to corporally mock the gentleness of respectable educators. Of all these actions, of all these errors, from all this manifested in insufficient governing of primary education that should work for the future greatness of the nation, the national yearning from which the New Ministry of Public Instruction employs its spirit and its heart to save the Argentine school.

THE GREAT EDUCATORS
Francisco Andres Berra

We have imposedthe task of parading in our review the names of the great teachers that have promoted with ideals with strength, true progressives in the education of the nation. It is not our intention to hyperbolically applaud their reputations to the extreme, an action not conducive to our intentions nor our way of appreciating the values of the spirit. We will give to Cesear that which Cesar is of already. To our talented men that have acted in education, this corresponds in strict justice. It would not be our fault if the pedestals are insufficiently strong and are threatened to disrupt the balance of our always impartial pen, always analytical and sincere. We do not idolize men because we consider all idolatries fatal. Nevertheless, we are prone to applause when an enthusiast emerges without knowledge of our purpose.

We have looked to honorably initiate this section with the culminating figure of a man that is synthesized in an admirable unity of action and ideology, the most elevated gifts of intelligence but with the most virtual aspects of the character.

And we have found that after the Sarmiento name is the one of Francisco Andres Berra that deserves the first position of honor. In effect no life dedicated to teaching has left deeper and more everlasting footprints, translated in deeds and works of effective merit that this underrated educator, whose honest and laborious hands were always busy working with his clarified brain and his ardent heart of an apostle, in the assiduous work, because his work was his religion and the force of the ideal his spiritual divinity.

Andres Berra was stately by nature. With this affable and modest character came a Spartan will as the base of his constitution as a civil employee, sometimes dragging him to an extreme attitude in his interpretation of fulfillment of duty.

He had, more than others, the severe discipline of the Old military honor that did not waver in great storms of the spirit. His will was the breaking wave of all political tides, unreachable for all influences of corruption. This inflexible rectitude of conduct often aroused anger in the predominant leaders, who never managed to dominate him with their Olympic arrogance. In this way he lost the position of Director of Provincial Schools in Buenos Aires where no one understood his great contributions to teaching until today. Addedto his fast and profound scientific vision, his intellectual fertility, and his immense love for his work, he understood the invaluable worth of this man as one of the prophets of the civilization, was planting in youthful souls the seeds of the future. Because the ideals of Berra are still distant from our educational routines.

“When the history of our incipient education is written,” says Dr. Zubiaur before the grave of this eminent teacher, “Berra will be considered the most distinguished […]