Ever Forward

Minister of Education Manuel Gual Vidal had some cheering year-end news: in the three years of Mexico's "each one teach one" campaign (TIME, Feb. 4, 1946), almost 1,100,000 illiterates had been taught to read & write.*

That left more than 6,000,000 illiterates (30% of the nation) to be taught, and many of them are Tarascan, Mayan, and Otomi Indians who speak only their own languages. To educate them, the government is now using a new hotly disputed technique; they are first taught to read & write in their native dialects, then are taught Spanish. Not for another year, and only after reports are in on a similar UNESCO pilot-project in Haiti, will educators decide just how good this scheme is.

* Guatemala, Venezuela, Peru, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Panama and Bolivia now have similar literacy campaigns. Argentina and Uruguay have had them for years.

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