Ceremonial Teaching: Public Examinations in Elementary Schools in Mexico City during the First Third of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This article focuses on the performative ceremony of the public examinations practiced in elementary schools in Mexico in the first third of the nineteenth century. By means of a «thick» description of three such examinations at three different times (1807, 1819 and 1831), it is shown how these events, rather than mere student assessment mechanisms, were a staging of a schooling ideal in which other elements were at stake: a display of state symbols, a demonstration of political loyalties, a manifestation of responsibilities in educational affairs and a representation of the social order and its values. Specific mechanisms of the educational function of ceremonies are discussed, such as the mobilisation of certain emotions, the inculcation of a feeling of belonging to a social and political community, and the transmission of particular values. Variations in these mechanisms are studied in the transition from the monarchic culture of Mexico in the colonial era, to the liberal, republican culture of the first decade of independence.