Abstract
In Colombia, until 1892 starts the process of shaping a modern national education system-staggered, public and democratic-, crossed by a complex set of tensions, including: between the state and the Church, the private sector and the public sector; the Humanist-elitist and the democratic-diversified conceptions of the baccalaureate; and a tension between central and local elites, for funding, autonomy and uniformity. The state pawned in controlling a hierarchical system. But when more democratizing proposals emerged, both the state and the intellectual elites refused to assume them as a national project.
Keywords:
Colombia; baccalaureate; secondary education; public instruction system; unified school