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Primary Education and Literacy in Nineteenth-Century Mexico: Research Trends, 1968-1988

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

Mary Kay Vaughan
Mary Kay Vaughan*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois–Chicago
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Mexico as a nation has endowed education with magical meaning. From the moment when twelve Franciscans set foot in the New World in 1524 to evangelize, education assumed a transforming mission in Mexico. If schooling during the colonial period slumped into the less grandiose task of transmitting relatively fixed values and knowledge to new generations, it resumed its transforming role with the Enlightenment. Under the Bourbon kings, the first steps were taken toward introducing free primary education as a means of modernizing society. With independence, liberals and conservatives alike came to perceive primary schooling as critical to citizen formation, political stability, and economic progress. But the obstacles to realizing mass literacy have been multiple and prolonged. In 1910 an estimated 68 percent of all Mexican adults could not read. Yet even this limited proportion of literate adults were active and contributed significantly to the Revolution of 1910.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , 1990 , pp. 31 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Jean Pierre Bastian, Milada Bazant, Luz Elena Galván, Charles Hale, Susana Quintanilla, Elsie Rockwell, Carlos Schaffer, Valentina Septien, Barbara Tenenbaum, and three anonymous LAR readers for their comments on an earlier draft of this essay. The first version was presented at the Simposio sobre Historiografía Mexicanista (1968-1988) held in Oaxtepec, Morelos, in October 1988.

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