Education In New Mexico Has Long, Tenuous History
By: Rob Martinez
Education and learning have been taking place in New Mexico for centuries. The ancient ancestors of the Puebloan communities at Chaco and Mesa Verde were certainly versed in passing knowledge from one generation to the next. These places had communal dwellings; organized towns and villages; kivas for spiritual rites; and fields of beans, squash and corn.
Oral histories, traditions, laws and holy words were passed from generation to generation. Just like today, people learned in order to be able to survive and thrive in their current circumstances. Their teachers were parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, religious and community leaders.
When settlers arrived from outside places such as Spain and Mexico, they brought new things to learn. The Spanish system had a duality of civil and religious powers. As such, governors and priests were appointed to serve in outlying territories like New Mexico. These were men who were educated, especially priests. The governors brought retinues that sometimes included scribes, who were intensely literate and skilled at writing calligraphy.
There were no schools to speak of in colonial New Mexico. What one learned was what one needed to know to be a vecino, or citizen, on the edge of the empire — planting; harvesting,; and working with domesticated animals such as horses, cows, pigs, goats and sheep. Hunting skills were essential to kill buffalo and deer. Here and there, a child might get some form of private instruction from a priest or government official in the art of reading and writing, maybe some understanding of numbers.
Books were scarce in colonial New Mexico. We know from scant archival mentions or lists in documents that priests had some books, mainly about theology, philosophy, scripture or writings of the saints. Governors brought what books they could carry on a carreta, or cart, some for themselves to read, others for their wives. Maria Theresa de la Roche, wife of Gov. Bernardo López de Mendizabal, was known to read books in Italian during her stay in New Mexico in the mid-1600s.
Diego de Vargas brought a library to New Mexico in 1693.
Those were the exceptions. Mostly, New Mexicans told stories, heard dichos (sayings or phrases that taught wisdom) and learned through songs. As late as 1812, the state of public education was nonexistent. Consider the words of Pedro Baustista Pino, who represented New Mexico at the Spanish Cortes in Cádiz. That year, he reported the state of public education in New Mexico was reduced to only those who could contribute to the hiring of a schoolmaster. According to Pino, it was not possible to fund a teacher for the general instruction of the people of Santa Fe.
As the waning years of the crumbling Spanish empire came to a close, the education of New Mexicans was not high on the list of Spain’s priorities. Up until 1821, the only true example of a type of formal education system in New Mexico were the Franciscan Missions, where indoctrination and teaching were attempted for centuries with some success and many failures.
With Mexican independence from Spain in 1821, moves to establish public schools throughout the new nation were put in play. Antonio Narbona, Mexican governor of New Mexico in 1825, came up with a plan for establishing schools in the territory. He assigned the task of raising funds for education to the Rev. Juan Felipe Ortiz, as well as the various alcaldes or local magistrates. During Narbona’s brief tenure, there was a school in Santa Fe. Opening schools in smaller communities proved elusive.
When New Mexico became a U.S. territory in 1850, the Catholic Church filled the education void in the region. Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy brought in religious orders, such as the Sisters of Loretto and the Christian Brothers to educate and evangelize the New Mexicans, as well as to fill the gap in public education.
Protestants and those of other faiths, including Judaism, were not keen on having their children taught by Catholic nuns and priests. The struggle over the life of public education between the Catholic Church on one side and politicians and citizens on the other lasted decades.
In 1898, public education was officially established in New Mexico. Some speculate that had the U.S. implemented public schools in New Mexico 50 years earlier, New Mexico would have had an earlier entry to statehood.
This article first appeared in the Santa Fe New Mexican on June 4, 2021.