Purposes, function and social importance of pre-Hispanic and colonial education

Abstract

Education as a fact has a human and social meaning. If it is about talking about the purpose of education, it is necessary to place oneself in time and place, since human beings from the beginning have searched for an explanation of everything. In pre-Hispanic times, education manifested itself as a spontaneous influence of the adult on the child and the young. Education is a phenomenon through which the individual appropriates the culture of the society in which he operates and adapts to the lifestyle of the community in which he develops. The Nahuas juxtaposed the idea of ​​"face" and that of the "heart", an organ to which they attributed the dynamism of the will and the maximum concentration of life. The purpose of "educating" located in the colonial era, was that the indigenous people, that is, the inhabitants of Mesoamerica, would delve into the beliefs, customs and conception of the Spaniards. The arrival of the Spaniards in Mesoamerica implied a cultural fusion, the ideological clash between them caused one to be the dominant one. The transformation process with the change strategy through religious imposition combined with the education given to the younger population was a key piece of change. We can recognize that the concept of education in pre-Hispanic times went beyond an educational concept under a structural and systematic regime to obtain a hierarchical position of power, a reality that occurred in the colonial educational ideology of New Spain.