ABSTRACT
According to Moisés Sáenz, in 1923 the Mexican state instructed “all . . . schools to become ‘schools of action’ ” and a “certain advice and an absolute command was given to teachers to conform to the new ideas.” According to Sáenz, this “was an order to become modern overnight . . . the ‘project method’ was duly expanded; John Dewey became a gospel . . . learning by doing was the watchword.”1 Education in México would be known as “aprender haciendo”2 or learning by doing after Dewey’s own pedagogy. Sáenz enthusiastically affirmed that,
Dewey, with his philosophy of socialization, with his emphasis on reality, on self-activity and self-expression, became a watchword. Dewey [has] performed two great services for [Mexico]. He has confirmed our philosophy of education and has liberated us from the servitude of formal school equipment. Inasmuch as the school is a place where free activity is to have play, where growth, and self-expression making for growth, is the only rule, we can have schools without costly standardized desks, without a standard building, under the eaves of the thatched roof of the old farmhouse, under the trees . . . he has gone beyond pedagogies into the realm of mere common sense.3
