Ví­ctor Mercante and the production of a scientific discourse on education

Abstract

The article discusses Victor Mercante’s role in the production of a scientific discourse about education. Following a historiographical balance of how his work has been read, the text analyzes the discursive constructions that are present in his texts, i.e. the association of science and pedagogy and of a scientific pedagogy and educational reform. It scrutinizes the political and epistemic project of Paidology as a science of schooled childhood, and of the Laboratory of Paidology at the University of La Plata as a space for producing and instituting/disseminating knowledge. Mercante was well-established in an international network of scholars, and embraced the notion of science as a cosmopolitan endeavour. He was also pivotal in the production of a scientific writing in education, with numbers, tables, and footnotes as modes of authorizing statements. Mercante was central in privileging childhood and adolescence as pedagogical subjects, still based on 19th-century epistemic categories but stated with 20th-century instruments, languages and networks of knowledge