Abstract
A comparison is made between the lancastrian teaching model, from the earlier part of the 19th century, and today’s virtual education. A historical comparison based on the idea that both processes are part of the expansion, transformation, and constant market exhaustivity logics that provide the foundation for liberal governance. This substratum, used methodologically, allows the identification of comparable features across both ends, such as technological innovation, the preponderance of method, the dilution of teaching functions, and the need for people’s literacy as a totality. These comparisons, enabled by the notion of “controlled anachronism”, contribute to avoid, on the one hand, assuming the present as unprecedented and unmatched and, therefore, free from historical critique and debate, and on the other hand, revisiting the past with new questions only exposed and articulated through the current trends of virtual education.
Keywords:
lancasterian method; liberalism; virtual education; market