Mexico in Transition

Photoessay

Dear Colleagues, we want to share with you our experience with Postprimary Centers, an innovation that has brought high quality education to the most remote rural villages in Mexico. For the past three years, these centers have allowed students to certify elementary or secondary school education. Students of all ages and social standing can come to these centers to study what they need or want to learn. The centers, of which there are 240 in 20 States, reach into tiny villages with fewer than 500 inhabitants. The Consejo Nacional de Fomento Educativo, a branch of the Ministry of Education with an unusual degree of autonomy and 30 years of experience in rural education, provides this service.

The innovation rests on a simple pedagogical axiom that good education demands both genuine interest in the learner and demonstrated capacity in the teacher. Rigor in securing these two tenets explains the success of the Postprimary program. In practical terms, it means reliance on learner-managed learning?highly qualified instructors insure effective tutorial support.

A measure of success is the fact that people come to the Postprimary Centers to study. In poor, scattered, rural communities, even young people do not enjoy the leisure of their urban counterparts. In an impoverished and rural environment academics competes with basic subsistence occupations for time. An internal measure of success is the discovery that it is possible to enlarge the cultural horizon by engaging in dialogue with authors of both the present and past.

The program involves three basic conditions: instructors are trained in a master-apprentice relationship, centers are equipped with abundant written materials and with the most advanced means of communication (such as computers, satellite connections, and solar power plants), and, equally important, students are free to choose themes according to their interests and proceed according to their possibilities. Independent learning coupled with advanced technology permits links between academic urban centers and scattered rural communities. This makes it possible to enrich local populations without the necessity of migration to cities. Equity and quality are becoming realities in rural education.

Gabriel Cámara, Harvard Graduate School of Education Ph.D. '72, is Program Director of the Consejo Nacional de Fomento Educativo. He can be contacted at and . The program also has a webpage .

Susie Fitzhugh has been a documentary photographer* for thirty years. Upon hearing of her interest in photographing education in Latin America, Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor Fernando Reimers led Susie to Gabriel Camara and the Posprimary program. All of the images here were made in February 2001. Susie appreciates all the help she got from Fernando Reimers, Gabriel Camara, and Keren Nes, each of whom made these photographs possible.