to the Americans because it was a working system of interdependent institutions that represented the complicated relationship between education and the modern state rather than a complacent ethical pronouncement about local communities in a rapidly changing North America. The teacher, the importance of experience in learning, and the relationship of the student to the larger community were all instruments to be studied closely, the Americans knew. Given the large framework into which Dewey developed his philosophy, it makes sense to evaluate the presence of Dewey in Mexico by splintering the elements of education into its multiple parts and testing each one, rather than reducing Dewey to an unbreakable whole that must stand as a single test of ethics in the modern nation. It was not hope alone that had brought the Americans to study Mexico’s
misiones culturales and
casas del pueblo. In the face of a political project that was still unfolding, the Americans saw reform impulses of potential change in Mexico’s educational institutions that they adapted for their racial liberalism work in the United States. It was these impulses that attracted their attention, even as they acknowledged that transforming the social hierarchy was neither an instantaneous process nor one for which success was ever guaranteed.
The Convergence of Pragmatism and Indigenismo
