John Dewey in Mexico: A Shared Experience in the Rural World

Abstract

This work examines the influence of John Dewey’s ideas on the Mexican pedagogical theories and rural schools in the first decades of the twentieth century, and Dewey’s own experience in Mexico. We look at how Deweyan thought was expressed mainly through educational ideas that shaped the design of policies aimed at improving schooling in rural areas, promoting practices based on community-based «active learning». One of John Dewey’s peculiarities is that the American pedagogue had the opportunity to see how some of his main ideas were appropriated and implemented in the real world, generally in situations fuelled by the desire for social change. In the Mexican context in particular, such change was impelled by the social ideology of the Mexican Revolution, and the life stories of the protagonists of the ensuing pedagogical transformation, the conditions furthering the possibility of new education policies, and above all, the communities who participated in the material and symbolic construction of a new form of schooling are discussed.

Keywords

• Dewey
• historia de la pedagogía
• historia de la educación
• escuela de la acción
• escuela rural
• México