Nationalism and Education in the Neoliberal Revision of Mexican Historical Narratives

• Main Author: Sibbald, Kristen
• Format: Others
• Published: Scholarship @ Claremont 2017
• Subjects: Mexico; Neoliberalism; Education; History; Nationalism; Chicana/o Studies; Latin American Studies
• Online Access: http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1051; http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2049&context=scripps_theses

Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s overhaul of the national education system in the early 1990’s offers an example of how neoliberal governments have reworked education systems and curriculum to fit neoliberal economic models. Part of the goal of this overhaul was to reconstruct a national identity that would support the development of neoliberalism in Mexico, where the post-Revolutionary national values ran contrary to those of neoliberal capitalism. This thesis explores the reconstruction of national identity through the use of educational policy in Mexico to rewrite historical narratives to promote the government’s neoliberal agenda. It examines the changes implemented in educational policies to understand the fundamental shift in the government’s approach to education and in the neoliberal agenda directing that approach. Next, it analyzes the historical narratives presented in one state-sponsored primary history textbook to investigate how the historical narrative is revised. The findings suggest that the new educational policies apply a neoliberal framework to the public education system, and that reframed historical narratives are designed to highlight capitalist values, such as individualism, Western notions of modernity, and the maintenance of social order, while downplaying and criticizing revolutionary nationalism.