María de Maeztu Whitney
(Vitoria, 1881 - Mar del Plata, Argentina, 1948)

María de Maeztu Whitney was born into a wealthy, cosmopolitan, and liberal family whose influence, especially her brother, Ramiro, was decisive in her intellectual development and professional career.

After she finished primary school, she studied -obtaining excellent grades- at the Escuela Normal de Maestras (School for Women Teachers) in her hometown from 1896 to 1898. In 1902, she won a teaching position in a public school in Santander. She immediately got transferred to a position of equal rank in Bilbao, a city in which her family had settled and where she worked as a teacher at the Anglo-French Academy founded by her mother, Juana Whitney.
In September 1907, she finished her baccalaureate in Humanities with honors. She continued working in Bilbao and began to study Humanities at the University of Salamanca in 1907, though she did not enrolled officially, and after her second academic year, she continued her studies at the Universidad Central, majored in Philosophy and completed her B.A. with honors in 1915. Between October 1909 and June 1912, she studied Humanities at the newly established Graduate School of Teaching, where she regularly obtained the highest grades.

Under the guidance of her brother, Ramiro, she met Unamuno, and Ortega y Gasset, who was her teacher at the Graduate School of Teaching, and for whom she felt an enormous admiration. She followed the educational reforms of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza and the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas (JAE), which provided her with the opportunity to study in Europe. She was one of the first applicants for a grant in 1907. In the summer of 1908, she went to England for two months, as a member of a delegation sponsored by the JAE, to study the Education Section of the Franco-British Exhibition in London. She dealt mainly with primary education, visited several schools, and attended the meetings of the Moral Education Congress, where José Castillejo read a paper in French on the educational system of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza. The result of her stay in England was her paper, “La pedagogía en Londres y las escuelas de párvulos “ ("Pedagogy in London and the nursery schools), published in the first issue of the Anales of the JAE in 1909.

In the summer of 1910, she obtained another grant for three months to conduct research on the current problems of education in some European countries. She visited schools of different grades and characteristics, especially primary and girls’ schools in Belgium, Switzerland, and northern Italy (Turin and Milan), and attended the Third International Congress of Family Education in Antwerp. Finally, in October 1912, and again with a grant from the JAE, she traveled to Germany to study pedagogy and spent two semesters at the University of Marburg, where she studied with Paul Natorp. She later translated Natorp’s Religión y humanidad, and Curso de Pedagogía into Spanish.

The JAE also commissioned her in many occasions to attend conferences or carry out various assignments. In November 1913, she joined Section 9th of the Center for Historical Studies, dedicated to contemporary philosophy and directed by Ortega. She worked there until the summer of 1916, when the section closed. She was director of the Residencia de Señoritas –the women branch of the Residencia de Estudiantes- since it opened in October 1915. She also headed the Preparatory school of the Instituto-Escuela since its founding in 1918. Between March 1928 and March 1930, she was also member of the JAE board-the only woman to hold that office before 1936 - and belonged to its commission for cultural relations with America since its creation in November 1928.

In 1926, she became the first president of the Women's Lyceum Club, an association closely related to similar European centers. During Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, she made the most important political decision of her life by accepting to become member of the National Assembly. In the thirties, she was appointed member of the Board of Public Education, and of the National Cultural Council. In 1932, she became a professor at the newly established Department of Education, in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, at the Universidad Central.

María de Maeztu was a tireless traveler and a high profile speaker in Spain and America; she received many awards and recognitions, including a doctor honoris causa from Smith College in 1919, her appointment as corresponding member of the Hispanic Society of America, and Honorary Professor of the University of Mexico.

Maeztu went through a very drastic ideological evolution, clearly influenced by the Civil War and the execution of her brother Ramiro by Republican soldiers. She distanced herself from her previous liberal convictions and settled in Argentina, where she taught at the University of Buenos Aires, and gave numerous courses and lectures in many cities, as well as in Chile and Uruguay.

An important part of Maria de Maeztu’s writings dealt with educational issues, and she incorporated conceptual and methodological current trends. She wrote about social pedagogy, the school colonies, rural schools, and the importance of toys and the cinema for children. Those works revealed her agreement with the educational approach promoted by the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, also evident in her summary of the mission of the Prep school of the Instituto-Escuela, that advocated a comprehensive and practical educational system based on the active participation of students. She also wrote about the status of women, whose education she always promoted.

María de Maeztu’s most important publications correspond to the last stage of her life. Her main purpose was to collect and disseminate the work and ideas of her brother Ramiro in the last years of his life, not only because of her admiration and brotherly affection, but also because of her ideological conviction. She also wrote two essays consistent with that line of thought: El problema de la ética (1938), and Historia de la cultura europea (1941). In 1943, she published her most famous book, Antología-siglo xx. Prosistas españoles, a didactic work intended primarily for high school teachers, which had a significant and long- lasting influence (Colección Austral, Espasa-Calpe.)