Education is another area of earnest but…

Education is another area of earnest but limited accomplishment in Colombia.

The present National University of Colombia is founded in 1867.

The need is much greater, however, in primary education, where little has been accomplished since the days of Santander; an illiteracy rate of more than eighty percent is an obstacle to almost any aspect of modernization.

Accordingly, the Liberals in 1870 adopt a measure declaring primary education free and obligatory, as well as religiously neutral.

New normal schools train the necessary teachers, and experts from Germany impart the latest pedagogical methods.

However, this ambitious program requires collaboration—not always forthcoming—between federal and state governments, and adequate resources are unavailable at either level.

Thus, net progress is far from matching the contemporaneous push for popular education in Argentina, and although ecclesiastical backlash is a problem in Argentina also, it is much more severe in Colombia.

Even though a provision exists for supplementary religious instruction to be offered by church representatives to children whose parents request it, much of the clergy and devout Roman Catholic laity sees the Liberals' education initiative as heretical or worse.