under the terms of the section of the Constitution dealing with labor. Every agricultural, industrial, or mining enterprise located at a distance of three or more kilometers from a town must provide housing, school, infirmary, and other community services. A school must be established if there are as many as 20 children, and a teacher must be employed for each group of 50 or fraction over 20. In a school having fewer than 10 teachers the director of the school also teaches. The company provides the building, furniture, equipment, library, books, and teachers' salaries; SEP assigns the teachers and supervises the instruction.

There are a number of special schools or auxiliary institutions. For the mentally retarded but educable children there is the Escuela para Anormales e Instituto Médico Pedagógico at Parque Lira, Tacubaya, D. F., which accommodates 375 children from the kindergarten through primaria. Its facilities are greatly in demand and are being expanded. In 1953 the school received 18,000 applications for admission. The school day is from 8 to 6 with two shifts of teachers. Three meals a day are served at the school. The Instituto Nacional de Pedagogía, which carries on extensive research in educational psychology, uses the Escuela para Anormales as one of its laboratories. This Instituto maintains a testing and counseling service for exceptional children. There are also Federal Schools for the blind and the deaf and dumb.

Problem children who are not mentally retarded may receive instruction and guidance at the Centro de Orientación Psicopedagógico in Lomas de Chapultepec, also in the Federal District. This center provides consultative services to parents and teachers and maintains an up-to-date library of professional books. Some of the children are boarding students

and others come from their homes or other schools for classes or special instruction.

Boys and girls who are detained by the police for creating disturbances on the streets or elsewhere are taken to the Clínica de la Conducta, which is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Social Welfare in the Secretaría de Gobernación. They are given a hearing before a juvenile court and their case is studied by a group of three professional people— a doctor, teacher, and lawyer who decide whether the child's home situation warrants returning him there or whether he should go to the Casa de Orientación or a Casa Hogar. The first is a correctional institution, one for boys and one for girls, and the second is a combination foster home and boarding school. The Government maintains 6 casas hogares, 3 for girls and 3 for boys. Since all of these schools are very crowded, some religious groups are also permitted to operate casas hogares, the Government paying for the food and clothing of the children. This represents considerable relaxation in the enforcement of Constitutional provisions restricting the participation of religious organizations in education. The Clínica de la Conducta collaborates with SEP and the Secretariat of Health and Welfare in organizing volunteer groups who can give time to social work. Since the number of professionally trained social workers is inadequate, many teachers and parents are active in part-time social service.

Mexico has a number of schools which are sponsored by British, French, German, Italian, or United States citizens, or by other foreign groups. In all cases these schools are required to provide as a minimum program the official elementary school course for Mexican schools and to employ qualified Mexican teachers for the work in the Spanish language and for civics and the history and geography of Mexico. In the student body Mexican children are generally in the majority. Some of these schools also include secondary-school curricula, but above the sixth grade they may follow their own programs of study. One or more elementary schools sponsored by United States citizens and organizations may be found in the following cities. Full information concerning their organization and administration is available from the Inter-American Schools Service of the American Council on Education, Washington, D. C.

Anáhuac, D. F.

Chihuahua, Chihuahua

Colonia Dublán, Chihuahua

Durango, Durango

Guadalajara, Jalisco

Guanajuato, Guanajuato

Guayameo, Guerrero
Mérida, Yucatán

México, D. F.

Montemorelos, Nuevo León

Monterrey, Nuevo León
Navojoa, Sonora

Pachuca, Hidalgo
Puebla, Puebla
Querétaro, Querétaro
San Luis Potosí, S. L. P.
Tampico, Tamaulipas
Teapa, Tabasco
Torreón, Coahuila

STATISTICAL DATA

A relatively high number of children who enter the first grade drop out of school before completing the primaria. In the Federal District in 1953 the number beginning the first grade was 141,304, while the number beginning the sixth grade was 50,353. Sixty-five percent of the children who enrolled in the first grade stayed in school and were promoted to the second grade. Approximately 75 percent of the initial groups composing the second, third, fourth, and fifth grades stayed in school and were promoted to the next higher grade. Of the number starting in the sixth grade, 84 percent graduated. The figures published by the Office of the Director General of Elementary Education, SEP, are as follows:

Table F.-Progression of primary school pupils in the Federal District, 1953

Although there are a few rural schools in the Federal District, these figures mainly reflect the situation in urban schools. A tabulation made 2 years earlier for rural schools shows the same trend. The number of children beginning the first grade in rural schools was 1,383,367, while the number beginning the sixth grade was 9,499. Of the children who started to school in the first grade, 62.4 percent stayed in school and were promoted to the second grade. Of the number starting the sixth grade, 80 percent graduated.

The rural schools try to emphasize practical work, but the chief difference between urban and rural schools is in the number of grades provided. In 1951, 3,659 out of the 5,289 urban schools had 6 grades, while only 580 of the 19,365 rural schools had the full 6-year program. The distribution of urban and rural schools according to the number having first

grade only, 2 grades, 3 grades, 4 grades, 5 grades, or 6 grades is shown in the following tabulation from the official census report.

Table G.-Number of urban and rural primary schools and number of grades provided, 1951

The sudden decrease in numbers for rural schools after the fourth grade. has been reached can be explained partly by the fact that students may enter practical schools of agriculture after completing the second cycle of the primaria. It must be considered also that the development of schools in rural areas has taken place almost entirely since 1922. When several hundred new schools a year are being opened, they can get started with the first grade and try later to add to the program as it becomes necessary or possible.

Supervision of elementary education in 1954 was carried out by 10 Zone Chiefs of General Inspection, 32 Federal Directors of Education, and 482 Zone Inspectors, who worked in cooperation with the State governments in supervising the 40,000 teachers in the primarias distributed throughout the country. The Federal District was subdivided into 59 zones having a total of 962 elementary day schools (674 public, 288 private), and 138 elementary night schools. The President's annual State of the Union message delivered on September 1, 1955, reported an increase of 4,481 primary teachers in the Republic and new construction under way on 80 additional schools. The total enrollment in primaria was 2,407,000. But the President stated that nearly 3 million still lack educational opportunity. The amount of the national budget allocated to elementary education for 1955 was 331 million pesos, an increase of 107 million over the 1954 expenditure for primaria.

Fundamental Education and Literacy

Along with its effort to provide schools for children up to 15 years of age, the Mexican Government has been promoting literacy campaigns, cultural missions, fundamental education projects, and other means of assimilating the Indians of the country into the stream of national life. Since education must go hand in hand with economic betterment and political consciousness, the creation of higher standards of living and community development is the primary objective of the adult educational program. Alfabetización concerns itself first with practical living and second with reading, writing, and arithmetic, for in the backward and primitive communities the most elementary techniques of existence have to precede literacy. Going to school means staying away from productive work, and hunger must be appeased before book learning has any appeal.

The teaching of reading and writing is itself not a simple accomplishment among isolated heterogeneous peoples who speak only their native languages and who have little incentive to learn. But to produce an integrated nation to amalgamate the valuable elements of indigenous cultures and provide some articulation with the civilization of modern Mexico-is a task infinitely more difficult. The new has to be adopted voluntarily and assimilated slowly. Old folkways and beliefs that perpetuate disease and poverty can be abandoned only gradually as scientific methods prove their worth and win confidence. Even when outside influences change outward forms, the basic attitudes remain.