The Community Box schools, first attempt to configure an imperial educational system

Abstract

The Bourbon reform of first letters teaching in its Community Box schools version is still a subject with little research, since only Dorothy Tanck de Estrada, who in her work Pueblos de indios y educación en el México colonial, 1750-1821 (“Indian Pueblos and education in Colonial Mexico, 1750-1821”), presents a complete map of Indian towns in New Spain, including their schools of first letters, forming incipient school networks at this time, which slowly over time would serve as the basis for the formation of subsequent educational systems in our country. These cash schools –following the influence of the Enlightenment on education– were also an attempt to provide education to all indigenous infants, as public funding was found, drawn from the indigenous community funds. These institutions provided fundamental elements for the formation of the first national educational system, such as “public” financing that allowed group assistance for all the children of a certain town; starting the group payment to the teacher, that prevails up to this day. It also promoted the first teacher salary rates, attempting to regulate teaching salaries but, fundamentally, displacing the church from the management and control of first letter teaching, in an attempt to generalize an administrative secularization that included the main towns of all of New Spain. Thus, the objective of this study was to learn and disseminate the Bourbon educational model as yet another reform of this government regime, since it is important to disclose the background of the formation of the first educational networks, even before Mexico existed as a nation. The main sources of this investigation were archive documents indicated in its development, as well as the bibliography necessary to support it.