This detailed and comprehensive synthesis of the history of education in Mexico, covering the period from the conquest until 2006, is a product of El Colegio de México's long-standing seminar on the topic, and offers much more than pedagogy and programmes, rather placing the study of education firmly within social, cultural and political history. Illustrating major themes across time, including how education has functioned as a means to maintain social order and how debilitating obstacles, be they political, practical or financial, often made reform difficult, the volume also offers a thorough synthesis of current research findings.

La educación en México opens with Pablo Escalante Gonzalbo's discussion of Nahua educational culture and institutions, which were an important means to create and maintain social order. Non-noble boys, for example, studied at military schools, where their training culminated in the capture of their own prisoner. Young noblemen attended the calmécac, which prepared them to lead society by instilling strict discipline and morality. In the next chapter, Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru argues that post-conquest education also sought to maintain social order and hierarchy, by legitimising colonial rule. Religious teaching to the indigenous population, for instance, was deliberately limited to basic catechism, as theological arguments were viewed as too complex and potentially dangerous. Meanwhile, both rural and urban girls were trained for a life of women's work amid domestic spaces. Dorothy Tanck de Estrada's lively chapter on the eighteenth century shows the colony in full bloom, with intellectuals and educational institutions to rival those of Spain. Proto-nationalist resentments boiled around the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 and the appointment of peninsulares, instead of creoles, to positions of academic authority. According to the Spanish, creoles were so ignorant that none of them could even ‘take care of a lettuce’ (p. 76). By the end of the century, innovative pedagogues were seeking to make education fun for children by publishing literature specifically for them. Among these publications was the biography of an Otomí woman, venerated as a saint, which was the first free textbook in Mexico and was intended to make indigenous children proud of their ancestry.

During the Independence era, Anne Staples argues, children, whose presence had begun to be divined in the eighteenth-century reforms, all but disappeared from view again, while a proposal to clothe primary school pupils, in order to reduce absenteeism, indicated the profound difficulties facing any educational efforts. By mid-century, despite the Catholic Church's longstanding and diverse role in provision, Article 3 of the Constitution stipulated ‘free education’ and set the stage for heated debates about what role, if any, the Church had in public life. Staples and Engracia Loyo co-wrote the chapter on the Porfiriato, in which children again became the focus of educators and medical professionals, who wanted to improve educational opportunity but also recognised basic difficulties, such as primary schools functioning more as centres for the transmission of illnesses than knowledge. Training expectations and opportunities for teachers increased, while primary teaching became a woman's job.

In the revolutionary years, as Loyo describes, schools, occupied by warring forces and abandoned by their students, shut, while their teachers joined combat forces and taught basic literacy to the troops. The spread of literacy, and increasing rural schooling, became hallmarks of revolutionary success in the 1920s. At the same time, the new federal state sought to assert its authority in the field of education over municipalities, states and the Catholic Church. ‘Education’ had become a key arena in which the revolution was carried out, but what that actually meant changed with the political winds. Cecilia Greaves argues that by the second half of the 1930s education was no longer meant to transform Mexican society, defend workers or promote land reform; rather education was to be oriented towards industrial development and national unity. But the reality was that rural schools were empty during harvest time, while urban schools had class sizes of 45 to 50 students. By the end of the 1950s, amid an unprecedented demographic boom, schools and the school system still faced many of the same problems: 50 per cent of rural children did not attend school at all. In the final chapter, Josefina Zoraida Vázquez brings the story up to date, concluding that, despite some notable efforts and significant progress made in terms of literacy rates, functional illiteracy remains a serious issue, and the expansion of the school-age population makes improving the provision of education difficult. Each president's desire to leave his mark on schools, meanwhile, inhibits a long-term approach to improving education.

This work will be of use to scholars and students inside and outside the field of education in Mexico, precisely because the educational challenges discussed across this long time frame are presented as integral to Mexican history; also, the volume offers another angle on big issues, for instance depicting Emperor Maximilian as the tragic reformer whose educational ideas were taken up later by liberals. Moreover, accounts of educational practitioners, students and reformers offer vivid examples of the historical currents under discussion. Perhaps because it is oriented towards the general public, the volume does not use references, which is a frustration for those wanting to follow up on particular events or arguments. From this perspective, the bibliography acts as a guide for further reading. Yet, despite these slight problems, the volume is a credit to its contributors and their years of research on the topic. It will quickly become a frequently consulted work in the field.