MEXICO PLANS TO PLACE EVERY CHILD IN SCHOOL

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6804, 7 January 1929, Page 8

MEXICO PLANS TO PLACE EVERY CHILD IN SCHOOL

GAINS IN LITERARY AND PRACTICAL TRAINING CITED

The progress of education in Mexico was described in a statement issued at Washington recently, which remarked that during the last five years a gradual and systematic increase in budget appropriations for educational purposes had taken place and it was the intention of the Administration to continue this expansion until full educational facilities were granted to every child in the Republic. “This result, it is admitted, requires time, money, and the gradual training of an army of teachers, but the results already achieved fully justify brighter expectations for the future,” the report continues. “A very interesting feature of tho present educational movement in Mexico is its practical character, teaching the children the use of local natural resources, raw materials and natural products, and winding up in rural and grammar schools with the elements of mechanical trades, farming, dairy industries and poultry raising. “Special attention has been given to the rural schools. The great mass of the population in Mexico lives in the country, and it is very important that the children derive all possiblo benefit from the elementary education they obtain before joining their parents at the farm.

“With this end in view a typical method has been devised and eight missions of professors and specialists in practical farming, cattle raising, farm industries, horticulture, aviculture, apiculture, sericulture, sanitation, cooking, hygiene, tanning, small industries, physical culture, etc., visit all rural schools in rotation, raising extra attendance

from parents and children going to the lectures and demonstrations and going through a brief course in all the subjects enumerated, to supplement and increase the regular teachings. “In order to encourage t-he Indians to co-operate in the educational movement special Indian schools have been established, where illiterates are given an education and a trade, to go back home and show others the practical advantages obtained in school.’*