subprofessional, and professional courses. It has an enrollment of about 2,400 students, 700 of whom are from out of town. Night courses are

conducted for some 600 of the city's industrial workers.

The Universidad Obrera de México, a center for the cultural advancement of workers in the capital, was established in 1936 by Vicente Lombardo Toledano, a well-known labor leader. This school has no academic requirements for admission and gives no diplomas. Courses of many types are available as well as lectures, exhibits, concerts, sports, educational excursions, clubs, and theater productions. The subjects range from arithmetic, Spanish, geography of Mexico, and other primaria studies to economic theory, Mexican problems, philosophy, labor law, and international relations. A number of practical courses in homemaking, child care, plastic arts, and trades are included in the offering.

MILITARY

Military training, under the Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional, is available to young men who have completed secundaria with good grade averages. The basic 3-year course leads to the rank of lieutenant and includes with the military subjects some of the academic studies of the preparatoria. The Colegio Militar, founded in the 19th century, has an enrollment of about 700 cadets in its basic course. After the 3-year course students may specialize in engineering, medicine, aviation, or other fields. Also in the capital are the Escuela Médico Militar, the Escuela Militar de Meteorología y Mecánicos Especialistas, and the Escuela Superior de Guerra, which offers advanced professional training for officers. A new school, Escuela Militar, was built in 1951 in Cuernavaca. The Escuela Militar de Aviación is located in Guadalajara and the Escuela Naval in Veracruz. The latter trains officers for the expanding merchant fleet and naval reserve. Mexico is divided into 10 military zones. The commanders in these zones direct the armed forces in public service work, such as narcotics control, public health campaigns, reforestation, control of hoof and mouth disease, and housing projects.

Teacher Education

KINDERGARTEN AND PRIMARIA

Teachers are prepared for the kindergarten and primaria in the escuela normal, which offers a 6-year program in 2 cycles of 3 years each. The plan of studies in the first cycle is approximately the same as for the secundaria; the second cycle consists largely of professional training. The plan of studies for the professional cycle is given in Table 3, p. 100. Students in training to become nursery school or kindergarten teachers make certain substitutions in the professional cycle so that they devote

more time to materials and methods for young children, but their program is very similar to that of the primaria teachers. A kindergarten and primaria are annexed to the escuela normal to serve as practice schools.

Students who plan to teach physical education take the professional cycle in the Normal School for Physical Education. Their plan of studies includes physical measurement, tests of physiological proficiency, first aid, history of physical education, physical therapy, organization and administration of physical education programs, and 2 years of music, Spanish, English, and science. In addition to the theoretical subjects, the students have 25 hours a week of physical exercise in the form of calisthenics. sports, and military training. During the second year they do practice teaching 5 hours a week in an elementary school and during the third year they practice in a secondary school.

After completion of the regular professional cycle, students who wish to specialize in the teaching of atypical children observe in the Escuela para Anormales or other special school and practice under the guidance of professors and medical advisers in the Escuela Normal de Especialización and of the Instituto Nacional de Pedagogía. The latter, a research center in educational psychology, testing, and statistical analysis, helps teachers to work out methods best adapted to the social medium in which they teach. The Revista del Instituto Nacional de Pedagogía is an important publication in this field. The Escuela Normal de Especialización, established in 1943, offers 2-year courses in each of three fields, for the mentally retarded, blind, and deaf and dumb. Enrollments in 1951-52 were 337, 173, and 73 students, respectively, in these special programs. Rural teachers receive essentially the same preparation as the urban teachers, although there is more emphasis on practical studies in agriculture, stock raising, and rural home industries. Students in rural normal schools are generally supported by Government scholarships. Those coming from a 4-year primaria may regularize their training by preparatory work in the normal. Teachers in service who have not had an opportunity to complete their normal school training may take correspondence courses given by the Instituto Federal de Capacitación del Magisterio. established in Mexico, D. F., in 1945. In-service training is also available in connection with the cultural missions.

The hope of the Revolution's ideal of universal education is built around the training of rural youth. The first normal school for rural teachers was opened in 1922 in Tacámbaro, Michoacán, with a 2-year program, and slowly year by year other schools were established. The greatest difficulty was to get and hold new recruits for rural teaching. The city-bred teachers either refused to take positions in remote areas or lacked the experience needed to make their teaching practical. The rural students who attended a normal school in an urban center preferred

to stay on in the town, so fewer than half of each year's graduates entered the ranks of the rural teachers. With the growth in population and the expanded effort to build more schools, it became imperative to make greater progress in the preparation of teachers. From 1944 to 1954 the Federal budget for normal schools was increased from 11⁄2 million pesos to 16%1⁄2 million. New schools were built, the Instituto Federal de Capacitación del Magisterio was established, and other measures were taken to improve the preparation and status of teachers. One such measure was the unification of urban and rural school programs. In 1946 it was made mandatory for the rural normal schools to maintain a 6-year program, and since that time the rural teachers have come to feel more a part of the profession.

Another part of the plan was to make Teacher's Day an important occasion. Schools are not in session on that day and elaborate ceremonies are held to give recognition to worthy service and make the profession attractive to young people. Throughout the Republic, Government officials and civic leaders pay tribute to outstanding teachers in the schools, identifying them with the social work of the Revolution in their double role of educator and exemplary citizen, and hold up as examples the lives of famous Mexican teachers of the past, such as Hidalgo and Juárez. In the capital, the President of the Republic awards the Ignacio Manuel Altamirano medal to teachers with 50 years of teaching experience. Twenty-one teachers received the medal in 1955 and others were given diplomas for shorter periods of service, 30 teachers having completed 30 years of service in the secundaria. In 1954, a statue of Enrique C. Rébsamen, a teacher of the nineteenth century in Jalapa, Veracruz, who worked for national unity through education, was placed in a corner of the patio of the Secretariat of Public Education. As a result of these efforts there has been a gratifying increase in the number of elementary school teachers. In 1945 there were, in all, 45 normal schools with an enrollment of 5,664 students; in 1955 there were 71 normal schools with 22,635 students, and 6,852 rural teachers had finished their preparation by means of the correspondence courses of the Instituto Federal de Capacitación del Magisterio.

The largest normal school in the country is the Escuela Normal de Maestros in Mexico, D. F. It has four departments, one for men, one for women, a mixed evening school, and the Escuela Nacional de Educadoras for kindergarten teachers. It occupies a magnificent building on Ribera de San Cosme which was constructed during the administration of President Manuel Ávila Camacho. In Mexico City also there are 9 private institutions (incorporadas) with normal school departments: the Cristóbal Colón for boys, the Hispano Americano, which is mixta, and the following for girls: Anglo Español, Comercial Francesa, Instituto Morelos, Miguel Ángel, Montferrat, Simón Bolívar, and Manuel Acosta.

ESCUELA NORMAL DE MAESTROS, MEXICO, D. F.

Outside the Federal District the Federal system of normal schools includes 18 rural normal schools, 3 Federalized mixtas in Ciudad Victoria, Pachuca, and Oaxaca, 3 Federal schools in La Paz, Mexicali, and Morelia. and 20 incorporadas. The State normal schools are located in Campeche, Coahuila, Colima, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Durango, Cuanajuato, Guerrero, Jalisco, México, Morelos, Nayarit, Nuevo León, Puebla, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Sinaloa, Veracruz, Yucatán, and Zacatecas. There are municipal and private normal schools in 9 cities. Two-thirds of all the normal schools in the Republic are centered in and around the capital, while a few States have no institutions for teacher education.

In 1954 the Dirección General de Enseñanza Normal of SEP called a congress of normal school directors and teachers to discuss education and the great national problems. Representatives of all the normal schools, Federal, Federalized, State, and incorporated, attended along with representatives of the dependencies of the Secretariat of Public Education, the universities of the Republic, and of the State governments. One of the problems receiving special attention was how to enlist the participation of all social sectors in the educational effort.

FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION AND LITERACY

Another opportunity for teacher education of the type needed in cultural missions, workers' projects, rural schools, literacy centers, community development, and the like, is UNESCO's Centro Regional de Educación Fundamental para la América Latina (CREFAL), located at Pátzcuaro, Michoacán. It is supported and administered by UNESCO, with the Organization of American States providing fellowships, and the

Government of Mexico furnishing housing and maintenance. When Jaime Torres Bodet, former Secretary of Public Education in Mexico, was director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, he suggested the Pátzcuaro site for a pilot project in UNESCO's worldwide attack on illiteracy in order to share with the other American republics Mexico's experience in rural education. Expresident Lázaro Cárdenas gave his Quinta Erendira, named for a heroic Tarascan princess, for the center's headquarters, where some 85 Mexican teachers and Government employees work with specialists from other countries in the training of teachers and other community workers.

The quota of students from Mexico is twice that of other countries, and 21 villages of the area are participating in the community education projects. The fundamental education experiment at Tzintzuntzan (Place of the Hummingbird), the ancient Tarascan capital, is supervised by the Museo de Artes e Industrias Populares and is carrying out with international cooperative effort many of the handicraft ideas that Don Vasco de Quiroga introduced there in the sixteenth century. The Spanish edition of Fundamental and Adult Education, one of UNESCO's bulletins, is published by CREFAL.

The teams of students who come to CREFAL work for 19 months, which are divided into 3 periods of 6, 91⁄2, and 31⁄2 months, according to the nature of the activities. The first period of 6 months is primarily one of orientation and classwork. The studies are divided into sections pertaining to the home, health, recreation, economics, and basic knowledge, and include such subjects as social anthropology, sociology, psychology, pedagogical principles, doctrine of fundamental education and literacy, and Mexican history, geography, and education. During this period also the students receive orientation in the production and use of filmstrips, films, printing, drawing, puppetry, and the theater. They work a part of each day at photography, weaving, tailoring, ceramics, apiculture, aviculture, or carpentry. During the second period, 9% months, the students go in teams of 5 into the communities scattered along the lake, on the islands, and in the sierra. They live in the community to which they are assigned and produce materials as needed in their work. The last period, 3%1⁄2 months, is spent in reviewing experiences in classroom, shop, and community, and in visiting educational institutions such as the cultural missions, normal schools, the Papaloapan River basin project, the pilot project in basic education in Nayarit, and the work of the Instituto Nacional Indigenista in Chiapas and Hidalgo. In seminars the students analyze the theory of fundamental education in the light of their experience in the communities and in the last 10 weeks prepare a thesis and take examinations. When the work is completed the trainees receive a diploma of Specialized Teacher of Fundamental Education.

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