Modernizing Minds offers a valuable vista onto the world of development experts and modernising elites in El Salvador during the 1960s and 1970s. The book focuses primarily on the Alliance for Progress-inspired education reform of 1968, probing deeply into the relationships between the varied stakeholders in the reform and its profound consequences. Moreover, the study presents a highly relevant political analysis of the Salvadorean Right that adds a significant dimension to the interpretative debate about the origins of the civil war that convulsed the country from 1981 until 1992.

The book is remarkable for its focus on external/internal actor relations and in that it offers the single most comprehensive analysis of a governmental action in the country's extant historiography. Ching and Lindo-Fuentes fully document the external conception of the educational reform, created within the context of the Alliance for Progress, and the numerous ways in which local elites shaped it. In so doing, the authors present a more nuanced account of the last years of the Alliance than previously existed, at least with respect to Central America. Of particular interest (and relevance, given the way US university administrators are currently enthralled with Massive Open Online Courses) was the introduction of educational television. Walter Béneke, the minister of education and former ambassador to Japan, became its main proponent, overcoming all manner of obstacles.

Local elites and technocrats rejected the insistence on placing the televisions in primary school classrooms by the Alliance for Progress and UNESCO specialists and funders, eventually prevailing upon them to commence the programme in middle schools, given the Salvadoreans’ principal interest in developing workers and managers for the new industrial sector. Of course, this, like all of the reforms discussed in Modernizing Minds, had unintended consequences.

Perhaps the most important was that teachers mobilised against aspects of the reform. The authors found, albeit in a limited survey, that rural students in particular very much enjoyed and benefited from the introduction of educational television in the middle school classroom. At the same time, Béneke and others were able to redefine middle school as part of primary school and therefore constitutionally not subject to tuition fees (the authors do not explain either the origins or the continued necessity of public secondary school tuition fees). Thus the expansion of middle school enrolments accompanied the reform of 1968. Both the enrolment expansion, without concomitant increases in recruitment and hiring, and the use of televised lessons necessitated significantly more work by the teachers. Somewhat counter-intuitively, the use of television in the classrooms, which to some might have seemed a type of labour-saving device, required extra training for the teachers, which they received in Saturday classes.

In a detailed and convincing account, Ching and Lindo-Fuentes show how the teachers’ union mobilised around issues related to the educational reform. In 1968 the unionised teachers struck against anti-union repression, and for an improvement in pension and health benefits and the removal of Béneke as minister of education. Their strike earned widespread support in Salvadorean society. Although it failed to achieve its main objectives, it served to catapult the union into the forefront of the labour and oppositional movements. In 1971 the unionised teachers struck again, this time primarily for higher wages. The military regime responded primarily with repression, but once again the strike served to consolidate this increasingly important union.

Another major achievement of Modernizing Minds is its analysis of the deep divisions within the governing party, the Partido de Conciliación Nacional (National Conciliation Party, PCN). Building on the work of Jorge Cáceres Prendes and extending it into the 1960s, the authors present a convincing argument for strong reformist tendencies within the party of the military and among certain sectors of the elite. Although other studies have emphasised the split within the PCN, the authors examine with great detail the reformist commitment of one important current. That current challenged, however moderately and unsuccessfully, the lopsided land and wealth distribution that polarised Salvadorean society. Those reformists coexisted with another faction strongly committed to the status quo, to virulent anti-communism, and to repressive responses to any challenges.

The authors’ description of these two groups challenges the traditional perspective of a seamless governing alliance between oligarchs and officers. However, they do not fully address an important question. With the exception of the education reform, which did not directly challenge the interests of the agrarian elite, the conservative sectors of the regime consistently prevailed. Why, during the 1960s and 1970s, did the reformists not seek out like-minded progressives more actively in a way that would have entailed a rupture within the PCN, but might have led to the success of the reforms? If we look at the critical period after the coup d’état of 1979, we find an important clue. One of the main reasons for the failure of that reformist moment had to do with the unwillingness of the more progressive sector of the military to challenge the armed forces’ ‘institutional integrity’. It is quite plausible that the earlier reform setbacks had a similar cause. The other factor that led to the post-coup failure was the inability or unwillingness of the reformist officers to attempt seriously to rein in the rightist terrorists within and allied to the military. To understand why the reformists did not prevail would necessitate a more nuanced study of the relationship between them and the other sectors of the party and the military. Similarly, we would need a better sense of the quality of their commitment to reform and a sharper differentiation of the various currents of reformism and their distinct approaches to redistributive issues. Of course, the military has not aided such a research endeavour, as it has refused to open its archives.

The book also argues for a state-centred approach to revolutionary mobilisation. In particular, it argues strongly for the importance of the educational reform as an important independent variable in the process. The authors muster solid evidence to support their position, yet in so doing they question those interpretations that highlight the role of class relations in the countryside as a fundamental cause of the civil war. Without the space to discuss the interpretative issues fully, I share with the authors a commitment to multi-causal explanations, yet I do think that the state-centred approach is somewhat deterministic. I am admittedly biased by my own work, which has stressed the semi-autonomous transformation of rural subaltern consciousness as a precondition for revolutionary mobilisation. In the Salvadorean case, for example, it is difficult to imagine such a mobilisation without the impact of liberation theology and the Christian base communities in the countryside, a development that occurred largely outside the purview of the state and achieved remarkable transformations in subaltern consciousness before the state opted to eliminate many of its activists.

Beyond these issues of interpretation, I do wish that the editors of Modernizing Minds had taken more care in working with the authors on the book's style and structure. For example, the use of numerous section headings – in one case a section is a short paragraph – makes the narrative at times read like a report. Similarly, in an effort to expand the scope of the book beyond the education reform, the authors link it to the land reform attempt in 1976 and the Cerrón Grande dam, an example that contradicts their criticism of previous assessments of the Alliance by Walter LaFeber, Greg Grandin and others. Yet, the research and analysis of those projects pales in comparison to the work the authors did on the educational reform, thus creating a lack of symmetry in the narrative.

Despite these criticisms, this is an important book that should find an interested readership in a number of areas. Not only does it make a fine contribution to Central American historiography, but it will also interest scholars and students interested in problems of development. Historical research addressing such foreign/domestic interconnections around development issues is rare, and of course, the study has great relevance to ongoing debates about the roles of NGOs. The authors adroitly summarise key theoretical references related to such issues, in particular the work of James Scott, James Ferguson and Arturo Escobar. Their study of local responses to and management of the projects represents an important addition to the literature.