Mexican Textbook ‘Bias’ Attacked : Students Get Anti-Capitalist, Leftist Slant, Critics Charge

Should children in Mexico be taught that world trade benefits only a few rich countries, that Soviet land is in the hands of peasants and that “good organization” has led to rapid economic development in China?

Should they be taught that large international companies use most of their resources to persuade citizens of poor countries to buy useless goods?

A major parents’ group in Mexico and business organizations believe that they should not and are pressing the government to change textbooks that the protesters think are slanted in favor of leftist politics. The government replies that such protests are merely the latest outbreak in a century of carping by conservative opponents of public education in Mexico.

The conflict is drawing added attention this year because private business in Mexico is being called upon to help pull the country out of a persistent economic crisis. It is now supposed to be both patriotic and good business to improve the economy. Government-owned banks recently began a series of televised advertisements featuring businessmen assuring each other that “this is a good time to invest in Mexico.”

Contradiction Seen

Some businessmen see a contradiction between the call on them for help and the demonizing of capitalism in public school textbooks.

“We don’t understand the reason for the presence of tendentious ideology in the textbooks,” said Francisco Calderon, head of the Business Coordinating Council, a grouping of seven national business and professional organizations. “The books should at least be neutral.”

“Only disadvantages of capitalism are ever mentioned” in the textbooks, Jose Ruiz de Chavez, president of the National Parents Union, charged. Branches of the union are spreading in Mexico, and the organization long has been influential as a pressure group in the field of education.

Several specific books are under attack by the parents and businessmen. One, a sixth-grade social studies text, is obligatory in primary schools under the government’s free textbook program, which distributes books to 15 million students.

‘Dependency Theory’

The book appears to be heavily influenced by the so-called dependency theory of development, which holds that the underdeveloped world is locked into endless poverty because it must pay dearly for imported manufactured goods while it is able to export only underpriced raw materials.

One excerpt states: “We have already said that industrialization and enrichment of a few countries convert the rest into producers of cheap raw materials and consumers of expensive manufactures.”

Descriptions of Communist-ruled nations also rankles critics of the book. They assert that the Soviet Union, China and Cuba are excessively praised.

On progress in the Soviet Union, the text asserts that, “With education, little by little, peasants better exploited the land and workers managed the factories.”

Cuba is said to have resolved literacy problems with a government that dedicates itself to delivering medical attention, employment and food to “all the people.” China’s advances are mentioned without reference to the violence of the Cultural Revolution.

“It is a clear attempt to make our students think in one direction,” Ruiz said.

Centralization Opposed

Beyond the perceived ideological implications of the text, Ruiz and other critics object to the centralization of decisions on textbooks in the hands of the government. In Mexico, the Ministry of Education approves school curricula, chooses texts that are distributed free and recommends other books that are bought by secondary school students.

“It is a totalitarian system,” Ruiz said.

The Parents Union and business groups are concerned that experimental books that they say are especially leftist-oriented will soon be obligatory in secondary schools. There is as yet no free textbook program for junior and senior high schools, but government critics fear that one is in the works.

“It’s a long fight,” said Ruiz. “We have to keep watch.”

The Parents Union successfully exerted pressure on the government to alter primary school texts in the 1970s. The parents group contends that a leftist tendency began to emerge in the textbooks during the 1970-76 presidency of Luis Echeverria.

The government asserts that its critics are reactionary. Education officials say that since the middle of the last century, part of the Mexican public, usually well-to-do people with strong links to the Roman Catholic Church, has opposed public education.

The only novelty in the latest campaigns, the government insists, is an attempt to find Communists behind every textbook.

‘Attacks . . . Are Constant’

“There’s really nothing new in all this,” said Javier Wimer, head of the government’s free textbook program and printing house. “The attacks on public education are constant.”

Wimer did not deny that some texts might criticize private industry.

“This is Mexico, and in Mexico, the government and not private capital has been the force for development,” he said.

He did insist that no slant toward Communist countries exists, pointing out textbook descriptions of dictatorial policies and lack of freedoms in China and the Soviet Union and of Cuba’s economic dependency on the Soviet Union.

Wimer also denied that the government plans to extend the free text program to secondary schools.

The free book program has been in place since 1962 and is designed to create a national, homogenous educational system, Wimer said, as well as to ensure that the country’s many poor need not sacrifice to buy reading material for their children.

Private education also is well established in Mexico, but the free textbooks are required reading in those schools as well as in public institutions.

Since the free book program began, the government has published and distributed 1.6 billion volumes. This year, it will distribute more than 85 million texts.

Secondary school books are selected by teachers from lists of recommendations supplied by the government. The states also have some leeway in recommending texts purchased by parents.