# Enrique C. Rébsamen

Enrique Conrado Rébsamen Egloff (1857-1904) was a Mexican educator born in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland on February 8, 1857, and whose educational reforms decisively influenced Mexico's current educational system.
Rébsamen was the eldest son of Jean-Ulrich Rébsamen, an educator and director of the Normal School of that town for 43 years, and Catherine Egloff, a woman of vast education, daughter of the colonel and government adviser.

## Childhood and academic training

Rébsamen was born on February 8, 1857, in the village Kreuzlingen-Egelshofen, located near the Lake Constance in Switzerland. Firstborn of the marriage of Juan Ulrich Rébsamen, educator and director of the normal school of that town for 43 years and of Catalina Egloff, woman of vast education, daughter of the colonel and government counselor Johann Conrad Egloff,"Great educators of Mexico and Latin America" (PDF). Government of the state of Veracruz. Retrieved September 5, 2021. Rébsamen' main training was in the area of pedagogy obtaining primary teacher diplomas on April 12, 1876, at the Normal School directed by his father in Kreuzlingen. Subsequently, he graduated as a high school teacher after graduating from the University of Lausanne in 1876, and from the University of Zürich in 1877. He studied botany with the naturalist Jean Balthasar Schnetzeler, French and English literature with Heinrich_Breitringer, Geología y paleontología con Eugene Renevier, así como Filosofía y Pedagogía con Richard Avenarius, fundador del empiriocriticismo. Since his time as a student, he made literary contributions that covered various topics, both scientific and cultural.
Upon graduation, he held the position of director and head of teachers at the newly founded school of the population of Lichtenfels in Germany, lasting five and a half years in this position. At that time, he developed friendship with various intellectuals of the time. One of them, Carlos Von Gagern, from whom he read the essay entitled "Quetzalcoatl" that deeply impacted him, had a great influence on Rébsamen's decision to travel to Mexico.

## Arrival in Mexico

He came to Mexico to take charge of the education of the children of a merchant in the city of León. He then lived in Mexico City, where he befriended important thinkers of the time, including Ignacio Manuel Altamirano. He devoted himself to researching various questions of linguistics, history and sociology, as well as writing essays for a newspaper in the capital. The then President of the Republic, Porfirio Díaz, was interested in Rébsamen's work and recommended him to Veracruz, Juan de la Luz Enríquez, who managed a large-scale state educational project.
On the instruction of the latter, in 1885 Rébsamen joined the model school of Orizaba, founded and directed by the German Enrique Laubscher. There he created the normal academy that induced the governor to carry out the educational reform that ordered the creation of district schools in all towns that would be in charge of teachers graduated from the academy. There he also generated what Abraham Castellanos would publish as "Pedagogía Rébsamen".
In 1886 Governor Enríquez commissioned Rébsamen to create a normal school in Xalapa and an annexed experimental school, which began operating the following year with twenty-five students. In it, with the most modern educational strategies of the time, he trained teachers who worked in different parts of the country, modifying primary education. He participated in the National Congresses of Public Instruction of 1889 and 1890, in which Justo Sierra Méndez served as president; In them, he contributed very important elements related to the organization and operation of the schools.
Beginning in 1891 and at the request of President Porfirio Díaz, Rébsamen (without leaving the direction of the Normal School of Xalapa) began to work on the reorganization of public instruction in various places: Oaxaca, Jalisco and Guanajuato personally and in seven other states through his disciples, whom he advised. By 1900 there were 45 normal schools operating in the country. His work laid the foundations of Mexican normalism under the premise that, in his words:
   "... What characterizes the Normal School is the theoretical-practical application of doctrine to form men and to form citizens, this doctrine being scientific and practical..."
He worked in Guanajuato between 1894 and 1900, carrying out, among others, the following actions: he founded the Normal School of León on November 3, 1894; drafted the Primary Education Act and Regulations at the state level, which introduced as a special modality the creation of Model Schools in 1895; proposed to the state government a project for part-time systems in the schools of the countryside (1899); He personally oversaw the development and progress in the model schools he organized (1900).
Rébsamen's conception of education was based on authors of German pedagogy (Herbart, Ziller, Diesterweg, Froebel and Kehr), by the French (Rousseau and Jacotot), by the English (Spencer and Bain) and, of course, Swiss pedagogy (Pestalozzi and Giart). For this reason, Rébsamen considered his doctrine eclectic since it handled the most transcendental reforms and contributions of the various pedagogical tendencies of the time.
Throughout his life, Rébsamen published countless books. In 1888 he adapted Volckmar's Geographical Atlas for Mexico. In 1889 he founded the pedagogical, scientific and literary magazine "México Intelectual". In 1899 he published the "Method of Writing and Reading", known as the Rébsamen Method, a book that by 1929 had sold four million copies. In 1900 he published the Guide for the Teaching of Writing and Reading in the First School Year.
Enrique Conrado Rébsamen's thought, although naturally located in the context of normal education, has the conditions of validity that allow it to transcend in time and space to other fields of pedagogy, since it is based on principles that in current terms are related to the quality and relevance of education.

## Awards

Among the many educational institutions and streets named after him in Mexico are:
* The Veracruz Normal School founded by him, which continues to have national importance and recognition, now bears the name: Benemérita Escuela Normal Veracruzana "Enrique C. Rébsamen".
* Streets, schools and various monuments bearing his name and image, commemorate his exemplary performance as an educator in Mexico.
* The Enrique C. Rébsamen School Center, a primary school, located in the building of the former headquarters of the Benemérita Normal Veracruzana, where a full-length sculpture is erected in its central courtyard.