page_title: Porfiriato
section_title: Education
hierarchical_section_title: Porfiriato / Education
caption_attribution_description: Don Justo Sierra, promotor de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
context_page_description: The Porfiriato is a term given to the period that General José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori ruled Mexico as president in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, coined by Mexican historian Daniel Cosío Villegas. Díaz pursued a policy of "order and progress," inviting foreign investment to Mexico and maintaining social and political order, by force if necessary. There were tremendous changes economically, technologically, socially, and culturally during this period. As Díaz approached his 80th birthday and after having been continuously elected since 1884, he still had not put in place a plan for his succession. The fraudulent 1910 elections are usually seen as the end date of the Porfiriato. Violence broke out, Díaz was forced to resign and go into exile, and Mexico experienced a decade of regional civil war, the Mexican Revolution.
context_section_description: Liberals created a secular educational system to counter the religious influence of the Roman Catholic Church.  Public schools had been established during the period of Benito Juárez, but expanded during the Porfiriato after the defeat of the French monarchy and their Mexican Catholic allies. Schools did not just teach literacy and numeracy, but also aimed at creating a workforce guided by principles of punctuality, thrift, valuable work habits, and abstinence from alcohol and tobacco use, and gambling. Even so, illiteracy was widespread, with the 1910 census indicating only 33% of men and 27% of women were literate.  However, the government's commitment to education under Justo Sierra was an important step, particularly in higher education with the establishment of the secular, state-controlled Universidad Nacional de México. The Pontifical University of Mexico, founded in the early sixteenth century under religious authority, was suppressed in 1865. Teaching school was one of the few honorable professions open to women. Urban, educated women school teachers were in the forefront of feminists in Mexico.
caption: Justo Sierra, Díaz's Secretary of Education (1905-1911), who established the National University in Mexico
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