Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Study of Educational Conditions in Mexico and an Appeal for an Independent College
These blind efforts have failed of their ends largely because the people have been without learning and without true leaders. There has never been a middle class in Mexico to supply leaders for the people in their struggles with the feudal lords. Organized public opinion is the only basis for democratic government, and this has never existed in Mexico. The only newspapers are controlled by the Government, by the land lords, or by the big corporations. There are no real political parties. The only politics are wholly personal, and the only political organizations are gangs formed to advance the interests of leaders Whose names they bear. There are no political campaigns to educate the voters, but only processions and rallies intended to impress them. There is, in fact, no free political discussion of any kind. Elections in Mexico, con sequently, are either farces or frauds.
Organized public opinion and the free discussion of political affairs so necessary to free government can not exist where themasses of the people are ignorant. The only solution of the Mexican problem, therefore, will be the establishment of public schools which will educate the people to know their rights, and of colleges to train men to help them in their strug gles to win those rights.
In the belief that the best thing the friends of Mexico can do at the present time is to prepare to assist her in educating her pe0p1e, a Committee was formed a year ago for the purpose of studying the educational conditions and needs of the country. The following paper was prepared under the direction of this Committee by George B. Winton (now of Vanderbilt Uni versity, but for thirty years a teacher in Mexico, ) with some assistance from Professor Andrés Osuna, formerly superin tendent of schools of Coahuila and at present general director of primary, normal, and preparatory education in the Federal District of Mexico. Several of the notes were contributed by Professor Ezequiel A. Chavez, formerly President of the National University of Mexico and Assistant Secretary of the Department of Public Instruction. We are indebted to Professor I. J. Cox, of the University of Cincinnati, for revising the material thus collected and contributing additional matter. For those who can not read the whole paper at once, the chapter summaries and Afterword will, we hope, prove helpful in giving a general view of the educational conditions in Mexico and our recommendations for their improvement.
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