Teacher’s training education in Yucatan during the Porfiriato and the sources for writing its history

Abstract

The 19th century is an important period in Mexican history from an educational perspective, as it was during this time that ideas about mandatory, free and secular education were consolidated during the Porfiriato (1876-1911). Public instruction received more attention from the federal government, and schools dedicated to teacher training experienced a boom in their establishment throughout Mexican territory. However, there are still regions where research on this topic is necessary due to limited existing work. Such is the case of the Mexican southeast and, particularly, Yucatan. The purpose of this writing is to present a general overview of teacher’s training school education in Yucatan during the Porfiriato and the sources of information available for its study. It additionally seeks to analyze the contributions of these documents and the difficulties in accessing them. To this end, I structure this work as follows: The first section is dedicated to a brief introduction about the emergence of Mexican historiography and the history of education, followed by works that have been done on teacher’s training school education in Mexico; subsequently, I refer to investigations of educational history at the regional level –the case of Yucatan–; in a third part, I mention the accessible primary and secondary sources on this topic and, finally, my concluding reflections.