that failed, so he had to leave the country for Kingston where he adopted the name Samuel Robinson. Then he arrived in the United States where he worked as a typographer allowing him to link his thinking to the publication of his books and express himself in his educational research work, then he traveled to Europe. Master of the Liberator Simon Bolivar, his life was a permanent come and go without finding a port to stay in permanently. He was, against all circumstances, the first and foremost defender of popular education that gathered in general all social classes, especially indigenous peoples, blacks, the poor and orphans. He considered that only with this educational system the social problems that were latent in the towns liberated by Bolivar, who was the sword of political emancipation while Rodriguez with his pen lashed out like a Quixote against the system; could be resolved; thence his rejection for the upper classes, that enjoyed all the privileges and governments that considered him crazy and eccentric. On his pilgrimage through Ecuador he stoped in Latacunga where he taught without being understood and wrote his “A Friend’s Tips to the School of St. Vincent”.