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MEXICO
ITS EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS— SUGGESTIONS
FOR THEIR SOLUTION

BY
MANUEL BARRANCO, Ph. D.

TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION, No. 73

FDBUSHBD BT
©partjrrs (UnlLtge, (UnUunlria Imtifrfiujj
NEW YORK CITY
1915

COPYRIGHT, 191 5,
BY
MANUEL BARRANCO

PREFACE
The ever clear and blue tropical skies of my beloved country
have never been so dark. The future of Mexico, rising from
her gloomy present, never was so full of terrible possibilities.
A feeling of relief and gladness came to me when I knew that
I could write my thesis with Mexico as the subject. At last, I
could do something — little as it might be — and not stand by
in exasperating inactivity, while my own people were passing
through such sad experiences.
Even now, as I begin to write this paper, the newsboys are
voicing outside the latest news. Their cry, only too familiar
to me, "The War in Mexico," makes my heart ache. I cannot
get accustomed to it. For three years it has been ringing in
my ears. For three long years it has been casting a shadow of
sadness upon my life as an expatriate. But then, no one ever
gets accustomed to that which tortures him!
There has also been another source of painful experience to
me. While the bloody drama is slowly developing upon the
field of Mexico, a deluge of articles, books, and editorials about
Mexico has overflowed this country. In a large part of this
"literature" on Mexico, its problems and conditions, what
amazing ignorance is shown. How many wrong statements
and mendacious conclusions are made owing to lack of knowl
edge of the real factors of the Mexican problem. I am referring
here to that press, to those pens, whose writings about Mexico
are motivated by higher ideals of human brotherhood and by
a lofty sense of justice.
As to the "jingo" press and writers, those that have nothing
but words of contempt and burning irony for our sorrows, and
those who, pursuing selfish and mercenary purposes, want to
capitalize in dollars our sufferings, and so are engaged in the
ungrateful task of misleading public opinion, what can I say to
them? Nothing is the matter with their knowledge or their
thinking; the wrong is in their hearts and only God can correct
it. They have not succeeded in making a terrible international

iv Preface
tragedy of the unhappy political conditions of Mexico; and
they will not succeed. There is against them that typical char
acteristic of the American people as a whole: A clear sense of
justice and fair play.
For the former people, for those that are sincere students of
Mexico, this work is written; to them it is humbly dedicated,
not with the pretentious idea of changing their views entirely,
but with the well meaning end of presenting to them what are,
in my opinion, the real factors in our problem; thus enabling
them to co-operate with us in solving or planning to solve
a problem that for us Mexicans is a question of life or death.
I must ask patience and indulgence for making suggestions
which are meant, too, to urge others better equipped with ideas,
experience, and intellect to pursue an inquiry that would be
so helpful to my country.
Love excuses many things! However, I am not going to
discuss anything on sentimental grounds, but on the basis of
facts and science, having as guide authorities on the subject
and illuminating opinions from educators of Mexico, Latin
America in general, and other countries.
It was my good fortune to come to the United States after
finishing my college and normal school education and having
had experience in teaching. So, after six years of study here,
two in a normal school and four in this university, I feel that
I should be able to judge coolly, to compare without prejudices,
and detect impartially our shortcomings and good qualities.
I feel, also, that, having become familiar with American life
and customs and ways of doing things, having lived the life of
the American students and drunk at the same fountains their
ideals of progress and democracy, without losing, however, one
atom of fondness and regard for my country, I should be able
to speak and see the things of Mexico with the eyes of an Amer
ican, if I care to, but with the heart of a Mexican.
I have planned my work in such a way that, in presenting each
of the factors, ethnical, political, social, etc., that to my mind
constitutes in itself a problem in the complex Mexican ques
tion, I will establish also the premises upon which the logical
conclusion will be the same generalization that is in the mind
of every sober student of Mexico: And this is, That education
and only education is the first, last, and ever the only remedy and
perhaps the only hope of the Mexican Republic.

Preface v
Mexico needs, cries for, reform, for a social reorganization
based on a better economic and social basis ; and education is the
strongest lever for a reform of this kind, since the school sees
and plans for the future.
There have been many patriotic Mexicans who have fought
bravely, who are fighting gamely to give Mexico an educational
system based on her needs and according to modern educa
tional ideals. But, although splendid laws have been enacted,
in the practice little has been accomplished. It is impossible to
build schools where "the lance is always glittering and the
gun-shot always echoing." It is difficult to sow upon a soil
that trembles!
But our opportunity will come. I believe that better times will
come, and then, when the smoke and turmoil of our petty quar
rels have cleared away, then and there another silent, mighty,
and noble battle is going to be fought — a long and persistent
battle — with its heroic, though unheralded, deeds ; with its patri
otic, though unrecorded, sacrifices. The same battle that
Germany fought after having seen herself humiliated in Jena.
The same battle that France fought after the German school
masters humiliated her in Sedan.
We need in our schools that old maxim of the Prussian schools:
"Through self -activities to self-dependence." How fruitful it
would be if we could impress in the mental make-up of our
directing classes that characteristic " go-aheadness " of the
northern people and succeed in directing their activities toward
the educational field.
The Mexicans of culture and ideals can do much in this line
for our country. There is no time for recriminations and put
ting blame — a task always easy for the weak — let us construct,
let us work. "We Latin peoples," says a French writer, "cry
to everything to help us and never think of helping ourselves."
One of the most important elements of our nation, its back
bone in certain respects, we may say, is made by the millions,
yes, the many millions of "certain wild animals" — quoting La
Bruyere's famous picture of the French peasants on the eve of
the French revolution — "male and female, scattered over the
fields, black, livid, all burned by the sun, bound to the earth
that they dig and work with unconquerable pertinacity, they
have a sort of articulate voice and, when they rise on their feet,
they show human faces and in fact are men!"

vi Preface
Sadly, this is a true picture of our Indians in Mexico. For
four centuries that has been their unhappy destiny in their once
powerful and glorious Anahuac. Their world has been their
toiled soil and has had for its limits the rising and setting of
the sun!
It is time for us to go to them, to raise them up by means of
education, extending to them our hand, not as protectors, nor
as tutors, not only as friends, but as brothers and fellow citi
zens. When the school has given a little corner of sunshine in
this festival of light of our civilization — God knows that they
never have had a chance — then we will have done our duty and
Mexico will be a great united nation.
As to the Americans : I pray that this and other works of the
same kind will induce them to study us better and to know
really what our situation and problems are. One of my first
ideas when I took up this work was to read what American
travelers who have gone to Mexico or Latin America say about
us, how they see us. Of course, I know what the "average"
American knows about us. Here again, I was disappointed to
find the astonishing lack of knowledge that the great majority
display in their observations and statements. Some of them
have measured our acts and manners according to strict American
standards of thinking and doing, ignoring the fact that they are
dealing with the characteristics of another race. Others have
regarded our political trials and failures as proofs of our unfit
ness for democracy without stopping to think that our nation
is hardly a century old and in her democratic essays of govern
ment and freedom, forgetting the centuries during which the
Teutonic people have been learning the principles of self-govern
ment. Commenting on the American ignorance about us, an
American writer says: "We have only just discovered Spanish-
America." I believe this is the main cause of the misunder
standing that often arises between peoples, between Mexico
and the United States. Knowledge of the persons, as well as
the culture, always softens personal relations and gives that
social sense of friendly relationship that makes one see and
judge people with sympathetic attitude.
The man that we do not like is the man that we do not know.
I do wish Mexicans could know Americans as I know them, and
that Americans could know my countrymen as I know their
countrymen. If we treat and comp into contact with certain

Preface vii
people about whom we know little, we are surprised to discover
unsuspected noble qualities, admirable traits that make us like
them. "Whenever we are tempted to conclude that somebody
is hopelessly insignificant," says an eminent writer, "then,
what we need to correct is our judgment by better knowledge
of them." Certainly, Americans should study and should
understand Mexicans better; then they will know what Mexico
is, what glorious hopes belong to her beyond the temporary
dangers and embroilments of the times.
I have faith that beyond the unhappy civil war that now
stains with blood the fields of my country lies a magnificent
future of peace and prosperity. The more terrible the storm,
the more beautiful its rainbow!
M. B.
Columbia University,
April, 1914.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
The Races  i
CHAPTER II
The Political Institution  27
CHAPTER III
Education  43
CHAPTER IV
National Character  69
CHAPTER V
Conclusions  76

MEXICO: ITS EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS-
SUGGESTIONS FOR THEIR SOLUTION

CHAPTER I
THE RACES

Race Characteristics and Struggles
A race has inherited characteristics of its own. Its individuals
differ, more or less, physiologically and psychologically, from
individuals of another race. Furthermore, a race as a social
group has customs, traditions, laws, institutions, and ideals
which constitute its culture or civilization. Such spiritual or
intellectual inheritance commonly varies in some essential
points from the ideals and traditions of another social group.
Differences due to environmental influences are found even in
races of the same ethnic origin but living in different localities.
When two races meet while moving more or less upon the
same plane of culture, which naturally varies, since such culture
springs up from different social and racial inheritances, then a
clash, a friendly or more often unfriendly conflict takes place, and
from this rival struggle, in its ultimate outcome, progress arises.
The history of human civilization is written in the history of
the struggle between oriental and occidental peoples, in the
rivalry of the Western and Eastern cultures: "All activity
is a clash of atoms or thoughts." In the physical world, all
activity of atoms produces energy, in form of heat, light, or mo
tion. In the intellectual world, all activity of ideas produces
that mighty dynamic energy called progress.
In terms of evolution, a struggle between peoples, as that
mentioned above, is called secondary struggle or struggle of
contention. But there is another form of conflict, more primitive,
more rash, more brutal, which has also been vital in the progress
or evolution of humanity. It has been the arm that has been
1

2 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
used mercilessly, by the law of the survival of the fittest. This
is called primary struggle or struggle of conquest. For example,
take two peoples who come together, one being strong and the
other weak, one civilized and the other barbarous or savage.
The result of such a conflict is well known. The weak is wiped
out and the social and racial cohension of its group is destroyed.
The stronger, the wiser, has survived. Humanity has obtained
a biological advantage in its evolution.
Such was the kind of conflict that took place when in 15 19
a handful of daring adventurers, clothed with a medieval civili
zation and thirsting for glory and for gold, fell as an avalanche
upon the Aztec Empire. Was the outcome of this terrific impact,
that pulverized a mighty nation, a gain to civilization? Before
attempting an answer, let us sketch, in a few lines, the scene
of this epic tragedy and its actors.
It must have been astonishing to those sturdy warriors, who
had still the dust of the bare Castillian plains on their boots,
to contemplate the wonderful panorama unfolded before them.
Imagine yourself seeing a huge plateau, embraced, as it were,
by a pair of gigantic arms, two chains of mountains, on its eastern
and western margins. Imagine the lofty plains of this plateau,
from five to nine thousand feet above the sea level, crowned
with majestic mountains and old volcanoes whose "peaks, en
tering the limits of perpetual snow, diffuse a graceful coolness
over the elevated plateaus below," all clothed with magnificent
vegetation only seem in equinoctial lands. The gentle and
sometimes abrupt slopes of that immense table-land were a
symphony in green, graded into a gamut of climes, offering the
vegetation and fruits of cold, temperate, and hot zones, within
a day's journey. No wonder that before such a spectacle, a
feast of color and light to the eyes, the rude iron soldiers of
Cortes stood astounded. They climbed the plateau and, press
ing on, at last reached the valley of Mexico. The jewel of Ana
huac was before them ! Again the Spaniards were taken aback
by the splendid panorama. Set in a perfect ring of mountains —
among them the volcanoes, Popocatepetl and Yxtlazzihuatl,
always covered with a mantle of snow — resting upon "soil
carpeted with beautiful verdure," and surrounded by blue and
placid lakes, stood Mexico City, the old Tenochtitlan, the pride
of the Aztec civilization, the "Venice of the Western World. "

The Races 3
'"Its long lines of glittering edifices and its floating gardens,
struck by the rays of the evening sun, trembled on the dark
blue waters of the lakes. " "It looked like a thing of fairy crea
tion," writes Vernal Diaz, the soldier historian, who was with
Cortes, as they stood motionless, contemplating the landscape
from the hills above — like a flock of birds of prey, before
descending upon their victim."
"This conquest," says Prescott, "taken with all its strange
and picturesque accompaniments, has an air of romance rather
than of sober history. " What kind of hearts were beating within
the walls of the great city? In what kind of civilization were
those thousands of souls living?
There is not room in this work for a description of the Aztec
civilization. Let the interested reader turn to the works of
historians like Prescott,2 Letourneau,3 and many others, and he
will find that the Aztec Empire was a very well established
government, with its nobility, judicial system, laws and revenues,
military, religious, and educational institutions, picture writings,
phonetic signs, and a calendar better calculated than the European
of that time. In mechanical arts, the skill of the Aztec jewelers
yet surprises those who visit the National Museum of Mexico
City. There, one may also find beautiful specimens of pottery,
sculpture, and feather articles.
In their social intercourse the Aztecs were kind and polite.
They had regular social entertainments where they enjoyed
dancing and agreeable drinks. They had baptismal rites and
funeral ceremonies. Their trades and agriculture were fairly
well developed. A black shadow in their culture was their
religious festival in which thousands of human hearts, warm yet
from their victims, were offered to the god of war, Huitzzilo-
pochtle, in the great Teocalli. But all, good and bad things,
fell like a castle of cards under the feet of the conquerors, and
from the ashes of the Empire of Montezuma an anemic "New
Spain" arose.
Who were the daring warriors that made this epopee pos
sible? They were the descendants of a noble and proud race,
a race which has made a high record in the achievements for

1 Quoted from Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, Vol. I, p. 430.
i Book I. View of the Aztec Civilization, op. cit.
* Letourneau, L'Education dans l'ancient Mexique.

4 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
the progress of humanity ; but they were not the cream of such
a race, far from it! Perhaps among them were some broken
hidalgos but the majority, undoubtedly, could not face
calmly the police of their country. They were a band of middle-
age Condottiers, remarkable for their heroism, but who
"often were mingling the enthusiasm of the Crusader and the
valor of the Knight-errant with the bigotry of inquisitors and
the rapacity of pirates."4
Alexander invaded Persia not alone to settle old debts with the
ancient enemy of Greece, for his youthful spirit was animated
also with the idea of expanding the Hellenic culture in Asia.
The patrician Romans wanted to see the Roman eagles dominat
ing every corner of the earth. France conquered to carry
civilization and freedom everywhere. England embarked her
self in conquests as a means of enlarging her commerce and
trades by colonization. The Puritans and Pilgrims came to
America, looking for religious liberty; but the aim of the con
querors of Mexico was to plunder. The banner of this band of
heroic robbers was gold, gold, and ever gold. The poor Indians
were astonished to see these "Sons of the Sun" go almost to
insanity in their desire for the yellow metal, to them unimportant.
At the beginning the Conquerors did quick work, never stop-
ing before anything in their eagerness to seize all that could be
found in gold and precious stones. They destroyed, burned,
and murdered just as a band of pirates do when a ship is boarded.
Later they were more systematic in their unhappy task, though
no less cruel and destructive. This is the answer to the surprised
foreigner who does not find in the beautiful Latin-American cities,
from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego, even a stone dedicated
to honor the memory of the Spanish Conquerors. Why should
we honor them? The Mingling of Races
With the beginning of the Colonial period in New Spain, the
process of fusion and assimilation of races began, and the present
types of Mexicans came into being. It has been said by many
superficial students of Mexico that a vigorous Mexican race
cannot be expected when its ascendants have been from a group

* Parkman, The Struggle of a Continent, p. 5.

The Races 5
of men of low moral standard on one side and degenerate Indians
on the other.
In the first place, although the Conquerors left an ethnic
trace of their stay in New Spain, it was too insignificant to be
the basis for the new race. It is generally admitted that they
never intended to settle in Mexico. Their rash methods to get
rich quickly were in part motivated by their desire to return
home as soon as possible. So, very shortly after the Conquest
was consummated, the majority of them were on their way back
to Spain, with their purses as full as their consciences, if they
had any. Then the real basis of our race began to come. A
current of Spanish emigration was established which has not
ceased to flow. To say that these emigrants were or are of the
type of Cortes's soldiers is to slander the thousands of Spaniards
who came and are coming to our shores. These are hardy
workers all of them, with honest and clean hearts, which have
been always animated by that Spanish quality of hidalguia,
that embodies a noble sense of charity, hospitality, and chivalry,
with an ideal of loyalty and patriotism that is almost a fanaticism
in them. Regarding the other side, the Indians, I shall discuss
it when treating Indians later on. Such was the race that
began to contribute to form our ethnic stock when, in the ruins
of the Aztec Empire, and among the fallen teocallis and broken
idols, the rude Castillian warriors found a charming "spoil,"
the Indian maid.
It has been said that this fusion was simply due to a male
impulse, flamed by a primitive instinct. The Spaniards came
without women. Although in some instances this might have
been the case, I do believe, that there was another higher chord
which moved the Spaniard unhesitatingly to the arms of his
brown companion. The winning beauty of the Indian princess,
who moves graciously into a society in which many touches of
civilization were noted, the noble distinction and appearance
in her manners and dress, undoubtedly captivated the sensitive,
dreamy, and romantic side of the Spaniards' nature. Cortes
himself set an example when he selected Marina, or, in her
Indian name, "Malinche," as companion, thus giving the theme,
with his idyl, to the most romantic chapter of the Conquest.
The readiness with which the Conquerors went to their pretty
captives and the fact that they have kept going to them for

6 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
centuries, even when there were Spanish women in the Colony,
show that there was something higher than a primitive instinct
behind their impulse. Perhaps in this phenomenon a proof can
be found that the differences between the whites and the Indians
are not so profound. It may be that this is a silent evidence
that there are many similarities between the two races that
make their biological and social relations closer.6
Classification of Races as Result of the Fusion of Spanish and
Indian Bloods
The intermingling of white and Indian blood, as well as the
definite establishment of the Spanish power, gave birth to various
race classes. Some writers in classifying the races in Mexico
usually go into such detail with long lists of names that it is a
puzzle even for a Mexican to understand it. Frequently they
take great pains to describe types and classes that, at least in
the Mexico of to-day, do not exist in such numbers as to form a
class, or a real ethnic division. Again, such classes have had
importance long ago due to special social conditions, but have
died long since with the banishing of the said conditions and now
their value is only historical.
Here is the classification more often made:
i. European race. Spaniards and other foreigners.
2. Criollo — Creole. Of Spanish descent, but born and bred in
Mexico. 3. Mestizo — mixed. Spanish and Indian descent.
4. Castizo. Spanish and mixed descent.
5. Indians. Race autochthonic.
6. Mulato — mulatto. Spanish and Negro descent.
7. Zambo. Indian and Negro descent.
Indeed, there is exactness in this list. All "shades" of color
are carefully classified and it is technically correct. But with
regard to Mexico the list is too long. For instance, the mulattoes,
or descendants of Spaniards and negroes, are practically un
known in Mexico. Rare examples are found in our Southern
States upon the Pacific Coast. In the other Central, Northern,
and Gulf States, mulattoes and negroes are only seen on the

5 Juarez, our pure Indian blood president, had six children; one married a Frenchman,
three married Spaniards, one Cuban, one Mexican.

The Races 7
Pullman trains, usually speaking English and not of Mexican
nationality. The Zambos, too, are very few, so few that I
do not remember ever having seen one Zambo in Mexico in all
my life. Perhaps in Cuba or Brazil these classes are important,
but not in Mexico. Now, coming to the "criollo" — creole — class,
descent of Spanish parents but born and bred in the country,
these people are not a class any longer. The criollo class does
not exist to-day in Mexico.
In the first place, I may say that criollo means in Spanish
just the same as creole in English: "born and bred a native, but
not of indigenous stock." So, a son of English, French, or
Chinese parents will be called incidentally a criollo of Mexico.
Race horses born in the country of foreign parents are known
as criollo stock. Speaking of New York City, we can say that
it is populated by Irish, Hebrew, Italian, and German Creoles.
The criollos as a class have disappeared from Mexico, and have
only historical importance. In the colonial days, there was
the criollo class. It was formed by all the Mexicans of pure
Spanish blood. Regardless of whether their parents and grand
parents were born in Mexico, they belonged to the criollo class
and were criollos as long as they were of Spanish stock only.
The criollos, thus constituted, played an important part in
our political and social life, and they have their share in the
building of our nationality. I shall speak again of them in the
chapter on Political Institutions. It is enough to say now that
Hidalgo, the father of our country, was a criollo. Iturbide,
who ultimately consummated our independence from Spain, was
another criollo. But such "class" has faded away from our
political horizon. Perhaps it would not be difficult to detect re
mains or vestiges of it, personified in some "hidalgos an sang bleu"
that are parading yet their Colonial titles and nobility in the cap
itals of Europe. It would not be a difficult task to trace back to
the old criollo class the descendants of some of the members of
our aristocracy, whose importance now, in relation to the progress
of Mexico, is to serve as a dull background for a more vigorous
and industrial class upon which the hopes of our democracy rest.
The Mexican nation does not owe one particle of her progress
and efforts towards civilization to her aristocracy. Indeed,
it has blocked her progress by isolating itself and its money, with
its egotism, prejudices, and conservatism, when the country

8 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
had needed the help of all her sons. Economic and industrial
developments have been checked by these people with selfish
persistence which can never be forgiven. They have been the
first to run to cover in times of distress and storm and the first
to come out to enjoy the sunshine when all is over.
But I am getting away from my present topic. What I
want to emphasize is that we have not a "mulatto" or "zambo"
class, that, although there are many pure white blood Mexicans,
they do not form a racial class.
The most practical and real division that could be established
is that of three ethnic groups: i. White or European race, 2.
Mixed race — Mestizo, and 3. Indian race. In the official census
of the Mexican Republic this is the classification adopted.
Humboldt made such distinction also. Other writers who have
been "on the ground" have made it. Matias Romero, in his
book, "Mexico and the United States," made the same race
distinction. Prince Roland Bonaparte divided our races into"
"Les blancs, les metis, et les Indians."
Statistics
To appreciate the importance of the problem of races in Mexico,
a superficial view of her census should be enough. However,
a census is not very reliable in a vast country with a great per
centage of uncivilized population, undeveloped roads, lacking
quick communication of any sort, and often disturbed by politi
cal agitations. Such has been the case in Mexico, where the
Indians, too, systematically avoid being taken in the census,
fearing that the Government wants to know where they are in
order to tax or to take them into the army. In 1900, during
the last years of the Diaz Administration, the government worked
eagerly on the census. An office with experts was created.
President Diaz himself, to set the example, went from house to
house on his "block," taking the census of his neighbors. The
bishop sent pastoral letters to the priests, urging them to co
operate. The result of the census was that the Republic had
13,611,712 inhabitants. Ten years later, when Mexico was
preparing herself to celebrate the centenary of her independence,
another census was taken, which, although not finished entirely

« Mexique au debut du XX Side, p. 95.

The Races 9
because the revolution broke out, nevertheless, gave 15,063,207
as the number of inhabitants. Therefore, it is a safe guess to
say that the Mexican Republic has 16,000,000 of population.
Regarding the distribution of races, there are many very
interesting observations to be made from the data given by the
census : Per Cent, of Population
Group 1810 1895 1900 1910
White or Europeans  18 22 19 2O '
Mestizos  22 47 43 45
Indians  60 31 38 35
I think the 1895 census is far from correct. Regardless of
the inaccuracies of the census, three things are clear from a glance
at this table : First, the white population is increasing very slow
ly. A means of its increase, emigration, has been small, very
small; political unrest and lack of intelligent advertisement are
the cause of it. Second, since Humboldt made his careful esti
mation a century ago, the mixed population has exactly doubled
its number.7 Third, the Indian population is decreasing rapidly.
Let us treat each group separately. Whites
Among the pure white population the foreigners are counted.
Politically, their influence is none, since the Constitution bars
them from that field. Socially, sorry to say, their influence is
not as important as it should be. Their social activities are
very limited and mostly among themselves. Only in their
civic celebrations do they get together and organize festivities
to which the Mexicans are invited. They come in contact
with the people only as a whole. In the large cities the
foreign colonies have schools of their own. In Mexico City
there are very good American, French, and German schools.
Mexican children are welcomed to them. The separation of
the foreigners is unfortunate, because the closer the social rela
tions, the easier the interchange of ideas, and the broader the
sympathies. Notwithstanding these disadvantages, it is remark
able to observe the power of absorption that Mexico has, due,
perhaps, to her climate or general environment. It is a fact
7 Humboldt's estimation In his Political Essay of New Spain.

10 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
that there is a strong attachment to the country in the people
that have lived there. The children of these very foreigners,
living with their parents, speaking their own language, and going
to their own school, come to be as real Mexicans, in heart, as
the Mexicans themselves. During the French intervention, the
French were surprised to find many French "criollos," French
in every way, fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Mexicans
against France.
Economically, the whites and mainly the foreigners are a
great factor of progress. The Indians and the Mestizos of the
poor class can not do certain work that requires the training
and education which they lack. The middle and rich classes
do not care to go into the trades and industries, so the foreigners
have control of the majority of our industries and trades. Mexico,
like all young, rich, and undeveloped countries, needs emigration.
With peace, a stable government, and as strong a current of
European emigration as that of Argentina, my country will be
the wonder of the twentieth century.
"Mestizos"
The preponderance of the Mestizos or Mexicans of mixed
Spanish and Indian blood is striking. Their growth, as shown
in the census, proves their importance as an ethnic factor in
the Mexican nationality. In the lapse of a century, 1810 to
1910, their percentage of the population, as calculated by Hum
boldt, has jumped from 22 to 45 per cent. So, for good or for
bad, their existence as a race is an accomplished fact.8 This
rapid increase of the Mestizos can be better understood when
it is known that in Mexico there is no sharp color line regulating
the mixture of european and Indian bloods. In the fusion of
two races there is a law of inheritance, that the strong race
must predominate. So, in individuals of mixed blood, usually
the white characteristics predominate and the individuals are
considered whites. In the United States, where the color line
is so sharp, a white man with a little negro blood is considered
negro and treated as such. Perhaps this attitude is justifiable,
as there is much difference between Indian and negro races.

¦ The distinction between races is in Spanish America a distinction of rank or class rather
han that of color. Bryce, South America, p. 471.

The Races 11
The following summary will make clear the rapid transition
of an Indian into a white:
Spaniard + Spaniard = Criollo (white).
Spaniard -f- Indian = Mestizo.
Spaniard + Mestizo = Castizo.
Spaniard + Castizo = Criollo (white).
Anyone who reads the history of Mexico will acknowledge the
importance that the Mestizos have had, and those who know
the present Mexico will acknowledge also that politically, socially,
and educationally the Mestizos are the main factors in the life
and progress of the nation.
In the Colonial days the position of the Mestizos was some
what uncertain and not very desirable. The Spaniards isolated
them and looked down upon them and the Indians scorned them
as spurious or bogus Spaniards. But soon the Mestizos formed
the bulk of the urban population and their activities were felt.
They were the bitterest enemies that the Spaniards ever have
had in America. When they found themselves barred from
political or government positions, which were all in the hands
of the Spaniards, the Mestizos rebelled and took the field against
them. They formed the bulk of the armies that for eleven
years fought against Spain (although there were many Criollo
officers), and Mexico was freed mainly through their efforts.
That is why the majority of our heroes of the War of Indepen
dence are Mestizos. Morelos, the greatest military general
of them all, was a Mestizo. Guerrero, the heroic Southerner,
who with inconquerable energy fought in his native mountains
until his country was free, was also a Mestizo.
It would be interesting to find out how many of the presidents
of Mexico have been Mestizos. It is safe to say that at least
two-thirds of them. The Old Man of Iron, Porfirio Diaz, is
also a Mestizo. There is no doubt that the homogeneous race
of future Mexico will be the Mestizos race, with strong Spanish
characteristics and faint Indian traits.9

> The Mestizo has the same prominence socially as politically and there is absolutely no
distinction between him and a pure white. Bryce, op. cit., 472. The Mestizos form the
enlightened elements or class of the country in whose hands there was always laid the steer
ing of the Mexican society in the moral, intellectual, and material order of things. Mexico,
Its Evolution, p. 27. The true American of the South is the Mestizo, the descendant of
Spaniards and Indians. F. G. Colderon, Latin America, Its Rise and Progress, p. 357.

12 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
Indians
Nowhere in Spanish America should the Indian as a racial
element be treated with such attention as in Mexico. Nowhere
in America is the Indian population so great. Probably Mexico
has as many Indians as the rest of America put together. Out
of the sixteen millions of souls in Mexico, at least eight millions
are Indians. These simple statements justify the seriousness
with which the Indian problem should be taken in dealing with
the Mexican problems.
Ethnically the Indian race is a factor, since a current of Indian
blood is yet flowing to contribute to the increasing Mestizo stock.
Economically the Indians are very important, because the
whole laboring class in the Republic of Mexico is formed by
the Indians. Agriculture as a whole lives there because of the
Indians. They use old Egyptian methods in the tilling of the
soil, but they are really the only producers in the economic sense
of the word. And, lastly, as a social and political factor, the
Indians must be taken into account. No nation can progress
if two-thirds of her population are left out of her social life and
civilization. No democracy is possible in a republic in which
the great majority of the inhabitants are not fitted to be citizens
worthy of the name.
When the Spaniards arrived in the old Anahuac, they found
a great Indian population scattered throughout the whole country,
genetic groups here and there with differences in language and
tribal traditions and customs, but all with the same physical
and psychical Indian traits. Some of them had a well organized
military government, others a powerful theocracy, having a
regular empire under its command. Such was the Aztec Empire,
or the republic of Tlaxcala, or the little kingdom of Texcoco.
Farther south, isolated and disintegrated tribes were also found,
vestiges of those ancient, wonderful, and mysterious Toltec and
Maya civilizations. But that was not all ; in the far away Sierras,
that run parallel to the Gulf of Mexico, and beyond, on the slopes
of the abrupt mountains on the Pacific Coast, were many Indian
tribes, some of them never conquered by the Spaniards nor
by the Mexican Government even to-day. Over all those peoples
the Spanish rule was established. The New Spain arose to
life, and the Via-cruds of the Indians began.

The Races 13
What a broad field for the activities of the Castillian adven
turers, with madness for gold and deep aversion to work, to
find themselves suddenly the feudal seigneurs of a country
of unlimited riches and with hundreds of thousands of brown
skin serfs to work those treasurers out of mother- terra ! They
had come for business and meant business, so they went heart
and soul into the work.
What a pathetic figure, that of the Indian, contemplating,
broken-hearted, but nevertheless stoical, his whole country and
culture going to pieces in a day! His teocallis torn down, his
gods trampled upon, his sacred books or hieroglyphical paint
ings burned, his emperor murdered and thrown on the street,
his priests, nobility, and warriors killed. No wonder the un
happy Indian lost all hope and went into submission and slavery
with that automatic or animal passivity of a being without
soul. He, for the time being, was spiritually dead. He be
lieved that his gods had abandoned him and that all was lost.
And thus he dragged on for three centuries "ranking among the
most ignorant and hopeless of the human race."10 The "Con
querors," says President Prescott, "despising them as an out
lawed race, without a god in the world, then, in common with
their age, held it to be their mission to conquer and convert."
The Spaniards organized their huge enterprise. They divided
the best land into large states and allotted to each one of them
along with his state a number of Indians "to civilize and
Christianize," as the royal charts that established those "Enco-
miendas" read. So, to each Spaniard a number of Indian were
"commended," to teach them the language and religion. But
the idea of changing these ambitious and rapacious warriors
into sweet, patient pedagogues was absurd. They put their
unlucky "pupils" to work like beasts in the fields and in the
mines. The poor Indians, treated mercilessly and living like
animals, died "like flies." Cortes himself was "sorry to see
their comrades of arms, so unmindful of the duty of cavaliers
of the cross, as to brawl like common banditti over their booty. "
It was in vain that some priests, like Las Casas, tried with an
heroic and self-sacrificing persistence to defend those poor crea
tures. He went several times to Spain and kneeling before the

10 Prescott, o*. cit., p. 541. Vol. I.

14 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
King told him the horrors that he had seen in America and made
heartrending appeals for pity and justice for the conquered race.
It was all useless. The government of Spain did enact laws for
the protection of the Indians. The archives of the Indians
are full of magnificent legislative measures to protect the In
dians; but all such laws were "obeyed but not executed." In
the Colonies, not a ray of hope was found anywhere. The new
religion taught the Indians resignation, patience, and obedience
and hopes of better life — in the other world.
One word of explanation, not of excuse, for this ugly conduct
of the Spaniards. It has been the rule of historians to crowd
upon the Spanish Conquerors all the adjectives synonymous to
cruel and barbarous, and justly so. Our indignation is aroused
by their heartless deeds, but most historians go further and assure
us that the conduct of the Spaniards was unique and that they
were a disgrace to the whole human race.
In the first place, it is not logical for us now to apply the stand
ards of the twentieth century to measure the actions of the
sixteenth century. It is not true that Spaniards alone were
disgracing humanity. The whole of Europe was involved.11
At that time, the Spaniard's conduct was the rule of the conquer
ors of all the nations. And certainly the Anglo-Saxon peoples
have little right to "throw stones." Everyone in the United
States knows the remark "that the Puritans first fell on their
knees and then on the aborigines."12 The only Indians that
have survived to tell the tale are kept confined in barren "reser
vation" grounds, as wild animals in a menagerie, and this hap
pening now in the twentieth century and in the very heart of a
powerful and cultured nation.
But to continue with our topic. At last Mexico was free.
Did the situation of the Indians change? Not in the least.
The independence was accomplished by the Criollos and Mes
tizos ; the Indians also fought, but they never knew why. But the
Criollos had inherited from their old Colonial ancestors not
only their Encomiendas and their corresponding number of

» "La Conquete Espagnole avait ete rude pour les races indigenes; il est juste d'ajoulor, qu'elle
n'etait pas plus douce au XVI6 et au XVIIs siecle dans les colonies des autres etats." Le
Mexique au debut XX6 — E. Levasseur, p. 21.
12 "Wherever the English went always the aborigines disappeared before them." Washing
ton, Origins in American Education, p. 340.

The Races 15
Indians, but also their old prejudice against the Indians. There
was between them that deep hate of those who have every
thing and those who have been despoiled of everything. Long
before the independence, the Criollos were the real tormentors
of the Indians, as they were the ones more closely in contact
with them. "The Indians felt more animosity toward the
Creoles — Criollos — than toward the Europeans. This was
natural, since their nearer and more numerous oppressors were
Creoles. The revolution was rather a reversal of the conquest,
since it fixed the possession and domination of the conquered
countries by the descendants of the Spanish Conquerors and
settlers."13 "The Indians only changed tutors," says a Mex
ican writer, "and the tutor, 'Congress,' to tell the truth, did
less for them than the tutor 'Viceroy.'"" "The Indian of the
present time, undermined by alcohol and poverty, is free ac
cording to the law, but a serf by virtue of the permanence of
authoritative manners. Petty tyrannies make him a slave.
He works now for the Cacique, the baron of the new Latin
American feudalism. Without sufficient food, without hygiene,
he decays and, to forget the misery of his daily lot, he drinks.
The great occasions of his civil life — birth, marriage, and
death — are subjects of a religious exploitation."16
However, since 1869, when the backbone of the old Creoles
and Church party was broken, the Mestizos government has
made well-intentionated, although feeble, attempts for the
betterment of the Indians, showing at least its good will. The
"Indianista" Society at Mexico City, which has for its aim
the defence and protection of the Indians, shows the spirit that
now begins to prevail toward the Indians, among the directing
class. The good intentions and desires of the leading men must
have two dynamic manifestations, first, by extending to the
Indians the benefits of education, and, second, by checking all
abuses and exploitations that they are subject to by the Ca
ciques, or petty town bosses, mostly Mestizos."
Physical and Psychical Characteristics of the Indian
The characteristics of the Indians vary a little among the
different tribes. Their environment, determining their occu-

" Cambridge Modern History, XV, p. 299.
"Mexico, Its Social Evolution, p. si
's Latin America, F. C. Calderon, p. 354-

16 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
pation and mode of life, impress upon them its seal. Never
theless, whether living idly in the suburbs of big cities, or carry
ing on a vigorous life hunting or warring up on the mountains,
or living in their wigwams and miserable huts upon the arid
central and northern parts of the plateau engaged in primitive
agriculture or humble trades, all these Indians are very much
alike in color, physical features, and modes of life and thought.
They are usually of medium stature with heavy frame, brown
skin, oblong head, with thick black straight hair, large boned
face, with slightly prognathous jaws, an aquiline nose giving
an air of distinction to the whole appearance, regular size mouth
with sensual lips which hide two perfect rows of white teeth,
few scattered hairs on the chin, reminding you that the male
of the species is there; and, lastly, two soft black eyes of a stoic
melancholy, illumine the usually saddened face of the repre
sentative of the Indian race.
Intellectually, the Indians have not had, as a whole, a chance
during the centuries of their hard physical labor to exercise
their mental capacities, so they are as is to be expected. The
best sword gathers rust and its edges dull when it remains too
long in its scabbard. When the Indians have been educated
they have displayed splendid intellectual qualities. However,
their minds have not that supreme test of an intellectual capac
ity, inventiveness. The Indians, helped by a keen sense of per
ception, are great imitators, and while at the school, they show
eagerness to learn, persistence and patience in their studies,
which are qualities for success and aptitude for culture.16
Emotionally, the Indian offers a striking contrast compared
with the Mestizo and Spaniard. The Indian is not as impul
sive and belongs to a silent race, laughs seldom and rarely aloud.
He is sober and reserved with the whites, but tender and affec
tionate to his own people. The impassiveness of the Indian is
proverbial; never a muscle of his face moves, no matter what
emotion he is subject to. In the service of the white man, he
is honest, loyal, and easily managed, docile and obedient, some
times to the point of servileness. "I have observed," a bishop
of Puebla wrote to a friend during the Colonial days, "that the

"In Secondary and Professional Schools the Indians show greater application than the
' Mestizos." Mexico. Its Evolution, p. 26.

The Races 17
Indian only gets into the habit of stealing where he lives in
contact with the Spaniards." His bravery in war and that
Oriental indifference with which he faces death have made of
him either miserable cannon flesh, by some ambitious military
adventurer and revolutionist, or a splendid and heroic military
force that has spent its blood lavishly in defence of the country
and her institutions.17 "The Kafir," says Mr. Bryce, "is like
a grown-up child, the Chinese have a curious, quiet alertness and
keenness of observation, the Hindus are submissive though
watchful, as if trying to take the white man's measure, but the
Indian is none of these things. In his obedience there is no
servility; he is reserved, aloof, seemingly indifferent to the white
man and things in general." There is the dark side to this
picture. That intellectual stagnation into which the Indian
mind has been sunk by centuries of ignorance, submission, and
passivity has made of him a being living in a kind of intellectual
atony, without ideals and aspirations. The richness of the
country makes it easy for him to get his living without very
much effort and his absence of ideals toward social improvement
makes his wants few. Adding the enervating warm climate,
we have the reasons why the Indian is incorrigible lazy. The
oppression under which he has lived and the unfairness with
which he has always been treated make him distrustful of
strangers and white men. He seldom forgives, and when he
has a chance to settle old offences, his hatred gives impulse to
the most cruel and brutal revenges.
The Indian has been labeled by many writers as very im
moral in his social intercourse. I do not think that he is im
moral; I rather say that many of his actions are unmoral, but
in general he lives a good life. "I have lived," writes a traveler,
"with the. South American Indians and I have found among
them a chastity of thought that would put to shame many of
our highly educated denizens of our cities."18
I have read statements made from usually over-zealous mis
sionary travelers, who say that Indians are immoral in their
marital relations, that there are many children who have no
legitimate parents. In the first place, the Indian is essentially
monogamous. In many cases it is true that his marriage has

" Op. cit.. p. 91.
"Quoted from the Evening Sun, New York, 29 Jan., 1914.

18 Mexico: Ils Educational Problems
not a civil or religious sanction, because he does not understand
its importance, because he does not have money to pay its
expenses, or because he lives too far away from the places where
such sanction can be obtained. In the second place, the Indians
have their own ceremonies and are perfectly satisfied with them.
They have not forgotten entirely their old traditions and cus
toms, and in many Indian communities such marriage cere
monies are performed by their elders or chiefs. Then a "mis
sionary investigator" comes along and, finding that none of the
marriages have any Christian sanction, hastily writes down
"gross immorality, hundreds of illegitimate children, etc., etc."19
Much injustice has been done by piling upon this unlucky
race more evil traits than those that it deserves, as an explana
tion of its degraded position. However, the great guilty one,
the white man, will never be justified in his conduct or exculpated
of his responsibility for such degraded condition of the Indians,
for, miserable as they are . . .
Yet whose hearts are fresh and simple,
Who have faith in God and nature,
Who believe that in all ages
Every human heart is human,
That in even savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings. . . . !
What Shall the Future Mexican Race Be and What Are the
Elements for Its Vitality?
Some pessimistic prophecies have been made by those who
believe that, on the whole, the tropical races are in decadence.
They think that such races have not invigorating elements
and therefore tend to disappear and sooner or later they will be
swept away before the mighty tide of the strong northern
races, looking for the rich soils of the equator.20
Other writers think that, owing to the unhealthful tropical
environment, unsuitable for the white men, the European races
will keep themselves out, or will be pushed out by races who
can stand successfully the tropical climate. Benjamin Kidd

" Le Indians conserve dans ses airs de musique dans ses melopfies trainantes, le charme et
le reve de ce passe aboli. Et le tout se transmet par des heredites mysterieuses de genera
tions en generations, comme les vieilles legendes et les vieilles chansons dans la memoire des
peoples. Jules Claretie le Mexique modern. Op. cit., p. 225.
" See F. H. Giddings, Democracy and Empire.

The Races 19
says, "both for climatic conditions and in obedience to the
general law of population, already noticed, by which the upper
strata of society (to which the white people for the most part
belongs) are unable to maintain themselves for any consider
able period, we must apparently look forward to the time when
all these territories will be almost exclusively peopled by Black
and Indian races.21 Dr. Pearson, too, writes: "The day will
come, and perhaps is not far distant, when the European ob
servers will look around to see the globe girdled with a continu
ous zone of the black and yellow races, no longer weak for agres
sion or under tutelage, but independent . . . and monopo
lizing the trade of their own regions. . . . when China
and the states of South America by that time predominantly
Indian, are represented by fleets in the European seas."22
Let us look first into these last two opinions. The tropical
lands are inhabited, and will be more so in the future, by a new
race, neither Indian nor European, but Latin-American, tanned
by the torrid sun more than by its Indian inheritance. The
facts are against the above statements of Mr. Kidd and Dr.
Pearson. The Indian race will disappear. The statistics show
that it is disappearing rapidly. In Argentina, Cuba, and the
United States, the Indians have almost vanished. In Mexico,
the nation most populated by Indians, in one century more
than one-third of her Indian population has gone. Two factors
are contributing to this rapid process of elimination. First, a
law of evolution enters into function: "Only the fittest shall
survive," and the weak and unfitted are dying. Bad nourish
ment, early marriage, poor medical attendance in sickness, or
none at all; the child death rate is as high as fifty per cent,
according to the last census. The swift current of human evolu
tion, impelled by the said law, is carrying away speedily this
racial debris to the unknown. The prophecy of the poet is
being realized: "at the arrival of the white man, the mission of
the Indian will come to an end and he will sail away into the
sunset to the land of the Hereafter."
The second factor is very important. A process of fusion is
going on and has been going on for centuries between the Indians
and whites. The strong, the healthy, the intelligent Indians

" B. Kidd, Social Evolution, p. 311.
-'- Karl Pearson, National Life and Character, Vol. I.

20 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
do not die; they are rapidly "becoming whites." Another
evolutionary process of natural selection is taking place which
gives good biological basis for the future race. An eloquent
proof of this statement can be found in the statistics given else
where in this work. The increase of the Mestizo population
is almost proportional to the decrease of the Indian population.
One is being fused into the other.
As to the first writers, who think that the actual tropical
races will disappear before a strong tide of other races. Of
course they are partially right. The Indians as a pure race
will disappear, but the new race will never be entirely European.
No matter how much European emigration (the time of land
conquests with its occupation by another race has passed) shall
bleach our brown Mestizos, there will be forever in their veins
remnants of Indian blood to cool down their Latin impulsive
ness and vivacity, to temper their nerves in their trying mo
ments with an Indian impassivity and stoicism, as there will be
remembrances eternally engraved upon the mighty volcanoes,
Popocatepetl and Yxtlazzihuatl. As for ever in the placid
evenings, the perfumed breezes of the old Anahuac Valley will
hum gently the old legends of that heroic race of bronze.
What will be the future race of Mexico? The answer is
already in the reader's mind.
The future race of the Mexican Republic will be the result
of the mixture of the European blood, mostly Latin, and Indian.28
In this fusion the characteristics of the white race will predom
inate.24 The Mestizos will be in the future, as they have been
in the past, the real Mexicans. They will be envigorized more
and more by European blood, carried by a never-ceasing emi
gration ; and at the same time their brown ancestors' stock will
become thinner and thinner. Such a race, although for culture

a "Everything points to a continuance of the progress of race mixture. It is a rule in all
parts of the world, except where religion or strong feeling or race antagonism prevents it.
Neither of these hindrances exists in South America; the same is true of Mexico." Bryce, of>.
cit., p. 585.
1. "An enlightened mixed race, the typical Latin American, will be the dominant element
in social and political life in the future."
1. "The true American of the South is the ' Mestizo,' the descendant of Spaniard and Indian;
this new race is almost the rule from Mexico to Buenos Aires." F. G. Calderon, o*>. cit., p. 357.
M"In the mixed race the white seems usually to predominate." Bryce, 585.
2. "The mixed blood population, while retaining many Indian qualities, is more strongly
Spanish in its present characteristics." Brown, op. cit., p. 27.

The Races 21
European, will have, however, strong characteristics of its
own. Though I do not go as far as Burkle in believing that
environment is everything in shaping the characteristics of the
races, nevertheless it is a scientific fact that the surroundings
impress their seal upon their peoples and that hand in hand with
racial inheritance make the body and soul of a race. Bryce
says, "Blood is only one factor in the making of men; environ
ment and the influence of the reigning intellectual type count
for more."
Happily the race problem in Mexico is clear and its solution
is being made automatically, according to nature's laws. It
must be kept in mind that there are only two races and that those
two races — Indian and white — are mingling themselves freely
and without prejudices. Helping to the success of this mix
ture, and acting as a great leveler, is the powerful tropical en
vironment, thus tending to make such races homogeneous,
which biologically, socially, and politically is a condition for
preservation and stability. As in a homogeneous race, the con
sciousness of kind is strong, the feeling of nationality is power
ful, and democracy is possible. Anyone who has come into
contact with the individuals of the new race, will agree that
such individuals possess in great degrees the two traits just
mentioned. Naturally there is not yet a definite type of the
Mexican race, since it has just now the instability of everything
that it is in the process of formation. What are we just now?
The learned sociologist, Argentine Sariniento, began his book,
"The Conflict of Races," thus: "Are we Europeans? So many
bronze faces give to us a negative answer. Are we Indians?
Smiles of contempt of our blond ladies are perhaps our only
answer. Are we mixed — ? No one wants to be!" Although
in some places and with certain persons that might be true
to-day in South America, in Mexico our ideals of race are more
crystallized, and to such questions we always answer: "We are
Mexicans!" Problems of Education Coming Out of These Conditions
What is the task of the school in this race transition? I
should say that its main work is to accelerate it. I have said
that there is no prejudice against Indians; the only gap between

22 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
the races which necessarily makes the process of fusion slow is
the difference in education.26
The importance of the popular school as an educative factor
in Mexico is obvious. In a highly civilized country the import
ance of the school has been over-estimated. There are other
educational agencies as powerful or more so than the school — a
cultured family, the Church, books and newspapers, theaters,
social gatherings, etc., with which the people cannot avoid com
ing into daily contact. In Mexico the situation is different.
Aside from the big cities, there are only two possible and natural
educational agencies, the Church and the school — backed by
the government. The Church has failed as an educational fac
tor. So the school alone stands as the only hope for enlighten
ment. It has been said that education is a "conscious evolution."
Nowhere is it more important that this should be its view than
in Mexico. Davidson says that education is the highest method
of social evolution. Certainly the modern school knows arti
ficial means of forming habits, understands how to handle those
delicate chords called the sentiments which mould ideals, is
familiar also with the manipulation and development of the body
to make the individual strong, efficient, better fitted for the strug
gle for life and therefore better fitted as a social being to con
tribute to the social betterment. That is how education in
its true conception is a "conscious evolution." It is easy to see
and to value the importance of this type of education in the
midst of a young race in full period of formation.
What a splendid task for the school in Mexico! Aim: To
build a nation. Pupils: Some millions of human beings that
are longing for light. Subject matter: Anything that will help
the pupils to meet their daily needs and help to train them to
take their part in the formation of the new nation. No, there
is no need of the complicated regulation of a too technical school
system. There is no ne,ed of an elaborated and over-crowded
school curriculum. Let us in a few lines sketch what may be
taken as a plan, to show mainly on what basis the organization
of the educational system in Mexico might be worked out.

" "There is no prejudice against the Indian in Mexico, and so when they are educated they
are accepted in marriage among the best families of pure Spanish blood." M. Romero.
"Mexico and the United States," p. 75.

The Races 23
First of all, the education of the Indians is a national ne
cessity, so it is a national problem, and therefore the Federal
Government has the right and the duty to handle it. In other
words, since the Indians are spread all over the land of the
Republic, the educational system must be centralized. Such
centralization might be accomplished upon the same basis that
the military centralization is accomplished. The Republic
may be divided into educational zones, marked not by geo
graphic positions, but according to the ethnic distribution of
the Indians. There are extensive zones of land inhabited only
by certain tribes; for instance, the Maya tribes are located in
the State of Yucatan and the Territory of Quintana Roo; the
Otomies tribes are living in the States of Hidalgo and Central
Vera Cruz. In this State the Totonacs are also located. The
Tarasco Indians inhabit the State of Michocan; the Mexicans
(old Aztecs) are distributed in some Central States and the
Federal District, and the Mixtecos and Zapotecos tribes live in
the State of Oaxaca.
The territory which embraces each tribe should be made the
territory of an educational zone, which shall have its superin
tendent with his headquarters established in the heart of
his zone. All those zones should be under the general direction
and watchful eyes of the Federal Minister of Public Education,
who shall have a special office with a staff of general superin
tendents, whose mission shall be to visit the zones.
Of course, there are many pedagogical reasons why centraliza
tion should be accomplished. They are the same reasons which
the leading educators in this country are giving when arguing
for a central educational agency in every State and in the Dis
trict of Columbia, with more powers than those that the Bureau
of Education has at present time. In Mexico, I must add, there
is yet another powerful economic reason. The States of the
Republic have rarely wilfully neglected to build schools. The
majority of the States have worked hard to build up schools,
but many have failed to organize a decent school system because
of the lack of money. The Federal Government has better
means to do it.
We find in Mexico enemies of centralization, armed with the
same old political objections of state rights and sovereignty —
most of them do not know as yet the pedagogical objections. The

24 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
answer to this political objection is logical. Is it worth while
to discuss the right of the States to keep their inhabitants in
the most ignominious ignorance, endangering thus the very life
of the State whose rights they are so zealous to guard? Be
sides, speaking plainly, Mexico has always been a centralized
nation, politically, religiously, and — I am willing to prove it —
educationally. Going on with our "sketch" of a plan, so much for adminis
trative machinery. Now the subject matter. Those rudimen
tary schools should be necessarily narrow and intensive in their
curriculum. They must attempt little, but do it thoroughly. In
planning the curriculum, let us leave alone "the mental facul
ties" of the poor little Indians and not try to develop them with
infinitesimal "doses" of some abstract, insipid, sometimes
bitter, and almost always useless "science." Let us have in
our schools that old Spartan or Roman simplicity that was so
efficient in making men.
The true conception of education is that it must tend to make
the individual efficient socially. The requisites of a socially
efficient individual in their simplest terms are these: First, he
must be physically fit to work and to form a family. Second,
he must have ability enough to be a sound producer and con
sumer. Third, he must possess, intelligently, a sum total of
knowledge sufficient to give him an idea of the civilization in
the midst of which he is living, with a conception, a simple one,
of the struggles of humanity to get where it is now. Fourth,
he must keep in his heart con amore the moral and esthetic
ideals of the group or society in which he lives, to help him to
form his character. Recapitulating in three words, he must be
able to do, to think, and to love. With these three words in
mind, our Indian school curriculum should be made. So the
school, wherever it is situated, no matter how poor its resources
are, must be able to form healthful habits, direct and improve
the occupations of the people of its locality, enrich the minds of
such people with valuable cultural knowledge, and, last, inspire
ideals which are the backbone of manly character. The Indians
are a rich "material" for this kind of work. They are not hope
less beings. "Every group," says a writer, "is capable of con
tributing to the common stock something uniquely its own,
something that in the full fruition of civilization cannot be

The Races 25
spared." The school should help the Indians to make their
contribution. It is indispensable, before planning any course of study or
teaching any detailed educational policy, to know well the people
among whom our schools are going to operate, to understand
perfectly the wants of such people, and to be familiar with the
possibilities and opportunities of improvement that the sur
roundings of the community offer. It would be a pedagogical
catastrophe to write courses of study on the desk in the Central
Office at Mexico City for all the schools of the country without
the knowledge mentioned, because then those courses of studies
would be the same for every school, which would be another
educational sacrilege.
In preparing for the making of the curricula, an intelligent
and experienced teacher should be sent to study carefully the
ethnic region in which an educational zone is to be established,
to learn the language of the tribe — every tribe has a different
language, and those living far from the towns do not speak
Spanish at all — to observe their customs and occupations. The
Indians' occupations are usually basketry, rudimentary clay
work or pottery, primitive agriculture, and commerce of fruits
and vegetables. The great majority are peones or agricul
tural laborers on big ranches. Every one of these pursuits should
be made an object of a detailed study by the teacher "explorer,"
with the view of improving their methods and results. The
natural productions of the region, whether exploited or not,
should also be made an object of his observation and study.
Then, with all these important data and a good census of the
school population, the bureau of education at Mexico City can
start its general outlines for a tentative course of study for
the zone that has just been studied, in close contact and agree
ment with the now "zone" expert or Aztec, Otomie, or Maya
"specialists." Another very important problem is the question of teachers.
No matter how good the course of study and how lofty our
school ideals, if the teacher does not understand them or is un
able to carry them into practice all the former efforts and care
ful planning are useless. In a great school, the teacher is one
of the most important factors; in a little country school, the
teacher is nearly everything.

26 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
Primary normal schools should be planned with no other
purpose than to enlist and train a body of teachers for this great
educational crusade. In planning the studies for these normal
schools, our little Indian rural schools should be kept in the
foreground and they should be the guide. Here, again, no
accumulation of science should be required, nor scholarly erudi
tion in pedagogical doctrines and methods. Two years of
sound theories, coupled with sound practice, should be enough.
The requirements for admission might be the certificate of ele
mentary and superior grammar school. Each "zone expert"
and future superintendent may bring with him a carefully se
lected number of young ambitious natives to be trained in those
schools at the expense of the Government, to be used later as
teachers in their own communities. However, in my opinion,
this policy should not be made too general. Scholarships should
be established for the "Mestizos" or whites to study in those
normal schools, and then they should be sent to perform this
truly missionary and patriotic work. They should be the link
that must unite the two races. They must go as messengers
from the civilized Mexican of today to the civilized Mexicans of
the future. The Indians will see in those young whites, coming
to them, no longer with the whip of the slave in their hands, but
with a heart full of sympathy, the uplifted hand of their white
brothers who at last have remembered them.
REFERENCES FOR THIS CHAPTER
Sociology and Psychology
Le Bon, Gustave. The Psychology of People, its Influence on their Evo
lution. Book II, Chapter I and II.
Dejoulins, E. Anglo Saxon Superiority. Last three chapters.
Bryce, J. Latin America.. Chapter, "The Rise of New Nations."
Bunge, Carlos Octavio. Nuestra America — Republica Argentina.
Jugenieros, JosE. Universidad de Buenos Aires — Sociologia Argentina.
Chapter, "Las Multitudes Argentinas."
Bonaparte, R. Le Mexique au debut du XXe — Siecle. Chapter on
"Races." Chavez, Ezequiel. Mexico, Its Evolution. Chapter on "Education
and Races."
Humboldt. Political Essay of New Spain.
History
Letaurneau. L'Education dans l'ancient Mexique.
Prescott. The Conquest of Mexico.
Cambridge. Modern History. Vol. X, p. 299.
Sahugun. La Conquista de la Nueva Esoafia.

CHAPTER II
THE POLITICAL INSTITUTION
The Government
The government is the social institution that offers perhaps
the best ground for the study of the customs and culture of a
people. The ideals of liberty, as well as the stagnation of polit
ical inspirations, can be detected in the governmental machinery
of a nation. Behind the brutal despotism of a Persian king,
millions of serfs are kneeling, with fearing hearts, in an intel
lectual and political atony. In the Greek democracy, with its
ideas of individual freedom and self-government, the whole
personality of the Greek people is reflected. The sacredness of
the home and personal rights, upon which the English put so
much emphasis, gives the standard of the strong English people,
so zealous of their rights and so conscious of their duties. The
great economic issues behind which the aspirations of the par
ties are hidden in a political campaign show distinctly that the
commercial character of the country reflects itself in the govern
ment of the United States.
So it is with every nation's government. It shows really
what such a nation is and what are her standards of right and
duties. A nation has the government that she deserves or that
which her degree of culture allows her to have. The principles
upon which a government rests are the laws. If we know what
a law is and means in a political institution, it is easy to under
stand the close relation that there is between a nation's culture
and customs and the government.
A true law is nothing but a custom crystallized. A commun
ity has been living under certain standards; some members of
it break those standards, the whole community resents it and
makes compulsory the obedience of what their custom has
established, and a law is enacted. To enact a law, the people
must feel first its necessity, because it is going to regulate what
is already functioning. A nation must have only the laws that
27

28 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
her civilization can tolerate. Solon said: "I have given you
the best laws that you can tolerate." Moses explains that
"God gave the laws that our perversity could bear." An ideal
legislator must understand the temperament of his people, their
psychology ; must know their past and understand their present,
so as to make a body of laws which will be to the nation what
the conscience is to the individual. Laws are traditions conse
crated and traditions are the habits of a nation, as a habit of a
person is but a personal tradition.
Treating the political aspect of any Latin-American country,
some peculiar situations are found. Contrary to this concep
tion of law, the body of laws which were made to rule those
young Spanish republics was not based upon what these nations
are, but upon what they should wish to be. Such laws do not
represent the crystallized customs and traditions of their peoples,
but the aspirations of their legislators. The logical result has
been that there is a great disparity between our actual political
machinery and laws on our statute books.
The Latin- American countries have been "promenading"
among the nations of the world as republics, but it is a matter
of common knowledge that they are "masquerading," because
they are not yet republics.1
Mexico has had her share in this political carnival. Her
government is republican, and her constitution is one of the best
documents of its kind. Ideas of equality resting upon the
human rights are found there hand in hand with democracy
and liberty. But in actual practice our magnificent constitu
tion has been kept in the most dusty corner of the government
offices.

• "South American Republics have known only two forms of government. . . . First
there Is an executive, the limits of his power ill-defined and often imposing his will by force
In essence arbitrary and personal, and feared rather than respected by the people; secondly,
the Cabildos and their modern deliberative bodies, never really elective." — Dawson, South
American Republics, Vol. I, p. 55.
"In Argentina, there seem to be no political ideas among the people for united action and
energetic citizenship." p. 28.
"In Colombia, politics means holding office and drawing salary and talking of the nation's
honor." p. 60.
"The government in Chili, in spite of its name, has been an oligarchy, composed of the best
families of Santiago, who have controlled everything, ... no attempt was ever made to
suppress the farce of universal suffrage."
"The great issue in all South American republics is, in short, whether republican institutions,
representative governments, and local authorizing shall become a reality in these countries
and not a mere Illusory program." — Theo. Childs, Spanish American Republics, pp. 28, 60,
128, I2P.

The Political Institution 29
Why have our trials in the republican form of government
been unsuccessful so far? A nation, as an individual, must try
in order to learn, but our political mentors, lacking pedagogical
insight, gave Homer's Odyssey to us to enjoy, forgetting that
we did not know the alphabet. In other words, Mexico was not
prepared for such a kind of government.
The Spanish-American nations have nothing in their inherited
political traditions to back up a democratic government in the
Teutonic sense. Mexico, before the Conquest, was ruled by an
autocratic emperor. He was vested with supernatural powers
and the Mexicans regarded him with the same veneration that
a Japanese of to-day treats his emperor.2 There were laws and
councils, but the Aztec emperor's will was the supreme law.
Their religion was as imperative and tyrannic as their govern
ment. In the family relations, the father had the same supreme
power in his entire relations with his family as had the patrician
Roman head of a family. The Indian was a living automaton.
The Spanish Conquest took place and Spain gave to Mexico
what she had. The Spanish Colonial Government of Mexico
"was therefore an autotheocratic one. The viceroy's power was
as omnipotent or more so than the power of the King of Spain
himself. The Church's fondness for democracy and freedom is
too well known to be mentioned here. The Conquerors brought
with them their old ideas of semi-independent feudal divisions
with a ruling class and an underworld of serfs. Wherever a
Mexican looked, only the word obey was to be found. But winds
of liberty swept the land and after a bloody war, independence
was consummated and the present "Republic" came into being.
To frame the laws or constitutions, our legislators were in
spired by the philosophical theory of the French Revolution and
the "ill understood constitutional notions borrowed from Eng
land and the United States."
The result of such legislation was to be expected. A decree
cannot change the social make-up of a people. The Northern
Republic government after which ours was modeled grew out
of local self-government and rested on the English or Teu
tonic political idea of strong nationality depending upon self-
government. As we have seen, in Mexico there was an abso-

¦ See Mexico a! traves de los Siglos, by Alfredo Chavero, Vol. I,

30 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
lute absorption of the individual into the State and the Church.
Those two institutions directed everything, regulated every
thing, and controlled everything. To believe that a true re
publican government could be established with such citizens in
a fortnight and by virtue of an ideal Constitution was the stu
pendous mistake that our political fathers made. No, a "mode
of government cannot be imported." To believe that, because
a democratic organization of government was so successful else
where, it was going to be so with us was a mistake. "It would
be as futile," says LeBon, "to persuade fish to live in the air,
under the pretext that arial respiration is practiced by all super
ior animals." "It is a childish chimera," he adds, "to believe
that Constitutions count for anything in the destinies of the
people. The destinies of a people lie in themselves and not in
exterior circumstances."
The cardinal doctrine of any sound political system is that
rights and duties should be in equilibrium. That has never
been the case in our political life. The Government, and,
behind it, the privileged class, has had all the rights and ignored
all the duties.3 "Under the outward forms of written laws,"
says Kidd, "they have displayed a general absence of a sense of
public and private duty."4
Our political system is individualistic and moves around one
man. Questions of personality and not principles of govern
ment are the theme of our political discussions. The Indians
had their Emperor and their Cacique, the Spaniards had their
King and their Caudillo, and we have our President and jefe
politico, with exactly the same powers and functions. Our
whole political machinery is moved by the Cacique or jefe polit-
icos, who are the bosses of the towns and who have no respon
sibility regarding their acts so long as they are in harmony with
the plans of the President, who is the boss of the nation. There
are legislative powers, to be sure, but its members seem to have
byzantine natures. Such are the real political conditions of
our nominal democratic government.

'Op. cit., p. 312.
' See Candillismo, Sociologia Argentina, p. 249. Jose Ingenieres.
"The Conditio is the pivot of the political system; leader of a party, of social group, or a
family whose important relations make it powerful, he enforces his tyrannical will upon the
multitude. In him reside the power of government and the law. His authority is invisible,
superior to the Constitution and its laws."
F. Garcia Calderon, Latin-American — The Political Problem, Chapter III, p. 36s.

The Political Institution 31
But the noble dreamers who gave us our laws were not wholly
wrong. Law must be sometimes a check to certain tendencies,
with hopes of future betterment. Our Constitution is an aspira
tion. It stands as an ideal to be reached. It is a sacred light
that guides our painful but not hopeless march towards a true
democracy. To believe that, because our people have lived under a per-
sonalistic government, they have no love of liberty and no desire
for a better government is a great mistake. The Mexicans are
as jealous of their political freedom as the most patriotic people
on earth, and they are ready, yes, too ready, to sacrifice them
selves to improve their political conditions. It is remarkable to
find among people who never have tasted the sweetness of a true
democracy such fondness for equality and political freedom, such
unselfishness to work for its cause, even to sacrifice. The orien
tal satraps found it an easy task to govern despotically their
thousands of servile and passive people. The Latin-American
satraps are far from feeling it an easy position in which they
know their days are counted. Their dreadful enemy, the revo
lution, is always staring them in the face; a longing for freedom,
a jealousy for their rights — which they never get — move the
masses to form behind a leader — another satrap to be — who
promises them order and justice and prosperity, and who has
always unfolded before their eyes a proclama announcing that
the Constitution has been violated.*
This has been the origin of almost all the Latin-American
revolutions. When the people do not get a square deal from
their government, if such people are servile they will remain
quiet and resigned, but if they are virile they will rise against
the tyrant and a revolution will take place. In the case of the
people oppressed by a despot, a revolution is a right. That is
the only way in which a government can be changed, when it
does not fulfill the promises and refuses to get out. But the
wrong lies deeper and it is not cured by revolution. We have
aspirations to a democracy, and democracy means self-govern
ment, efficient citizenship, and as long as we depend on a govern
ment based on a personality, rather than on a principle and an

6 "A revolution is indeed a sort of popular election. And there is something noble in the
loyalty and sacrifice with which multitudes of poor people . . . have fought for their leaders
and followed them to death. "-^-Robert E. Speer, South American Problems, p. 32.

32 Mexico: Ils Educational Problems
intelligent civic organization, our hopes of better government
never will be realized. The "man on horseback," the "strong
hand," or the "man of the hour" are but names for the same
thing, a despot, more or less intelligent, more or less cultured,
but with the eternal thorn of personal ambition and selfish pur
poses in all his acts.
Anyone who reads the history of the revolutions in Mexico
will be surprised to find how the people have fought to take away
from the privileged class, backed by the Church, the political
power of the nation. Even in the revolution that now is taking
place in Mexico, the people are not fighting just for the love of
war. At the bottom of it all is the hunger of our peasants for a
piece of land of their own and a free government.
The strength, the courage, and the everlasting persistence
with which these people fight for their rights give splendid
material to mold into good citizenship. Think of those energies
directed into their right channels by a wise and honorable gov
ernment and a sane and proper education! What a mistake to
think that, because we are not yet fit for a democratic form of
government, we never will be! From people who loved liberty
and fought tyranny the living democracies have been made. I
do not despair of seeing a genuine democracy blossoming south
of the Rio Grande. The road has been and is painful. The
world is now pointing at us as a band of savages, because we,
unhappily, are always measured by our failures rather than by
our progress. The world forgets that all young nations have
passed through a critical period — a period of hesitancy, of in
testine struggles and vicissitudes. What nation has not founded
its stability and prosperity and happiness upon blood and sor
rows? What country has not a martyr or hero to consecrate
and the memory of a glorious past struggle to venerate?
Where other people have reached, we will also. Democracy
is not for one race or one people alone. Justice, virtue, and
courage are not and cannot be monopolized by any race or na
tion. I know that, for those whose knowledge about Mexico
does not extend outside of the information through a yellow
paper, the Mexicans that are looking forward to a democratic
government are idealists. But so long as those dreamers are
willing to work toward the accomplishment of their ideals, they
are dreaming future realities. ' ' Mexican idealists, ' ' writes a New

The Political Institution 33
York paper, "are like honest Democrats and Republicans in the
United States. The dreams that they dream are bound to
come true. There is a mighty difference between an idealist
and a visionary. Washington's ideal was a free nation, Jeffer
son's ideal was a free people, Lincoln's ideal was freedom for
all without regard to race and color. Every one of these ideals
was ridiculed by elements like those which now sneer at the hopes
and aspirations of Mexico's most devoted sons. Some ideal
ists south of the Rio Grande have seen the light dimly, but that
they have seen it at all is a fact to be recorded to their honor."8
And education is going to be the mighty hand which will help
"those dreamers" to push off upon smoother seas!
Before going into the subject of education from the political
point of view, I shall give a summary of our present political
organization. The present Constitution of Mexico was promul
gated on February 5, 1857. By its terms Mexico is considered
a Federal Republic divided into twenty-seven States, with
three Territories and one Federal District — where the Federal
authorities are — each State has the right to manage its own local
affairs, while the whole are bound together in one body politic
by the fundamental law of the land, the Constitution. The
powers of the Federal Government are divided into three
branches, the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. The
legislative power is vested in a Congress, consisting of a House
of Representatives and a Senate. The executive is a President
of the Republic, and the judicial in Federal Courts. Repre
sentatives are elected by the suffrage of married males, if eigh
teen years of age, and twenty-one years of age if unmarried
(at the vote of one member for every 40,000 inhabitants or
fraction exceeding 20,000), and hold their places for two years.
The Senate consists of two members from each State, of at
least thirty years of age, who hold their places for four years.
The President is elected by electors popularly chosen in a general
election, and holds office for six years. In case of his sudden
death or disability, the Vice-President, who is also President of
the Senate, officiates in. his place. The States have an executive
officer, the Governor, a legislative power, the Legislature, and
judicial power, the State Courts.

• The New York World.

34 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
Education, the Main Hope of a Future Mexican Democracy
What are the essential conditions of a Democratic Govern
ment? Democracy means government of the people. The
fundamental condition of a Democratic State is that the actual
power of government rest on the masses of the people of such
State. There must be a substantial equality of legal rights and
obligations and opportunities. Christianity, stating that "all
men are equal before God," gives the basis for Democracy to
affirm that all men are equal before the law. But in order to act
as one body politic a democratic society must be homogeneous
in its make-up. Social relations in such a democratic group
presuppose an actual coming together of the individual ele
ments. A democratic social aggregation must be harmonious in its
habits of thought and action. Its members, who are united
and organized for a common purpose, should come into contact,
mingle, and converse to form an intelligent social mind, to hold
and crystallize a public opinion. The heart of the community
must beat with the same sympathies, beliefs, ideals, and long
ings for the common welfare.
"Democracy makes of every man a king." No other political
organization bestows upon him more honors and greater respect.
No other social organization gives him more freedom of action
and greater opportunity to display his personality and his initi
ative. But no other form of government puts upon the shoulders
of its members greater responsibilities. The citizen must be as
conscious of his duties as he is zealous of his rights. He must
have the cultural and spiritual possession of his group in order
to feel that paternal regard for its members. He must be
educated if he wants to be an intelligent voter, and if his State
is to have a sound, orderly, and progressive legislation and ad
ministration. Is it possible for Mexico, at present, to have such a Democratic
government as that described above? Is it possible for the
average Mexican to fulfill the requirements of a true and active
citizenship? If the reader has followed this paper up to this
point, he will give, without doubt, the same answer that I do.
Mexico has magnificent possibilities of becoming a true demo
cratic nation. A young crop of energetic, intelligent, and patri-

The Political Institution ¦ 35
otic Mexicans have but one aspiration, but one ideal — that is,
to build up in our country a real democratic government. They
are now keenly alive that, to accomplish this noble task, there
is but one way: to educate the ignorant masses, to be just with
them, and to make the directing classes give them a square deal.
They know too well that under the present conditions a demo
cratic government is Utopian. They know that between them,
who are but two-tenths of the people, and the rest of the Mexi
cans there is an abyss of ignorance. How under the existing
conditions can these eight-tenths of ignorant Mexicans be ex
pected to act as cultured and conscious democratic society should
act? "Good government machinery," says a writer, "can make
it relatively easy for the people to govern themselves, at least
it tends to that direction. But there is a limit to that tendency.
There is no devised machinery automatic enough to provide good
government in the hands of an illiterate and half-civilized people."
And now, being more specific, here are some opinions regarding
the matter.
"Briefly, we may say that the citizens," writes Theo. Childs,
"do nothing and can do nothing against their parasital rulers
because they are not organized and not prepared or educated
for republican institutions."7
"Democratic principles have been proclaimed in the broad
est terms," observes Mr. Bryce, "but thinking men and even
unthinking men cannot but dimly feel that no government,
however good its intentions, can apply such principles in a coun
try where seven-eights of the people are ignorant, unfit to exer
cise political rights."8
Referring to the oligarchic government of the Spanish Amer
ica, Professor Bingham says: "One cannot help feeling that
that is the only possible outcome of an attempt to stimulate the
forms of a republican government in countries whose inhabit
ants are not educationally and perhaps racially prepared for
it."» Georges Clemenceau remarks in his book, "South America of
Today," that there is little homogeneity in the masses who are

1 0p. cit., p. 328.
• Op. cit., p. 412.
•Across South America, p. 155-

36 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
scattered and separated by land and ideas and one cannot ex
pect from them any concerted political action.
Dr. Brown expresses himself thus: "The people have to learn
that there is no such thing as liberty in the abstract, that pub
lic opinion must be educated in usages of peaceful discussion,
and that revolutions are not a panacea for all political ills.
Self control has to be acquired."10
Is there any doubt of the importance of the school as the — I
am tempted to say — only panacea for our political ills? The
school is everywhere the foundation of any democratic govern
ment; but in Mexico the school is more than that, it is the sal
vation of our nationality. Task of the School in a Democracy
Aim. It must be kept in mind always that before being a
citizen the child is going to be a man. All men are equal was —
and it is in many Latin-American republics — the old demo
cratic slogan. Yet we are confronted with the psychological
fact that there is an absolute inequality among mankind; in
equality in capacities, inequality in disposition and ability, in
equality in strength and character. The school should under
stand the true meaning of that old maxim: In a democratic
society all men are equal before the opportunities that such a
society offers. In the feast of its prosperity, all men must have
an equal chance to share it. The school should prepare indi
viduals, help to develop the best within his scope, in order to
make him able to reach the highest plane according to his nat
ural capacities. The school must develop "the habit of re
sponsibility," but at the same time must give the tools of self-
help, the means to realize the personal independence and self-
direction. "A healthy democracy is indeed a training in judg
ment and self control as applied to political actions," says Cooley.
The Pupil. He must do his own thinking, always and every
where. He must feel, and actually be, responsible for his own
acts and should be educated to stand on his own feet and face
"the music" courageously. Let him clearly understand what
liberty means. Among children, especially of the Latin race,
liberty means to do as you please. He should know that his
rights end where the rights of his neighbor begins. There is
10 Op. cit., p. 145.

The Political Institution 37
another attitude of conduct, which I want developed in
our children. The lack of such characteristic is very notice
able among the Latin people in general and Mexicans in par
ticular. It has been one of the sources of our political troubles:
To suffer a defeat gracefully. I have learned to admire the
Americans more in their defeats than in their victories. They
all are good losers. No resentment, no bitterness, no vindictive-
ness, a dry "all right" accompanied by a cold Yankee smile,
and all is over.
The Curriculum — Its Educational Connections with a Democracy
and with the Citizen
Language. To have the same language is as essential for a
nation as to have the same land. The Indians will never be
Mexicans, unless they learn to speak the national language.
The duty of our schools is not only to teach the Spanish language,
but to cause it to be loved. This fondness for the language
should be fostered, at the beginnings, by a wise selection of read
ing materials. There are fairy tales that belong to the children
of all countries; these should be presented. Short stories hav
ing as their theme national legends and old Mexican traditions
should not only be read, but dramatized as well; all in a clear,
simple, and easy style, for which the sonorous and musical
Spanish language is so suitable. In the advanced grades,
especially in our urban schools, the love of the language must
be more intellectual or more intelligent. Our pupils should
read and develop an esthetic appreciation of our classical
authors. They must be taught to read and enjoy our literary
gems, the genuine ones. There are in Mexico many little books
of cheap literary value and other so-called anthologies, written
especially for children. Based on the belief that anybody can
write for children since — they think — the only didactic condi
tion of a book for children is to be simple and easy and short,
these amateurs in education have collected or written stories.
Indeed, they are simple and easy to the point of stupidity. Some
are really an offence to the average intelligent pupil.
¦ Civics. To comprehend the institutions of the land, to under
stand and be familiar with the methods of municipal, state, and
national government and arouse an interest to improve and
serve in those institutions is the civic preparation that a democ-

38 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
racy requires for its citizens. And it is the task of the school
to prepare these citizens accordingly. In connection with this
subject, I remember that we read at school some pamphlets or
"Manual of Civics," which were nothing but dry extracts taken
from our laws. A few days ago, while reading a newspaper
from Mexico City, I came across the approved list of text-books
for the next school year. The "Manual of Civics" was there.
We need better books, with more interest and vital discussions
about the problems of the community and their relation to its
citizens. I am going to give a summary of the topics selected
in some text-books, as the easier way to give an idea of how this
subject should be treated:
"Good Citizenship," by S. Richman and I. Wallack. "This
book is planned," the authors say, "to meet the needs of fourth
year (fourth grade) children." It is dedicated to the boys and
girls of America, "with hope and prayer that it may help to make
them true citizens." Table of Contents: The Fire Department —
engine and fire house; lessons fires teach; how citizens can help
the Fire Department. The Police Department — noble duty of
the police; stories of police heroes; how police keep order and
fight crime; how citizens can help the police. This, as well as
the chapter on the Fire Department, ends with "an afternoon
with the police." Department of Health — how to fight diseases;
how citizens can help guard the public health. All is written
in a delightful and entertaining style.
Going a little higher, we find books with more definite and
concrete civic notions. "The Government by the People," by
R. H. Fuller, offers a good example of its kind. The aim of the
book is to give facts for the practical information of the voter.
Contents: Government by elections. Qualifications for voting.
Voting on Election Day. Bribery and Intimidation. Parties
and their organization. Party Platforms of 1904. The writer
avoids technical terms and treats the problems unpretentiously.
Still a more detailed and complete treatment of this subject
is found in the book, "Training for Citizenship," by J. W.
Smith. It is an elementary treatise on the rights and duties of
citizens. It would be helpful to the teacher more than to the
pupils. Nature Study and Geography. Engaged in nature study,
and while running merrily through the fields after a new "sped-

The Political Institution 39
men," who mockingly flaps its golden wings, the child should
feel the emotion of the landscape, which later in life he will re
member tenderly, coupled with home recollections. The geog
raphy study should put the pupil in close and sympathetic
touch with all that is beautiful and good in his country. He
must know and love her people, admire her natural beauties,
appreciate her richness, and be able to embody all that into a
patriotic affection for his "terra patria."
History. History is a great field to arouse and cultivate a
true national spirit. No other subject offers better opportun
ity for it. No other subject has been so mistreated. What
has been the function of history in our schools? History has
been a long list of dates, with its burden of battles and biogra
phies of great men. Lately, some improvements in our text
books have been introduced, but there still remains in them the
defect of almost all our histories in Mexico. This is that they
are not histories at all, but one-sided account of events in which
imagination takes the place of a scholar's erudition. The au
thority for statements is seldom given. But this is not all!
The aim of the historian is not to narrate the events, but to
slander and blacken the other side. There are no middle grounds;
fairness and coolness in judgment is rare. Therefore, in the
War of Independence, the Spaniards were cruel rascals that
could hardly be recognized as men. In our civil struggles, if
the historian belongs to the liberal party, of course the liberals
were the heroes and the conservative party was composed of
traitors and robbers. If a conservative historian writes, of
course he also makes history and the poor liberals are no less
than savages and bandits. Think of the effect of all this stuff,
which is called history, put into the hands of our little country
men; whose impressions are going to be lasting! Our history
has been the worst obstacle in our national cohesion.
No, history has another noble and higher place. It should
be a source of inspiration. It should be the apotheosis of our
national heroes. We should find there no line of unfairness to
foster hatred and ill will toward our fellow men. Neither will
the history be a place for spectacular narrations which put in
relief the brutal phase of human nature. It is cruel to darken
the rosy thought of a child with bloody descriptions. It is
criminal to muddle the limpid conscience of a boy with early

40 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
odiousness. Someone may smile, thinking that I want to make
little angels out of the common "average" little rascals who
attend our schools. No one detests more than I do an effemin
ate and too "dandy" education and no one admires more than
I, a manly training. The following examples will, I hope, clear
rmy position.
t While treating the torment of Cuauhtemoc by the Conquer
ors, the contempt for death, the heroic attitude of the great
Indian should be emphasized, instead of the cruelty and bru-
\ tality of the Spaniards. During the American Intervention,
the Americans were assaulting the Castle of Chapultepec, which
is also the Military School. All was lost and only a handful of
cadets were defending their alma mater; Melgar, a child, six
teen years old, who was the sentry at the door of the Entrance
Hall, died face toward the enemy and firing to the last. The
enemy fired at him only after a manly refusal to surrender. As
he fell the American officer, at the head of the attacking column,
jumped forward and, taking off his hat, kissed the still warm
forehead of the child hero. The other boys were defending their
school valiantly, resisting the invaders, room by room, floor by
floor. The Mexican flag was still floating in one of the turrets
of the Castle. Suddenly, an American appeared near the turret
and ran toward the flag. Escutia, another boy cadet, the
standard bearer, was on guard there. As he saw the big, muscu
lar, and massive, blond Yankee, advancing heavily, Escutia
quickly took the flag down, hid it in his breast, and threw him
self down the rocky precipice. To-day, upon the place where the
pierced body of this Spartan hero fell, stands a beautiful monu
ment, and every year, until i^io, the American Ambassador
used to go on the eighth of September and deposit a wreath of
roses upon it.
Such should be the spirit with which a theme of history is
approached. Why take the study of history as a means of
arousing the sleeping, but never dead, instinctive aversion
among peoples? One day, an "observation lesson" in history
was being given in one of the fashionable schools of Upper
Manhattan, and the topic was the assault of Chapultepec in
the Mexican War. I was among the student "observers." I
saw a boy with golden curls and clear blue eyes describe with
innocent delight how hundreds of Mexicans were slain, seemingly

The Political Institution 41
unaware that they too were human beings. How I wished to
tell that boy, to those children, how in that battle other boys,
almost of the same age and with similar childish faces and curly
black hair, had died — died in the early spring of their lives when
everything was love, hopes, and smiles for them! I wonder
what reaction my story would have had in the frank and inno
cent hearts of those children? For myself, that was one of the
most profitable lessons that I have ever "observed," although
I confess that I did not see whether the "five formal steps"
were properly placed.
Do you not think that there are many other ways of inspir
ing patriotism and love for our own country?
Military Drill. In connection with physical training in the
school let us continue the military exercises as a special civic
preparation. These exercises now come at regular class per
iods and are in charge of officers of the army. There are many
qualities which develop with military duties whose possession
the Latin pupils badly need. In a stern military training the
people learn how to obey, the high sense of discipline. The
sense of solidarity which manifests itself as fellow feeling, and
a sentiment of duty and of comradeship, are so important in a
democratic community, although at the beginning all these
qualities are only skin deep, because they are the result of ex
ternal and compelling disciplinary measures. Nevertheless, as
time passes, slowly, by an unconscious association of reflexes,
this feeling of duty and discipline becomes an internal and habit
ual force which rarely fails to influence the conduct. However,
the idea of the militarization of our schools should be cast aside.
A regular military system in the school damages the cornerstone
of a democracy which is the individuality and free development
of opinions and actions. A complete military school system will
be a sacrilege to democracy. For the masses military service is
very necessary in Mexico. It is an element of education and a
help to our national solidarity. Regarding the schools, there
may be established special classes of military exercises, or ar
rangements should be made to go camping for a few weeks
every school year, in order to carry out in those camps a
military organization and training.
Music. Every civilized nation has some songs that are called
national. We have, too. It would be an excellent practice to

42 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
teach and have our children sing those songs in the school.
Here our national hymn must be sung, too, with the reverence
and respect that is due to it.
The Teacher and School Management. What should be the
school spirit and policy ip a democracy? It should be a spirit
in which freedom and responsibility, right and duty to one's
self and to the whole school should stand in prominent place
in the pupil's minds and hearts. In the words of Irving King:"
"The pupils should be taught to participate in the government
of the school as they afterwards must in the government of the
community and State. The pupils should feel that they have a
public duty in the school community as they will later have in
the adult community. They should be carefully trained in school
life to see their relations to law and order and their enforcement
in the school, as they must later see them in adult life, if they
do their duty as law-abiding and law-enforcing citizens."
"Men," says Cooley, "are little to be stampeded in matters
regarding which they have a trained habit of thought and
action."

11 King, Social Aspects of Education, p. 291.

CHAPTER III
EDUCATION
Its Development, Present Conditions, Needs, and Sug
gestions for its Improvement
Indian Education
The education of the Aztecs, like their government, was
military and theocratic. The schools were annexed to the
temples. Each teocalli or temple had a calmecac or school.
There were two kinds of schools, one for the children of the
aristocracy and the other for the common people. These
popular schools were numerous and were located in almost
every quarter in Mexico City. The children were received
there at the age of four or five years, but officially the education
began at six or nine years of age. Such education had a religious
character; the boys were drilled in the routine of monastic disci
pline. There was, however, practical work to be done by the
pupils. They had to sweep the temple and the school, decorate
the shrines of the gods with flowers, feed the sacred fire, and go
to the forest for wood for it. At twilight the pupils would all
get together in the "singing room" and sing and dance. Some
of the children slept in the sanctuary, where the women were
not allowed to enter. At the age of fifteen or sixteen, the
parents took their sons from the school to teach them some trade
and hunting or fishing.
The curriculum of these elementary schools was simple.
They learned to read easy hieroglyphs and make them with
small colored feathers. Counting was done mainly with ob
jects. The method was that of trial and error based upon imitation.
Their methods of discipline were cruel. Terror was the spring
of education with the Aztecs. The punishments were such as
tyjlng the boy's feet and hands for half a day, or leaving him on
the street for one day naked, and with feet and hands tied. The
43

44 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
head of a noisy boy was put into a large earthen jar full of
smoke.1 In the schools for the nobles the curriculum was more elabor
ate. They were taught pictography, astronomy — science in
which the Aztecs had a remarkable knowledge — the sacred
hymns, and their laws also were taught to them. The nobles
had literary education. Since they were destined to occupy
public places and to be sent as ambassadors, they were trained
to pronounce long speeches that were already made in an official
style. There was no manual work to be performed by them
and the disciplinary methods were less cruel, usually consisting
in an increase of work upon the pupil and at the same time a
decrease in allowance of food.
At the age of fifteen the noble took the training in the use of
weapons, and at twenty he went to his first campaign under
the watchful eye of a veteran soldier. At the age of twenty-two,
if he was not married, he was consecrated to the service of the
gods, entering into the sacerdotal class.
The moral education was embodied in precepts and practices
in which there was a mixture of lofty and cruel features.2 Here
are some examples of the Aztecs' maxims: "Walk calmly, talk
calmly, be modest in your dress and reserved in your manners."
"Do not walk too fast or too slowly; the slow march has a pre
tentious air and the fast one, on the contrary, shows little calm
and an uneasy spirit." — Sahagum. "Dieu a or ordonne que la
femme fit usage de 1'homme et reciproquement; mais il con-
vient que cela pratique avec moderation . . . ne te jette pas
sur la femme, comme le chien sur sa nourriture; n'imite pas cet
animal dans sa manier d'avaler ce qu'on lui donne." — Letour
neau. — To the girls: "Avoid familiarity with men." "Live
and stay in your own home." — Prescott.8
Colonial Education
The Conquerors could not take any interest in education;
first, because in their nature, too full of love for adventure, there
was little or no place at all for instruction, and, second, because
1 See Letourneau, Ch., L'Evolution de l'education. Chapter VII, " L'education dans l'Ancient
Mexique." Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, Vol. I, "Education of Youth." p. 61. Biart,
Lucien, The Aztecs. Chapter XI, " Education — Public Schools." p. 213.
2 See Biart, The Aztecs. Chapter XVII, "Ideographic Paintings and Feather Mosaics."
P- 313-
g The data for the Aztec education were take- ~->;"1" fmm Pr^rntt. rnnnnest of Mexico.
Vol. I. Letourneau, L'Evolution de L'Educa

Education 45
of their ignorance, they never paid attention to such a matter.
It is told that Pizarro, the Conqueror of Peru, being asked by
Atahualpam, "what have I written upon my finger?" Pizarro,
after seeing the finger, answered, "I do not know," to which the
astonished Inca King exclaimed, "Ah, barbarous, it is the name
of your god, written on my nail by one of your soldiers." Piz
arro could not read.
But the cause of civilization was not lost. Right behind the
ignorant Conquerors came another type of men, who are the
only white spots in this picture of blood and destruction.
"Men,"4 said Parkman, "pale with the close breath of the
cloister, here came to spend the noon and evening of their lives
ruling savage tribes in a mild paternal way, and stood serene
before the direst shapes of death. Men of courtly nurture,
heirs to the polish of a far-reaching ancestry, here, with their
dauntless hardihood, put to shame the boldest sons of toil."
Such were the priests and monks who came to America to Christ
ianize the Indians.
In 1516, Cardinal Cisneros commanded all the vessels bound
to America to carry at least one monk or priest. In 1562 the
king ordered the same thing. Soon an army of Jesuits, Fran
ciscans, Dominicans, and other religious orders were doing a
noble work in New Spain. In 1563, the king of Spain gave
instructions to all these orders: "To establish the Indians in
villages, to provide a schoolhouse in each village that the chil
dren might be taught reading, writing, and Christian doctrine,
to make efforts to have the Indians marry their wives in due
religious form, and to encourage the inter-marriage of some
Christians with the Indians, both men and women."6
In every village a church was built and beside it a school.
"We took,"6 writes Sahagum, "the children of the 'caciques'
into our schools, where we taught them to read and write and
chant. The children of the poor class or natives were brought
together in our courtyard and were instructed in the Christian
faith." The scanty popular education in the Colonial period assumed
a pronounced religious character. The aim of such education

« Op. cit., p. 5-
'Fabie, Eusayo Historico, p. 52.
•Sahagum, op. cit., p. 77.

46 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
was political, to maintain, through the school, the people of the
Colony under the temporal power of Spain. There was no well
defined plan of organization and instructiono each priest working
isolated in the way that he thought the best.
The classical spirit of the Middle Ages animated the methods
and curriculum of the Colonial schools. The instruction was
dogmatic in its character. Obedience and routine were the
rule of all actions and tradition their inspiration. There was no
scientific freedom, as wide scientific studies would not help to
keep the colonies submissive.
The curriculum of the elementary schools was typical Middle
Ages — the three R's, singing, and religious teaching. However,
there were some exceptions to this poor curriculum. "Pedro
de Gante founded," says the Mexican historian, Icazbalceta,
"and conducted in the Indian quarter in Mexico a great school
attended by over a thousand Indian boys, which combined in
struction in mechanical and the fine arts. In its workshops the
boys were taught to be tailors, carpenters, blacksmiths, shoe
makers, and painters."7 "In the seminary under my charge,"
writes Pedro de Gante, "there are already six hundred pupils
who know how to read, write, sing, and help in the divine office."
The method of recitation is given by another priest. "After
the roll call a teacher recited twice the lesson for the day in a
loud voice and the natives repeated it after him," says father
Mendieta. The discipline was formal and rigid. "La letra
con sangre entra," was the familiar maxim. Patience and
punishment were the arms of the teacher. "The Indians,"
says Gante, "are docile and of good disposition and inclined to
receive our faith, but force and interest determine them to it
more than sweetness and affection."*
The Jesuits led higher education, following, of course, the
usual path of traditional orthodoxy. Nevertheless, there were
at Mexico City many signs of progress and love of science, and
in general the New Spain was by far more advanced than the
English Colonies. I have often read that Harvard is the old
est university in America, but a little investigation shows that
the University of Mexico was already old when Harvard was
erected. I have also read that the first book printed in America

1 Icazbalceta, Obras I, p. 146.
'Ibid., p. 176.

Education 47
was the Massachusetts Bay "Psalm Book" in 1637. There
were no less than seven printing presses at work in Mexico dur
ing the sixteenth century, fully fifty years before the said book
was issued.8
"Not all the institutions of learning founded in Mexico,"10
writes Bourne, "in the sixteenth century can be enumerated
here, but it is not too much to say that, in number, range of
studies, and standard of attainments by the officers, they sur
passed anything existing in English America until the nine
teenth century. Mexican scholars made distinguished achieve
ments in some branches of science, particularly surgery, but
pre-eminently linguistics, history, and anthropology. Dic
tionaries and grammars of the native languages are an imposing
proof of their scholarly devotion and intellectual activity."
Mr. Wash, formerly referred to, says, "American self-sufficiency
from which we look down on the Latins, our thorough-going
condescension of their ignorance and lack of worthiness, is all
founded on our lack of real knowledge with regard to them."
(p- 33I-) Mexico Independent
With the political changes, French literature and philosophy
overflowed the intellectual world in Mexico. Its influence upon
the privileged classes was strong. The Spanish power had died
and French domination had begun. But this intellectual ac
tivity did not go down to the popular school.
The first conscious effort toward the organization of the ele
mentary school in Mexico was made by an Englishman, well
known to any student of history of education, Lancaster. He
came to Mexico in 1822 and, with his characteristic activity,
opened a school in the building in whose halls the Inquisition
had lived. His experiment attracted the attention of some well
educated Mexicans, and a little later, January, 1823, they formed
a society — La Compafiia Lancasteriana — that had for its aim
the diffusion of education among the people. In Article 2 of
its Statutes, it is stated that "The object of the Company is to
give free primary education to the children and poor classes by
means of schools established at its expense."11
'See Origins in American Education, by J. J. Wash, p. 320.
10 Bourne, E., The American Nation — Spain in America, Vol. III.
11 Reglamento de la Compafiia Lancasteriana de Mexico, Chap. I.

48 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
Slowly and entirely under private initiative and effort the
"Compafiia Lancasteriana" was extending its fields of action.
Already Mexico was in the hands of the revolution and "we
cannot," says an educator of those days, "make war and schools
at the same time." In 1843, the Government gave the charge
of the schools of the Federal District to the Lancaster Company.
But as the Government did not have money, it did not help the
Company to perform its task in any way. However, in that
year there was a reorganization of the Lancaster Company and
under the presidency of Jose Maria Teruel a campaign to acquire
funds by popular subscription was started. The Company had
then 1310 schools under its charge.
Methods and Curriculum. In Chapter X of the Statutes re
ferred to (1843) is written: "Art. 69 — The methods of teaching
in the schools of this Company shall be the system 'mutual and
simultaneous,' with the reforms that experience shall teach
from time to time and the improvements in economy of time
and short instruction that the popular primary instruction re
quires. "Art. 70 — In the schools for boys shall be taught reading,
writing, and elementary arithmetic, the Castillian grammar,
morals, and the catechism.
"Art. 71 — In the schools for girls shall be taught reading,
writing, and counting, the catechism of the Christian doctrine, the
maxims of the good education and serving." (pages 16 and 17.)
The chapter ends with the statement that there shall be ex
aminations for promotion of the pupils every month, and that
a small sum of money shall be given as rewards to the more ad
vanced pupils.
The shortcomings of the Lancaster School need not be dis
cussed here. The reading of Statutes shows plainly that those
schools had the seal of the old educational formalism and were
under the strong influence of the Church. The impulse of their
founders was a noble one and accomplished its aims, which were
to awaken interest for popular education in the Government and
in the upper classes and to instruct as many as its resources al
lowed. Indeed, the Lancastrian School never had any peda
gogical pretentions. Its end was, in Mexico, as it was in Eng
land, to educate the greatest number with the least expenditure
of money and time. Its monitorial system was recommended
more for economical than for pedaeodcal reasons.

Education 49
The influence of the Lancaster School in Mexico was pro
found, and even to-day there are many country schools in which
the old monitorial system is practiced in a true Lancasterian
fashion and for many a little community an ideal school build
ing is a house with one lonely but spacious hall, which was char
acteristic of the Lancasterian Schools.
After the war with United States in 1847, a reaction took
place among the educated class. In our war with France the
Mexican patriotism was stirred and unified. The American
Intervention left a deep mark on the hearts of thinking Mexi
cans. We were defeated, but not for lack of patriotism and
courage. There were plenty of proofs that Mexicans knew how
to die for their Country. "The constancy with which the
Mexican infantry,"12 says General Taylor, "sustained this severe
cannonade was the theme of universal remark and admiration."
"The private Mexican soldier,"18 says Grant, "was poorly clothed,
worse fed, and seldom paid. With all this I have seen as brave
stands made by these men as I have ever seen made by soldiers."
Later he adds, "The Mexicans have shown a patriotism which
it would be well if we would imitate in part, with more regard
for truth." What was, then, the cause of our defeats? It was
mainly ignorance, lack of organization in effort and will. The
body of men that formed the invading forces was united, acted
consciously, and with a spirit of co-operation and "teamwork"
that was for us a revelation.
Yet, the Government was too busy with revolutions to pay any
attention to the schools. Again private initiative manifested
itself and in 1851, out of 122 elementary schools in Mexico City
with 7636 pupils, only four schools with 488 pupils belonged to
the Government; two with 150 pupils belonged to the convents,
and 116 schools with 6955 children were of private initiative.
What a noble example for the present generation to imitate!
It is a fact worth while noting that Mexico is the only Latin-
American nation in which the beginning of popular education
was due mainly to private initiative."

"Taylor, Z„ The Battles of the Rio Grande,
13 Personal Memories of U. S. Grant, pp. 168, 169.
14 In the majority of the Spanish American Republics, public education is and has been in
the hands of the Church or of the Government. (See Historia de la Instruceion Primaria En
la Republica Argentina, Chapter VII, "La accion nacional y la provincial en la Escuela,"
p. III.

50 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
It was not until 1867 that an organized effort was made to
build up a school system. It was under Juarez's administra
tion — it is always he — that a law was enacted making popular
education compulsory, free, and secular.
At last the school could get out of the hands of the Church.
The State and the Church were separated and the school was
made free. Honor to the men who accomplished such a task!
Honor to the men who wrote the name of Mexico at the head
of the Ust of liberal Latin Countriesl However, this honor cost
us three years of cruel war. My poor country has bought dearly
every bit of her progress!
The Government took charge of the public education and men
of great ability and wisdom, like Covarrubias, Ramirez, Tagle,
and Barreda, undertook the work of making a body of laws, to
regulate the new-born educational system.
The ideals of the new school changed a great deal. Before,
the task of the popular schools was to make good Catholics; now
its aspiration was to produce fine Mexicans, better men. The
methods changed little, since there was the same lack of trained
teachers and no normal schools to educate such teachers. In
the curriculum, besides the three R's, we find new subjects, such
as the metric system, physics and chemistry, geometry, geog
raphy, history, and civics, which show clearly the ideas that
animated the new educational policy. But public education
dragged along painfully. There was no money, and few pro
fessional educators.
Later on, under the iron hand of Diaz, "the epilepsy of anar
chic ambitions" died away, and blessed peace came at last.
The Government could afford more attention and money for
the schools.
The need for schools to train teachers was felt more than
before. It was good fortune that brought to Mexico, at "this
psychological moment," two German educators with sound and
modern pedagogical knowledge, with youth and love for their
profession, and— what was perhaps most valuable of all — with a
remarkable ability and tact for dealing with our people. They
were Enrique Luabscher and Enrique Rebsamen. In February,
1883, they founded a private school, a Model School in Ori
zaba, a city of the State of Vera Cruz. Their work was readily
appreciated, and very soon, from all parts of the country, teach-

Education 51
ers were coming to see and to learn the new methods of teach
ing. The Model School was turned into a school for teach
ers. Luabscher translated from the German some of the most
popular of Froebel's pedagogical literature. He also published
an educational paper, The School Teacher. To understand the
extent of the influence of Luabscher it is enough to know that
he was General Superintendent of Schools in the northern State
of Chichuahua, Principal of the Normal School in the State of
Oaxaca, and was inaugurating his educational activities in the
Federal District when he died. His colleague and friend, En
rique Rebsamen, undoubtedly has had a stronger influence than
he. Rebsamen is the father of the modern Normal School in
Mexico. He was called from the Model School at Orizaba
to the capital of the State, and there, in the beautiful city of
Jalapa, with the unconditional help of the progressive Governor
of the State, he founded a Normal School that is now famous
in the educational annals of Mexico. Rebsamen displayed, in
that school, his fine qualities as an educator. For more than a
decade the teachers that came from that school were sent,
under urgent appeals from the respective governments of the
States, throughout the whole republic, to organize the school
systems, to found Normal Schools, etc.16 The educational
publication of the Normal School of Jalapa, El Mexico Intel
lectual, was the leading pedagogical paper of the country. Reb
samen himself was called by General Diaz to Mexico City.
Conscious of the honor bestowed upon him, he consented to
leave his school, which he loved so dearly and which no previous
offer of any kind could make him leave.
Enrique Rebsamen contributed more than anyone else to form
a body of educational theories, mostly of Herbaffan origin, to
direct our school practices, until that time merely empirics.
The Normal School of Puebla, founded in 1881, and the Normal
School of Mexico, founded in 1887, were in some measure also
contributors, but none had the influence of the school of Jalapa.
To-day there is a normal school in the capital of each State, and
the German pedagogy is familiar to most of them. There were

16 Some of the Normal Schools established by Rebsamen's pupils are the Normal School of
Oaxaca, established by A. Castellanos; the Normal School of Guanajuato, established by
Enrique Paniagua; the Normal School of Chihuahua, established by F. Reyes and Alconedo;
the Normal School of Tabasco, established by H. Gil; and several others I cannot remember
just now.

52 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
some Mexicans too among the pioneers of educational theory,
such as Carrillo and Flores. In the National Congress of Educa
tion, held in 1889 and 1890 at Mexico City, in which every
State of the Republic was represented, for the first time it was
shown that the country had at last real educators. For the
first time also, in Mexico, educational practice and legislation
were discussed according to sound principles of psychology and
philosophy of education. For the first time Mexico, as a nation,
took up her problems of education and thought about and dis
cussed them.
In the school laws enacted in 1900 there were evidences of
the activities just referred to. According to these laws, "the16
Instruceion Primaria shall be divided into Elemental Education
(four years) and Superior Education (two years) ; Supplementary
Schools shall be created, to give elemental instruction to those
individuals who have not got it, during school age, and, to com
plete or extend the work of these schools, Complementary Schools
shall be erected to give some technical knowledge to the work
man." The aim of the education shall be "First, Physical Education,
to fortify the body and to procure its perfect development;
second, Intellectual Education, to invigorate the intelligence and
give to the pupils knowledge that is indispensable; third, Moral
Education, which tends to perfect the individuals, making them
noble and useful to the community. In this way shall be united
in a person knowledge, kindness, and health."17 In the cur
riculum besides the three R's other new subjects are found,
such as civic instruction, drawing, nature-study, gymnastics,
military exercises, and singing. In the Superior School (gram
mar), French and English, natural history, physiology, hygiene,
and notions of political economy, manual work for boys and
domestic labors for girls.
Method: "-The teachings must be essentially practical. The
lessons in the sciences shall be given by means of presenting
phenomena themselves, by means of experiments, or the proper
objects if possible. The class must be oral. Daily work shall
be six hours and each class period of forty-five minutes. Thurs
days shall be devoted to excursions to get specimens to make

18 La Noticia del Ministerio de Educacion, Mexico, 1900; p. 2.
" Op. cit., p. 7-

Education 53
collections, to visit factories, mines, agricultural establishments,
and historical places and monuments." "No corporal or de
grading punishments shall be allowed." The whole educational
system of the District and the Territories is in charge of the
Minister of Education in the Federal District and is run under
the technical direction of a General Director of Public Educa
tion and a staff of superintendents and medical inspectors.
There is, too, a "Council of Vigilance," formed by citizens to
enforce this compulsory attendance of pupils and to fine the
parents who fail to comply with the said law.
Statistics: The number of schools at that time in the Federal
District under the supervision of the Government was:
Official Schools in the Federal District and Territories 454 with 55,732 pupils
Private Schools  66 with 4,432 pupils
Catholic Church Schools  15 with 2,544 pupils
Schools of other denominations  14 with 833 pupils
Total  549 with 63,541 pupils18
The school budget in 1900 was $875,634.40.
All the data given here and the quotations were obtained from
the "Brief Notice of the Public Education in Mexico" sent to
the Paris Exposition in 1900 by the Minister of Education.
Present School Conditions
Since 1900, the school system and, in general, the cause of
education have made great progress. In 1900 the Secretary of
Public Education was also the Secretary of Justice. Later the
Minister of Public Education was made a separate office, and
at the head of this important post a man of great ability, wis
dom, and love for the cause of the education was placed. Don
Justo Sierra is the founder of the modern educational system
of Mexico. He surrounded himself with men of high records in
the educational field, such as Rebsamen, Chavez, Flores, and
placed each one in his special line of work. Sierra reorganized
the National University and brought to Mexico professors from
Europe, as Dr. H. Keller, of Berlin, and the United States.
Among those called from this country were Professor F. Boas,
of Columbia University, Dr. L. Rowe, of Philadelphia, and the
'¦ Total school population of the Federal District and Territories was estimated (1900's
Census) as 149,270!

54 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
psychologist, Dr. W. M. Baldwin. The Minister, J. Sierra,
raised the salaries of all schoolteachers according to their scholar
ship and established pensions of retirement for them.20 He sent
young men to study education in Europe and the United States.
At the end of the school year of 1910-11, the school budget for
the Federal District and Territories was raised from little less
than one million in 1900 to $4,010,426! There were 72 school
inspectors, 534 Elemental Schools, 5 Kindergartens, 46 Superior
(Grammar Schools), and 44 Supplementary Schools (Night
Schools) for workmen who have not completed their elementary
education. There were also "Complementary Schools to give
some technical and useful knowledge to the laborers, clerks, and
tradesmen" — a kind of Continuation School. A School of Com
merce for men and another for women were erected and three
Primary Industrial Schools began to function. The Primary
Education Department published a magazine of education, the
Normal School Department had another magazine to discuss
subjects relating to its line of activities, and the Minister edited
a Bulletin of Education.
The pedagogical insight that animated this educational
"renaissance" in Mexico is best shown by the spirit of its legis
lation. In the first Article of the Law of Primary Education,
given the 15th of August, 1908, it is stated that "The Official
Primary Schools shall be essentially educative; the instruction
in them shall be considered only as a means to education."21
"Art. Second — The Primary Education shall be National,
that is, it shall aim to develop in all the children a love for the
Mother Country and its institutions; its purpose shall be to
contribute to her progress and the betterment of her inhabit
ants. It shall be integral, that is, shall tend to produce simul
taneously in the pupils the moral, physical, intellectual, and
esthetic development. It shall be laic, that is, shall be neutral
regarding all religious beliefs and abstain itself, therefore, from
teaching, defending, or attacking any of them. The primary
education shall be, besides, free."
Regarding the curriculum, few changes were made in the list
of subjects that constituted it. The changes were mainly in the

10 See Anuarios Escolares, Art. 21, p. is.
11 Art. la Las Escuelas oficiales primarias s6ran esencialmente educativas; la instruceion,
en ellas se considerara solo como un medio de Educacion," p. 5.

Education 55
new point of view and method with which some subjects should
be presented. In geography, for instance, it is recommended
that the productions of the country shall be predominant in
the mind of the teachers, rather than the names and location of
hundreds of dry names. The history must be developed bio-
graphically in the first school grades, etc., etc. In Article 9 it
is stated that, "There shall be established in the schools, or
where it is more convenient, (a) Playgrounds, (b) Bath houses,
(c) Workshops for manual and industrial work, (d) Fields of
cultivation for agricultural studies, and (e) Household arts
laboratories where the girls may study domestic economy in
its relations to home hygiene, cooking, and washing."22
The elementary education was extended to another year,
making it five years instead of four, the school age being from
six to fourteen years. "The failure of the parents to send their
children to school shall be punished with a fine not exceeding
$500 or imprisonment not exceeding a month." The local
authorities have the duty of enforcing this law and inflicting
these penalties. "The said authorities shall make it easy for
the pupils to go to school, giving them assistance in form of
transportation and even helping the children with food and
clothes when such measure is indispensable for the regular at
tendance at school."
In Article 16 it is stated that "The executive shall establish
special schools and special teachers for children of deficient
physical, intellectual, or moral development."
Such are, in brief outline, the school laws that were enacted
by the Diaz Administration, under the inspiration of the Min
ister of Public Education, Justo Sierra, on August 15, 1908 —
almost on the eve of the Revolution. All the given extracts of
laws and data regarding the number of schools, etc., were taken
from the "School Annal of the Secretary of Public Instruction
— Primary Education, 1910-1911, Mexico."23
I was disappointed not to find in the School Annals, or any
where else, statistics referring to the school enrollment and at
tendance during the years of 1910 and 191 1. I asked for in-

22 With exception of the establishment of bath houses and fields for cultivation and agricul
tural studies; all other reforms were carried out, mostly in our "Superior Schools" (Grammar).
^Anuarios Escolares de la Secretaria de Instruceion Publica y Bellas Artes — Education
Primaria, Mexico, 1900-n.

56 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
formation from Mexico, and received some copies of the official
paper El Diario Oficial, in which some statistics of the kind that
I wanted were to be found. Such statistics were, however, of
more recent date (1912-13) and, although scanty, they are a
revelation, because they show that, in spite of the turmoil and
war that is raging over the country, still the work of education is
going on and some faithful still keep the sacred fire burning in
the temple of Athena.
School Enrollment in the Federal District and Territories for the
Academic Year 1912-1913 Pupils
Elementary and Superior Schools  100,027
Kindergarten Schools  1.653
Private Schools  8,062
Trades and Commercial Schools  3,078
Complementary and Special Schools for workmen (mostly night
schools)  11,891
Supplementary Schools (night schools)  9,130
Total enrollment  133.83154
The school budget for 1912-1913 was $5,630,383.09.
During the last decade the Government began to realize the
importance of education. This is clearly shown by a simple
comparison :
In 1900, the school enrollment was  63,541 pupils
In 1912, in the midst of the Revolution, it was  133.831 pupils
In 1900, when everything was prosperous, the school budget was $875,634.40
In 1912, when all was ruin and destruction, the school budget
was  $5,630,383-09
So far, I have treated only the educational activities in the
Federal District and the Territories under the direct control of
the Federal Government. But the Mexican Republic is com
posed of twenty-seven independent states, in which the educa
tional policy is a local affair. Most of them copy or try to imi
tate the Central Government, thus giving certain uniformity to
the educational system in the Republic. Nevertheless, those
states are too handicapped by the lack of money and expert direc-
" There are no data available regarding the total school population in 1912-13.

Education

57

tion to accomplish much. Therefore, the illiteracy in the whole
Mexican Republic is appalling. In the last decade progress has
been made in the school crusade, but, unhappily, there are no
statistics by which to judge clearly such progress. In order to
give an eloquent idea of the immensity of the problem of educa
tion in Mexico, I am going to close this informational part of
my work with a statistical table — the dry and significant elo
quence of the numbers — showing the illiteracy in Mexico, taken
from the Census of 1900. TABLE I

Persons 12 Years of Age or Over Who Can
Neither Read or Write

Persons Less than 12
Years Who Can Neither
Read nor Write

Sections

Male

Female

Total

Male

Female

Total

Central States 
Northern States 

1,457,276 245,021 398,532
1,019,115

i.77i,59i 250,555465,619
1,176,915

3,228,867 495,573 864,151
2,196,030

874,743 186,938
306,718 750,444

837,445 176,849
284,638 711,367

1,712,188 363,787591,356

Pacific Coast States. .

1,461,811

Total 

3,119,944

3,664,680

6,784,621

2,010,293

2,010,299

4,129,142

Persons Concerning Whom Information
Could Not be Obtained

Persons Who Can Read
and Write

Sfctions

Male

Female

Total

Male

Female

Total

Central States 
Northern States 
Gulf States 

57,86l i,554 556
16,457

67,598 2,011 506
19,449

125,002 3,578 1,062
35.906

601,147 158,379164,873
348,926

401,545 129,398115,214
260,106

1,002,692 287,777 280,080

Pacific Coast States. .

609,032

Total 

76,438

89,564

165,645

1,273,325

906,263

2,179,581

58

Mexico: Its Educational Problems
RESUME

Sections

Inhabitants

Persons Who Can
Read and Write

6,239,038 1. 174.341
1,756,006
4.437.874

1,002,692 207,777280,087609,032

Northern States 

Total 
13.607,259
2,179,588
In order to give an idea of the progress that has been made
in the educational campaign for the last decade, I have pre
sented some statistical data from the Federal District. To ac
complish the same with the rest of the Republic, I am giving
the Statistics of Elementary Schools for the period of 1874-
1907, which were gathered by the Minister of Public Education
in Mexico City. This is the only available material that was
found for this purpose:
Table II — Statistics of Elementary Schools, 1874-1907

Section

Total Population

Estimated School Popula
tion

Number of Pub
lic Primary
Schools

Number of Pri
vate Primary
Schools

Total Number of
Public and Pri
vate Primary
Schools

Central States 

1874 igoo
4.539.940 6,239,038
567,325 1,174,341
1,231,388 1,756,006
3,004,217 4,437,879

1874 igoo
907,986 1,247,904
113,463 334,867
246,277 351,195
600,963 891,995

1874 igoo
3,336 4,800
376 924
702 1,469
1.575 2,517

1874 igo7
1,160 1,116
185 226
100 194
694 694

1874 1907
4-496 5,916
561 1,150
802 1 ,663
2,269 3,211

Northern States 

Gulf States 

Total 

9,342,870 13,607,229

1,868,689 2,725,963

5.989 9.7io

2,139 2,230

8,128 11,940 tq

Enrollment
e™„„,s 1.8
Sections
Public Primary
Schools
Private Primary
Schools
Public and Private Primary
Schools
For Public Primary
Schools
Central States 
1874 1Q07
91,148 . 305,836
18,832 74,763
27,758 87,502
36,057 161,380
1874 1907
16,806 70,269
3,626 14,118
3,212 13,615
6,105 49,139
1874 igo7
203,111 ',">«"', 1*376,105
22,458 i3j ji 88,881
33,670 3£i,if- 101,117
84.654 ?},;< 210,519
18 74 igo7
465,368 2,305,839
70,456 598,391
42,648 561,914
167,039 796,744
Gulf States 
Total 
173,795 629,481
28.8zLO IJ.7.I4I
343 8O' 77n.(«9
74.,i.,nII 1 ->&-> 888 »—
CO
60 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
Needs of the Mexican Schools
Regarding the educational policy in general: The statistics
given elsewhere in this work, in connection with the illiteracy
in Mexico, are a vivid proof that the most pressing need of the
nation is the speedy education of its ignorant masses. Mexico
is anxious for schools, many schools, under competent technical
direction. Some states are able to take care of themselves,
such as Puebla, Vera Cruz, Jalisco; they are commercial or in
dustrial states and are financially able to carry out a vigorous
educational policy. But the great majority of the states of the
Republic are unable to do so. The majority of their inhabitants
are engaged in agriculture, working as simple laborers, and
usually poorly paid. The school funds are collected by personal
taxation; each individual gives a few cents. The lands do not
pay school taxes. Most of these states are thinly populated;
so the school fund is very small. On the other hand, the Federal
Government is usually strong financially, has better schools to
train teachers, and at the head of the department of Public
Education in the Federal District are educators of experience
,/ and culture. Therefore, the nationalization of the system of
primary education, organized, supervised, and partly controlled
by the Federal Government should be the first step of the nation
al educational policy in Mexico.
/ For the Indian schools the absolute control by the Federal
Government is necessary; but, for a great system of national
primary education, only part of the authority and control should
be under the Central Government. The parents should have
the right to see how their children are educated and, since the
people of the town must also help in the sustenance of the school,
they have the right to see how their money is spent. So the
local authorities and the people of the community should feel
and actually have responsibilities and rights regarding their
local school policy. The Federal Government should help
financially and encourage professionally, but should not take
care of the school entirely. The people must have an interest
in their school and it is natural to take more interest in that
which is costing us.
The Federal Government shall be in a position to exercise
and make felt its influence, mostly through technical supervision

Education 61
and professional advice, keeping in mind that thoughtful sug
gestions are often more effective than sharp commands. For
the teachers and pupils, the Central Federal Office will be a
source of inspiration, by bringing to them the best pedagogical
literature and school materials. One of the dangers of a cen
tralized system of education is that it tends to kill the person
ality and initiative of the teacher and pupils, when too many
orders are given, when everything must be done according to
prescribed regulations. The Federal superintendent has many
chances to foster the initiative of his teachers; for instance, by
giving them the minimum of provisions instead of the maxi
mum, thus leaving an open field to exercise their personality.
If the teachers know that they have voice and vote in their
schools and are not merely parts of a machinery, their work
will improve and their co-operation will be sincere.
The territory of the Republic is so extensive and the interests
and activities in the different states so different that the courses
of study necessarily should be different. Each state might have
its own textbooks and adequate materials, according to the
local needs and conditions.
But there is one thing in which uniformity is a requisite
which should be kept in the foreground in planning a great
national system of education. Every pupil must come out of
his school, no matter where it is located, a real Mexican. Every
pupil should have the consciousness of the national territory and'
fondly keep the same national ideals of historic solidarity, the
same love for the national literature. There should be uni
formity in ideals of patriotism and devotion to the Mother Country,
so that the child from the Pacific Coast can feel the same thrill
before the Mexican flag as the child from the Gulf Coast.
The direction of such a great school system is a difficult task,
but a level-headed, thoroughly trained, and professional edu
cator at the wheel is enough to insure the success in the work
of the whole educational system. One of the defects of the
schools in Mexico is that the amateurs in education, or dilet
tantes in pedagogy, have often been the heads of the schools
and pf the high educational offices.
In the United States, where the States are so jealous of their
local independence, there is a growing feeling among the lead
ing educators that the educational centralization, at least of

62 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
some type of educational institutions such as vocational schools,
is becoming necessary.
The school policy and educational officers must keep out of
politics. The directing heads and superintendents in the De
partment of Education should owe their positions to their pro
fessional training and personal character and ability and not to
political favors. These employees should be protected by
adequate laws, so as to feel easy and free in their tasks and be
able to put all their energies and minds upon them. Incompe
tency and negligence should be the reasons for their removal.
No one puts his whole soul into his work if he knows that per
haps tomorrow he and his efforts will be carried away in the
oblivion of a political change. In a huge national centralized
school system, lack of stability in educational policy of the
Federal Government is a calamity. The technical direction of
educational affairs, therefore, should not be changed with ins
and outs in politics. The School
Some ideas have been given already of the modern conception
of education and the function of the school; however, it is well
to add a few statements regarding the schools in Mexico. In
the eagerness to have modern schools, there is in Mexico a kind
of mania of imitation, trying to do what is being done in the
schools of Europe or the United States, thus overlooking the
needs of Mexico's own national education. Our first duty is to
?'make our course of study national, our didactic material
Mexican; in one word, to make our schools ours. There is, no
doubt, a good and noble idea in this "mania" to do what is
being done in the best schools, but, as Dr. Dewey says, "A work
ing model is not something to be copied ; it is to afford a demon
stration of the feasibility of the principle and of the methods
which make it feasible." Indeed, the Mexican teachers must
study, observe, and profit from the experiences of other educa
tors. It is one of the blessings of civilization, to be able to share
the successful experiences of the advanced nations. But they
must assimilate those experiences and make them their own
"flesh" as the Englishman does the sweetmeat of the sheep of
the Argentine pampas. If they know the ideals of a modern
school, the absurdity of some of their school activities will be
evident.

Education 63
The school life and work should reflect the activities of the
community. The schools act "as agencies to bring home to
the child some of the primal necessities of the community," says
Dr. Dewey, or, he adds, "as instrumentalities through which
the school itself shall be made a genuine form of active com
munity life instead of a place set apart in which to learn lessons."
The greatest need of the Mexican schools is to bring them
close to the people of the community, not only from the point
of view of their occupations, but from the social side too. The
relations between the school and the home have been practically
nil. The press and the public must be interested in the school
through its social activities. The ideals that the child gets at
the school are unknown to the family and ignored by all, out
side of the school walls. The Mexican school has been an
"island of knowledge," mainly engaged "in training the mind,
in disciplining the faculties, in making perception and reason
keener." The doctrine of formal discipline in its full meaning,
never has had a better home!
The excellent criticism that Dr. George Kerschensteiner,
Superintendent of Schools in Munich, makes of the school can
be very well applied to our own Mexican schools.26 "During
the period of elementary school age, as in his previous childhood
years, the pupil is by no means disposed merely to listen and
passively to take in the knowledge of others. The tendencies
of the human being at this period are toward work, occupation,
doing, testing, experimenting, personal experience, in order to
learn incessantly through the medium of actuality. The chil
dren are all initiative. They discover new fields for the in
dulgence of. their desire for occupation and forget all the world
in its exercise. Ninety per cent of them, in spite of every effort
of book education, prefer by far any practical occupation to
silent abstract thought and reflection. Only when other peoples'
knowledge contributes to success in their efforts do they prick
up their ears to listen; then they devour books! In the work
shop and in the kitchen, in the garden and in the field, in the
stable and in the fishing boat, they are ever ready to work.
These hundreds of accomplishments are developed and appre
hended by the unconscious muscular sense; there they feel,

"This quotation was taken from a translation made in the Report of Commissioner of
Education, 1909. Vol. I.

64 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
above all, the pulsations of social life in their own activities.
There they become conscious of the relations which the com
munity life establishes between persons, and of the dependence
of the smaller upon the greater, as well as of the greater upon
the smaller . . . . !
"And now the school opens its doors. Gone is every occupa
tion that had engaged the whole child; gone are the activities
of home, of -workshop, of kitchen, of stable, of garden, of field.
Gone are all digging, building, making, every activity— gone
the whole world of the child. A new world, world with a hun
dred riddles and incomprehensible demands and purposes, stands
before him. Instead of sand pile, the building blocks, the
hammer, the whip — slate, pencil, primer, ruler, instead of merry
chatting and romancing — silence and listening, instead of merry
bustle in road and street — sitting still and holding fast, instead
of common enterprise under freely chosen leaders — solidarity,
prescribed tasks, instead of helping the weak neighbor — deliber
ate isolation that he may not copy. Is it surprising if the little
ones at first stand aghast and feel lost, if they become reticent
instead of open minded, if their thoughts roam far away beyond
the four walls of the schoolroom in spite of the best intentions,
in spite of admonitions and punishments?"
I close the subject of the school, leaving in the mind the
above quotation, that speaks volumes of sane pedagogy and is
so rich in valuable suggestions regarding the activities of the
school. The Teacher
The teaching profession needs love and affection as well as
professional knowledge. To feel affection for the children and to
be able to follow or lead them sympathetically in their wander
ings for "sweetness and light, " is one of the conditions of a good
teacher. There is another indispensable requisite that in our
days the successful teacher must have — knowledge, professional
and general. To teach well, the teacher must know well. This
is a point that should be treated in connection with the Mexican
teachers. There is no need to emphasize here the obvious im
portance of a teacher clean in body and mind and heart, whose
manners, character, and whole personality should be an at
tractive example for the pupils to imitate, in whose serene and

Education 65
fatherly eyes the children can see themselves with respectful
delight, and think, longingly, "If I could only be like him!"
When this reaction has been accomplished, half of the battle
has been won; and I am tempted to say that the whole battle
has been won! The spiritual union of the pupil and the teacher
is completed.
But to return to the problem of knowledge in relation to the
Mexican teachers. The majority of my colleagues in Mexico
must agree with this charge that I am going to make against the
Mexican teachers. That is, that the ninety per cent of them
lack the ambition for better training. The great majority of
the teachers, as soon as they leave the normal school, if they
have been in any, never touch again a book of psychology or
pedagogy or even a magazine of education. The scanty knowl
edge that they got in their student days remains the only bag
gage for their professional work throughout life. It is unneces
sary for me to tell the result of such attitude in our educational
work. Even the teachers who have had normal school training,
what do they know when they leave the normal school? Little
of everything and nothing well. They have these advantages
over the "empirical" teachers. They possess that "pedantry
which shields ignorance from exposure," and are "experts in
the art of seeming wise with empty minds."
The fault is mostly, of course, in the schools; although there
are and have been in the faculties men of great erudition and
knowledge, the majority of them are not educators and very
few know anything about the science of education and under
stand its practice. A great many of the "professors" are the
debris of other professions or have failed in their business and
have taken refuge in a school. Their ability and scholarship
are evidenced in the form of a "letter of introduction" from
some political influence, that it is often wise to acknowledge.
So a fine morning they find themselves teaching a subject which
they hardly know! Of course, they hastily read a few books
on the subject, try to look wise, and hide their ignorance with
empty phraseology, of which the Latin peoples are so fond.
Finally, acting upon the belief that every man has instinctively
a little of the teacher in him, such "professors" end by think
ing themselves real teachers.

66 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
In education, the theory should always be the scientific side
of the practice; the scientific theory should be mostly the prac
tice condensed and crystallized. How can some of those pro
fessors, who never have seen a schoolroom since their childhood,
be anything but failures in preparing efficient school teachers?
Mexico has some excellent modern normal schools, with an
up-to-date equipment. Dr. L. Rowe says in his report on edu
cation in Mexico that "the Normal School of Mexico City is
thoroughly equipped and modern in every respect."26 There is
something more; there are plenty of scholarships for the young
students who care to study in the normal schools. But the
teachings in these schools are almost "metaphysical," in which
there "are definitions of human faculties, old theories of mind
inherited from the pedagogic fathers." As G. Stanley Hall
says, "The departments of human knowledge are classified,
correlated, co-ordinated, and educational value is discussed in
an abstract way, with an aloofness for detailed externality that
is an anachronism in a concrete age, while the cult of Herbart
and Froebel flourishes as a finality instead of a prologue to a
great drama now well on its first act.27
The remedies for these evils are : first of all, the establishment
of a higher normal school or teachers' college to train professors.
In such a school, of course, there must be departments of all
branches of education to form specialists, such as a department
of educational psychology, another of history and philosophy of
education, another of school administration, etc. Each depart
ment must be under the head of an able staff of assistants.
Second, to modify our normal school curriculum and make it
more professional, so the teachers will know by theory and
personal observation something about play, habit, imitation,
environmental influences, heredity, evolution, juvenile ab
normalities, etc., and perhaps less about Froebel's symbolic
pedagogical philosophy or Pestalozzi's educational lyricisms.
Indeed, it is more useful for the teachers to know what the
Mexican Indians beyond the hills do and need than to spend
much time to become familiar with what a Spartan boy did two
thousand years ago. Third, the educational authorities should
promote summer schools and teachers' institutes, educational

'•Educational Report, 1911, p. 488.
" Adolescence, Vol. II. p. 496.

Education 67
lectures by specialists, national educational conventions; en
courage pedagogical literature; reward scholarship systematic
ally; and establish examinations for promotions. The prin
cipals of the schools and superintendents should keep their teach
ers alive professionally by grade meetings of teachers of ad
jacent grades, subject meetings, round table meetings, classes
for definite instruction, exhibitions of work, visiting days, etc.
It would be a surprise to many Mexican teachers to know that
in my graduate courses in this University I have, just now,
several classmates over fifty years of age, and many around the
forties, and this year is not an exception, nor is this college in
this respect. Curriculum
There are two sides to be considered regarding the arrange
ment of the courses of study, the social and the psychological.
From the social point of view, the needs and standards of the
community should give the key for the selection of materials,./
which shall be in accordance with the current social conditions.
Utility in its broadest, ethical, aesthetic and material senses
shall be the ultimate end. From the psychological point of
view, the range of activities must be considered; the individual
whose growth is going to be stimulated should be taken into
account. From the social side, the interest is centered in the
body of knowledge to be acquired, to put the pupils in close
relation with the social, economic, and ethical conditions of their
community, and here in its broad outlines the course of study
should be mandatory. From the psychological side, the work in
the school shall be taken "as method of life" and according to
the varying capacities of the children. Here the course of
study shall be suggestive as to details, methods, and materials.
Of course, both sides melt into each other. In nature nothing
stands alone; everything in life is correlated: so, if we want the
school to be an epitome of life, the courses of study, as well as
the activities springing from them, should be related.
Applying the above discussion to the conditions in Mexico,
I should say that the broad policy in selecting the subject matter
must have as its aim to increase the earning capacity of thei/
ignorant Mexican masses, as a necessary condition to raise them
in their ideals of life. In the present epoch, nobody has culture

68 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
who does not know how to work. In the rural community, where
the only chance of learning something is to be had in the short
school life, the pupil should get there some "vocational hints,"
which will enable him to develop later by himself an increasing
efficiency to earn his living. These vocational suggestions must
tend to improve the agriculture labor and methods in the rural
schools and emphasize the industrial side in the urban schools.
Regarding the method, considering the training of the majority
of the Mexican teachers, the conclusion as to their methods can
easily be drawn. Yes, the Mexican teachers in Mexico have
also the mania to ask the children to reason everything; they
have, too, the obsession for formal steps, and "analysis" of
processes that the child should never analyze. They have the
"madness" of over-explanations! "The soul," says Stanley
Hall, protesting against this over-care regarding methods, so-
called rational or logical, "naturally storms its way to the cen
ter of things with a rapid impetuosity, but the methodaster and
macerator blunts the intuitions, the best thing in youth drags down
thoughts that fly and makes them 'crawl at a slow, senescent
pace.'" Furthermore, the Mexican schools have almost entirely
abolished text-books — with the exception of those in language.
The classes are oral, that is, we have, too, "the passion for
oral instruction that carried to excess forces the children to
listen to so many vain words constantly forgotten and distorted
and often not worth remembering!" "Is not reading," asks Dr.
Steege, "the surest means of acquiring the indispensable ele
ments of history, science, reading, and grammar? Because the
book was formerly abused by making it a mere instrument of
mechanical reading, it should not be to-day discarded as useless.
Books speak a language more precise, reliable, profound, and
more moving than the majority of teachers. They contain the
treasure of knowledge and experience acquired by the human
race. It is not pretended that this intellectual and moral
treasure can be imparted to every pupil, but it is possible to
give everyone the key to it, to make it familiar to him, and to
excite his interest in it. Then, when he leaves school, although
he may forget much that he has learned there, he will have a
taste for study and will possess the essential means of learn
ing." (Educational Report, 1909, p. 414.)

CHAPTER IV
NATIONAL CHARACTER
The individuals of a well-constituted society have a soul, a
character, that distinguish them from the individuals of other
societies. The combined influences of language, customs, and
traditions make a Frenchman different from an Englishman or
a German. A homogeneity in race and culture gives to the
French people, already forming a political body, a national
character. Has Mexico a national character?
"Wherever a community," says Bryce, "has both political
independence and a distinctive character recognizable in its
members, we call it a nation. Applying such a test to the
Spanish American republics, some of them, such as Mexico,
Argentine, and Chile, are undeniably nations."1
Certainly the Mexicans as individuals possess certain typical
characteristics. But, as a nation, Mexico has not yet a strong
national character, because it has not a crystallized culture of
its own; because, as every young nation in full period of trans
ition and fusion, some of the features of its national type are
in an embryonic stage.
Throughout this paper I have described some of the elements
— racial, social, and cultural — which are influencing the nais-
sant character of the new nation.
Let us single out, for the study of the Mexican character,
that type of Mexicans whose psychological traits are less dif
fuse; those who belong to the not very large group in whom
homogeneity in race and culture is more or less an accomplished
fact, those whose similarity in ideals makes of them, also, a
moral social unity. I am referring to that type that, outside
of Mexico, would be called in general Latin-American.

1 Bryce, op. cit., p. 425. 69

70 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
The Mexicans have, with more or less definiteness, as have
all Latin-Americans, the features of the Spanish character.
Their psychology is practically the same.
The Mexicans have striking characteristics. They possess a
keen sense-perception and their conceptions are rapid. Their
power of intuition is remarkable. Their reasoning is quick;
they seize the idea and react mentally upon it quickly, or do
not react at all. "One marked national characteristic of the
Latin- American," says Crichfield, "is his marvelous develop
ment of the sense-perception and extraordinary keenness of
mind; his mind is as sharp as a razor and as keen as the point
of a sword."2
Perhaps due to this "mental impulsiveness," they often lack
method in their reasoning and want in thoroughness. To keep
their minds busy they must have, like children, new subjects
always before them. Persistence in one task, intellectual or
manual, which becomes mechanical and monotonous, exasper
ates them. It is this craving to do something new and to
change that makes an American with experience in Spanish
America say that "if an uncultured Latin- American be placed
with a machine one of the two things must happen, either the
Latin-American will ruin the machine or the machine will kill
the Latin- American."
Their capacities, hard pressed by a powerful imagination, are
unable to sustain effort in one single direction at a time. The
imagination puts wings to their ideas and they soon fly, leaving
the world of realities behind. It was a Latin that called the
imagination "la loca de la casa." Being imaginative, the
Mexican is frequently an idealist and a dreamer; this is the only
thing in which he is persistent in his idealism. His artistic
temperament makes him respond keenly to any aesthetic mani
festation. He loves form and elegant diction in literary expres
sions. That is why French literature is so at home in Mexico.
"French literature," says Bryce, "has a double attraction for
Latin- Americans. It gratifies their fondness for graceful and
pointed and rhetorical expression. Spaniards, like Frenchmen,
love style and French style has for them a peculiar charm.
They have an intellectual affinity for France, for the brightness

2 Crichfield, American Supremacy, Vol. I, Chap. XXV.

National Character 71
of her ideas, the gaiety of her spirit, the finish of her literary
methods, and the quality of her sentiments."3
The reaction of these mental qualities upon the ordinary life
is too well known. They have been the source of our back
wardness commercially and industrially. We are an anach
ronism in this intensely industrial epoch. The "bohemian"
contempt of the Mexicans and, in general, of the Latin peoples,
for common and ordinary work, and a decided disposition to
avoid the prosaic commandment, " In the sweat of thy face shalt
thou eat bread," is proverbial.
"The Mexicans are 'impractical,'" say the Americans, "and
unable to undertake solid enterprises," and they, full of charity,
take care of our mines and railroads. "The Mexicans are men
of chivalry and poetry and not men of affairs," say the English
men, Germans, Frenchmen, etc., and they, with a lovely spirit
of helpfulness, take charge of practically all our commercial and
industrial enterprises. And we, with our manners of grand
seigneur and hidalga countenance, showing that there are some
drops of Don Quixote's blood in our veins, pass along, in an
imaginary aloofness, looking down with an Olympic contempt
on these modern Phoenicians, who placidly smile at our empty
pockets and sometimes empty stomachs!
But, after all, which are the happier? Mr. Bryce, trying to
be mild on our weak points, says, "They are not fond of commer
cial business. The process of money making has not for them
that fatal attraction which enslaves so many capable men in the
United States."
The emotional responsiveness of the Mexicans is striking,
but their moods change suddenly. Their enthusiasms are
"fire in straw," their passionate impulses are like "Soap bubbles."
They are very excitable and prone to act rashly under the im
pulses of the moment. The defects springing out of these
characteristics are obvious. Feelings apart from intelligence
lead to sentimentalism, to blind action.
To sum up, I am going to quote the lucid opinion of Dr.
Speer.1 "Speaking generally," he says, "the Latin-Americans
are warm-hearted, courteous, friendly, kind, patriotic to the

• Bryce, of. cit., p. 519.
* R. E. Speer, South America, p. 73.

72 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
very soul, but the tone, the vigor, the moral bottom, the hard
veracity, the indomitable purpose, the energy, the directness of
the Teutonic people are lacking in them."
Yes, and we do not only lack directness and stubborness in
the work, but we are lacking in the sense of personal respon
sibility and ambition to improve our work. We forget that we
live in a world in which only the people of energy and indomit
able purpose are the victors. The old Spanish slogan, "labor is
for plebeians," has gone for ever, and in this commercial and
industrial epoch culture in its broad sense includes activity,
ability to work, to produce, and to create.
As long as we shirk from the hardships of commercial, in
dustrial, or agricultural work and instead look for "soft snap,"
and are willing to fossilize ourselves in the semi-repose of a
public office, or go into the literary professions — thus "spoiling
a successful shoemaker in the making of a poor lawyer, or to
waste ten years to make ourselves useless" — our country will
drag along painfully.
Who is going to work to change this Latin attitude toward
labor and life in general? The family? It is doubtful. The
old Spanish prejudice against trades and commercialism as an
occupation has been inherited and is deeply rooted in our par
ents. They are the first who wish rather to see their sons starv
ing as lawyers than prosperous as storekeepers. They fondly
do their best to keep their sons from toil and hardship in their
preparation for life. Their lives are easy and their road smooth.
How can a young man raised under those conditions face the
battle of life courageously and successfully? Thus the Latin-
American boy or young man is ever dependent and is always
looking toward his parents or the government for help and
using his father as a crutch to walk through life.
How much we have to learn from the Teutonic peoples in this
respect! They push their sons into the scrap for life, as the
duck pushes its offspring into the water. Franklin wrote to his
wife, regarding his son, "He must be disabused and shown that
at the rate I am spending my money there will be nothing left
for him."
If the Latin-American fathers could only be persuaded to
take the same attitude!

National Character 73
Can the Church Help Us in This Respect}
There is no doubt that religious ideas can influence men deeply.
"They are the only forces that can influence character in a
rapid manner," says LeBon, but what has the Church in Mexico
done? In her stubbornness to stick to some old dogmas and
traditions, in her absolute refusal to meet modern conditions
and ideas half way, she has left the uneducated believers in the
most hopeless fanaticism and the educated classes in the darkest
of agnosticisms. We have allowed our old gods to die and our
faith is tottering! And the great culprit has been our Church.
We are not irreligious, "gods are not immortals, but religious
spirit is eternal." But the Catholic Church has refused to come
up with us into the modern world and civilization and we have
been left alone. We are now too grown up to believe in "fairy
tales," and this is the method by which our Church has en
deavored hopelessly to keep in our hearts the most beautiful
and dearest thing in a soul, faith.
Mexico needs a religious readjustment. We need a renais
sance in our faith and beliefs. "History shows us," says LeBon,
"that people do not long survive the disappearance of their
gods. The civilization that is born with them also dies with
them. There is nothing so destructive as the dust of dead gods."*
But if our old "gods" are dead our God is alive. The spirit of
Christianity is too deep in our hearts and too dear to our souls
to fade away. How are we going to reorganize our beliefs?
Protestantism perhaps? Oh, no! The missionaries that go to
Mexico might keep this in mind. Mexico as a nation will be
Protestant only when the New Englanders have bull-fights
every Sunday!
But I am getting away from my topic. I wanted only to
remark that our Church cannot help us to modify our present
morals. So here, as in many other social problems in Mexico, the
School is the only potent factor of reform. I am well aware of
the fact that the school, everywhere, is only a part and at the
best not a large part, as a means of moral education. But in
Mexico the school must lead, direct, and inspire not only its
pupils, but the other powerful moral agencies, such as the

'LeBon, op. cit., p. 191, for all his quotations on religion,

74 Mexico: Its Educational Problems
family and the community and Church. It must show the
parents the folly of their conduct toward their sons, it must
educate them too.
And as to the children, what a splendid opportunity for a
school and for a teacher.
The school as a store to get knowledge is an anachronism in
our days. The school as molder of characters is the modern
ideal school.
How is the modern school trying to mold the character? Not
through preaching against evil, neither through soporific les
sons on ethics, but by saturating with morality every bit of work
that the pupil performs. By giving a worthy outlet to the
native impulses and instincts of the pupil through practical
channels, in the broad social sense, thus making conduct that
springs from those instincts and impulses able to react justly
and skillfully in the daily life and situations. If the pupils
gain in the school power to stand on their own feet and have
stamina enough to face the battle for life courageously, such a
school has done its duty and such pupil will have initiative,
persistence, and industry, which are all blossoms of a true moral
sense. What a good chance for the school to arouse in our little
Latin-Americans a sympathetic disposition toward work, by
appealing through a wise course of study to their interest in con
nection with problems of their community life. If the right
kind of materials and motives are given, the children will always
work and work hard. They are not yet possessed by the con
tempt for work that their parents have; their natural impulses
toward activity are greater than any social prejudices; and
when these pupils leave their school they have already the habit
of toil and the right attitude toward work. From that school
will come out less holders of diplomas and more producers of
wealth, and national regeneration and emancipation will be then
a happy reality.
What a good chance for a teacher to appeal through his meth
ods to the instinctive "making" capacities of his pupils to arouse
in them the much needed systematic and orderly energy in
their tasks. The right method not only gives good results but
shows that persistence and order in action are sources of suc
cess. It gives a "mental clue" to how to reach an end. How

National Character 75
the inconsistent and changeable Mexicans need to acquire such
attitude of mind, such habits of thought and action. We need
thoroughness in overcoming our racial inability to go to the
bottom of the mastering of any task; actuation, so that the work
will not be left for Manana; independence and freedom of ac
tion during the labor, so as to arouse in the always dependent
little Latin that sense of personal responsibility and initiative
which they lack.
The interest in the work, the motives of action, must be of a
broad social service. This side of education will never be too
much emphasized in a Latin country, where the most selfish
individualism reigns supreme.
Above all, the teacher must remember that ideas do not in
fluence conduct until they have been transformed into senti
ments. In children, emotions are intensively active and, if
everywhere life is ruled by emotions more than reason, in a
Latin country and in our children this is even more true.
So give the little ones an ideal, cultivate in their tender hearts
an ambition, a dynamic desire to accomplish something, to be
someone, to help someone. Do not crush their little souls with
brutal materialism, making them breathe and move in an at
mosphere of narrow Militarism. Leave in their hearts some
illusions to dream about. Sometimes there is such joy to dream
and fancy! How unhappy must the people be who do not, who
can not dream!
But awake in those little people, too, that manly attitude
toward life which makes man successful. Take away from
them that Latin-intellectual sentimentalism that makes of every
youth a "romantic do-nothing," or a doll of the drawing rooms.
Yes, indeed, pour iron into their souls!

CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS
My task is at its end. I have not brought a new theory into
the field of Education; I have not offered a new contribution to
the world of ideas. The august altar of this science has re
mained with its old consecrated gifts. To increase its precious
burden is only a genius's privilege; already there are many, a
legion of common and ordinary "producers" of "new" ideas
and "novel theories." Perhaps they are more daring than I,
or it may be, in their fondness for their works, they forget what
a really new idea is; they ignore what a new theory really means.
Where is, then, the originality that a work of this kind is
supposed to have? I do claim the originality of bringing to
the attention of my Alma Mater an undiscovered field for a
noble educational crusade. I am only sorry that my intellect
did not follow the expectations of my heart. I should like to
have called the attention of the whole educational world to
Mexico's educational needs and problems. No, I have not
brought a new method to investigate or with which to impart
knowledge; but I have brought to you, instead, an ignored people
to be educated, a forgotten race to be uplifted.
There has been for a long time a general desire in the cultured
circles of the United States to help China in her fight against
obscurity. American teachers have gone over and American
schools have been built. Indeed, the Modern China owes much
of her occidental culture to the United States. But the Mex
icans receive of their powerful and cultured neighbor mainly
bullets to make their fratricide war more effective. No, Mex
icans have not even heard of your wonderful institutions of
learning, of your magnificent palaces to science ; but they know
your monstrous battleships that are now infesting their ports.
It is one of my fond illusions to hope that some day my coun
trymen will know "the other Americans," those whom I know,
those who are building schools, those who are working patriotic-
76

Conclusions 77
ally to make their country a better country, those who are
fighting unselfishly to make humanity a better lot.
If the interest of those Americans is aroused by the facts pre
sented in this work and our situation is to them a revelation
which could stimulate them to do us good, then I consider that
my effort has not been lost. I have done my duty as a Mexican.
Meanwhile, our door is open and you know now what we badly
need. As to the Mexicans, one word:
I am not afraid of a Yankee conquest, I do not believe in a
Japanese invasion, I do not think a European colonization pos
sible. I am afraid of the Mexican peril! I believe that the
greatest danger for our national existence is right in our own
country. If some day our nation is bound to disappear from
the world of the living, I dread that the Brutus will be a Mexican.
God knows that it breaks my heart even to think of it. But
who, having observed closely some of the unhappy develop
ments of the last three years, can help having those thoughts?
But it is time yet to find ourselves! We must not lose our
hope. Suffering is a great molder of character and teacher of
experience. Our racial inheritance is no better and no worse
than the inheritances of the other races. It is up to us to culti
vate and put in relief its great qualities and to correct and ban
ish its faults. We must throw away our prejudices and in
dolences and live and participate in a world in which activity
in industry and commerce is the striking characteristic. "Im
placable civilization," says Kidd, "has passed sentence on all
the races that are unable to adapt themselves to our form of
social evolution and from that verdict there is no appeal."
Our indifference to public affairs concerning our country is a
dangerous sign. Personal effort, personal interest, willingness
to do something to take our country out of her present chaos
is our greatest need. I make Demoulin's apostrophe to the
Frenchman mine. "Social salvation," he says, "is an essen-
tally personal affair. . . Every one must shift for himself!"
The Mexicans who think (there are some) that we are an
anemic race bound to degenerate, are ignorant and weak or half-
suicides. There is plenty of stamina and pluck in our race;
there is enough energy and hardihood in our people. We only

78 Mexico: Ils Educational Problems
need to educate them to teach them how to use all these qualities.
"The Mexicans," says Bryce, "are children of the most dogged
of the native races as well as the most stalwart of the Spanish
settlers." What has the future in store for us? Only God knows. We
must have faith in him. Success comes to those who believe!

S8

(M