Non-Graded Schools in Mexico in Historical Perspective: An Ever-Present Challenge

Abstract

Multigrade schools represent 44.3 per cent of all public schools in Mexico. This is important for two reasons. First, the persistence of multigrade schools is due to a variety of changing and unchanging factors in rural areas, which should be examined in depth. Secondly, the historical trajectory and the pedagogical experience of these schools is of theoretical interest for the history of education because they question the alleged universality of the "school form" or "the grammar of schooling" embedded in graded education (i.e. the relatively recent and internationally widespread distribution of students in homogenous groups, which correspond to specific grades and ages, with one teacher for each grade). The existence of non-graded or multigrade classrooms should lead us to revise our conceptions of educational processes taking place in and outside the school. In this article we trace the history of discussions and actions involving the one-room schools in Mexico up to 1990. This longterm history shows that it was a sector that always struggled against the ideal of the graded school form erected as the sole model towards the end of the nineteenth century.