Romero Brest and Pablo Pizzurno: a historical collaboration in the genesis of Argentine Physical Education

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze one of the many factors that, in our view, influenced the establishment of the Argentine System of Physical Education (SAEF) representing Dr. Enrique Romero Brest’s vision of what school Physical Education should be within the national educational system, in the early decades of the twentieth century. While Romero Brest’s friendship with Pablo Antonio Pizzurno—arguably the most influential pedagogue of his era on a national scale—is widely acknowledged, its significance is often superficially addressed in historiographical approaches. By delving deeper into the relationship between these two figures, this paper attempts to determine whether this factor effectively contributed to the predominance of the Argentine Physical Education System over other contemporaneous alternatives (Swedish, French, English, military, etc.) and, if so, to what extent.