Guillermo Marín Ruiz

“ Indeed, not all human beings desire or wanting can be positive or biophilous for the individual or the community. Humanizing the wanting is the restraint of passions, the containment of weaknesses. For the wise toltec the individual, the community and the world were perfectible, and it is precisely here where education takes its intersectoral and transcendent dimension. Only from this perspective the depth and meaning of Anahuac education can be understood, and the reason why it lasted for three millennia. ”

“ Education was a means to prepare future generations in the effort and permanent sacrifice. Life, as a self-control and temperance process, internal restraint and external balance. Education was not only based on knowledge. ”

“ As can be seen in this excerpt, the mother emphasizes that life is not only pleasure and joy. On the contrary, life is faced as a challenge of great effort and suffering and hard work, which has some bonuses, "my child in this world, is the place of weeping and afflictions, and discontent, where there is cold and unpleasant air and great heat from the Sun that afflicts us, and is a place of hunger and thirst: this is a great truth and from experience we know." ”

“ One could assert that civilization itself was based in education. No other humanity ancient people acted this way. With full coverage, mandatory for parents and authorities, and with a sense of being totally free. This education "conscience and concern" in which the Anáhuac inhabitants lived for three thousand years, is now seldom seen, very few countries have it. Because it is not only wealth and national power, but goes beyond, gravitates on a very high humanist horizon. ”

“ That is why, in education, gender held equal importance with different responsibilities and tasks, conceived differently but complementing. The essential for both, was discipline, responsibility, respect among peers and with elders, attention and concentration capabilities, the ability to express themselves properly and behave appropriately, austerity with elegance and frugality with measure, the self-restraint and ego domination, tolerance and humility, conscience of community responsibility, team work, aesthetic beauty and sacrifice. ”

“ The careful speech, firm but loving, indicates the son a way of behaving in life and in the world. These appeals were memorized and transmitted from parents to children for centuries, so it remained in the collective subconscious of the sons of the sons of the old grandparents, Mexicans of today, a standard of conduct, education acquired through the centuries of exercise from generation to generation applied at home and in popular culture. ”

“ Creation is not an instantaneous event, but an endless process. Men have to comply without interruption, taking upon him the duty of walking toward perfection what was initially created.
This explains, within the basic cultural unity, the dynamic manifestations range. It explains, for example, the differences between the urbanization of La Venta and that of Palenque or Monte Alban or Tenochtitlan. A single concept directs them: the human obligation to ally themselves to the gods to create, maintain and perfect the existing. Nothing should remain in the state in which it was created. ”

“ Instruction is based on knowledge transmission and education in values transmission. Every day individuals leave schools formd with advanced scientific and technological knowledge, but at the same time, devoid of values. And an instruction without values, leads to social and environmental destruction.
The choice is very old. Educate for life or train for work. Since the Industrial Revolution, education has been losing ground to instruction. Utilitarianism, pragmatism and individualism, have imposed, over the humanist, spiritual and community senses. ”

“ Finally, "the human", was not only inevitably linked to the divine, but at earth, was totally and absolutely immersed in the community. The individual, wheher male or female, was linked to a great obligation and existential responsibility before the supreme divinity and their community. Serving the community efficiently, was the highest performance that a human being could socially have in life. A human being could not be conceived without these two great responsibilities. ”

“ The Anahuac civilization was based on education. No other ancient civilization did it with such rigor and extended to the entire population. Education was a large State institution, which blended family education, religious, cultural through the formation of values. Parents delivered their children to schools, with certainty and conviction, of being part of an ancestral process that guaranteed the child development, the development of the community and the State permanence. ”

“ The human being is not resigned to be born, grow, reproduce and die, seeks to find a transcendent meaning to their thoughts, feelings and actions, in short, to their life. This quest for the meaning of life, shared by a group of people, is what gives continuity and direction to a civilization over time.
The ancient inhabitants of what today is Mexico initiated and developed from the very same origin of time, a number of ideas on the meaning of life. ”

“ Hard place is earth, place of tears and suffering, where sorrow and bitterness are known; it happens, the icy wind glides, it is said that wind and heat are really calmed, but there is hunger and thirst ”

“ Everything, thanks to the action and even the sacrifice of men, must be in perpetual upward movement toward its perfection, through constant efforts ruled by human consciousness that higher values are necessarily achievable". ”

“ If we assert that education transmits values and that in the Anahuac it remained present with total coverage, for at least for three thousand consecutive years. We can explain the reason why in Mexico, people who have generations of "not attending school" or not having completed grammar school, "are highly educated people, with strong ethical and moral values". This values education (non-formal and non-school) , transmitted through ancestral culture, allows individuals, families and peoples, to have better eating habits and to eat "out of nothing", the same in a desert as in a forest. ”

“ The social organization system and legal regime, ranging from ancestral family and community principles and ethical and moral standards, passing through production and trade relations, solidarity and social responsibility, forms of community and state administration; up to a very complex system of laws, rules, uses and customs that embodied free work by the community, the stewardships and charges system, which allowed the orderly and balanced community life as well as relationships and exchanges with other communities or states. ”

“ Values are related to discipline, responsibility, respect, honesty, spirituality development, solidarity and team work ability. Knowledge transmission occurred in the practice of everyday tasks to make institutions self-sufficient, whether in the milpa, in the pottery workshop or the maintenance and construction of educational buildings. It started from the idea that knowledge without wisdom was harmful to the individual and the community. The action of giving other’s faces wisdom (Ixtlamachiliztli) , is deeply understood with the concept of "humanizing the wanting" (netlacaneco) . ”

“ Another word that allows understanding the Toltec family dimension is —cenyeliztli— understood as a "status or nature of those who live entirely and jointly". Finally, to understand the family concept we need to remember the word —calpulli—, meaning "great House", which implies a set of families who live entirely and jointly. The family represents the nucleus base of the individual conscience; the second will be the community. This is the reason why the education essence emerges from the maternal womb. ”

“ There was a total sense of respect for the infant, both for a cultural value fully admitted as a community manner, as by a large number of human beings integrated by parents, grandparents, godparents, uncles, that supported them. ”

“ It is remarkable that at that time, and on that continent, an indigenous American people have practiced compulsory education for all and that there was not a single Mexican child from the 16th century, whatever their social origin, which was deprived from school. ”

“ The Toltec were not civil, religious or military authorities. They were instead, teachers familiar with millennial knowledge that versed on the ability of the human being self-conceiving capacity as an energy charge, and understanding the world around them as an energy conglomerate and perhaps, most importantly, conceiving themselves as "energy creators". ”

“ Thus, the toltec, symbolically represented the balance desired between spirit and matter, through "Quetzal-cóatl". Religious-philosophical figure, promoting the incarnation of the equilibrium symbol.
"As Quetzalcoatl teaches that the human greatness lies on a higher order consciousness, his effigy cannot be other than the symbol of this truth, and the serpent feathers that represent him should speak of the spirit which allows men —a man whose body, such as the reptile, crawls on the dust— knowing the superhuman creation joy, thus constituting an ode to the sovereign inner freedom. ”

“ The home education was practical and by imitation. The example of the family nucleus was basic, starting with the parents. Parents taught their sons, at an early age, to comply with all the male obligations with the household and the community. In addition to incorporating them into the work made by the father, such as agriculture, ceramic, hunting and fishing, etc., plus community activities, such as collective agricultural work, construction and repair of temples, public buildings, canals, roads, bridges, etc. Mothers disciplined their daughters in household chores. ”

“ In ancient Anahuac, men were not born "finished", on the contrary, were perfectible, imbued with a formative process, in which family, school and society intervened. The person through life, especially in the first part, gradually formed "an own face" and a "true heart", education foundation, from where the ixtlamachilitzli concept originates, "action of giving wisdom to the faces and tlacahuapahualiztli," art of raising and educating human beings". Education was considered the highest art, and the Toltec, the supreme artists. ”

“ Education is one of the issues mostly dealt with by demagogues who are in economic and political power. It is repeatedly stated that education is the future of peoples. But reality tells us that, with the exception of a few countries, education is insignificant on budgets and priorities for the rich and poor nations on the planet. ”

“ Do not act as mute, and be sure to comfort the poor and afflicted with sweet and good words. Honor all and more so your parents, to whom you owe obedience, service and reverence, and the son that does not do this won't develop well. Love and honor all, you will live in peace and joy. Do not follow the crazy that will not obey his father nor revere their mother, but as animals leave the straight path, and as such, will not reason, nor hear doctrine, or are given to correct anything... ”

“ But also, this education transmitted in the traditions, uses and customs, allows them to have good hygiene habits and healing methods, which include plants, insects, minerals and ancient techniques. These knowledge is implicit in construction, planting, reforestation, community organization and justice delivery methods and techniques.
Finally, education also prepares individuals from childhood to "serve" the community, to obey and respect hierarchies, learning that the community interest is more important than the individual. ”

“ Respect for parents and grandparents, as well as to older siblings, the relationship with extended family, that is, uncles, aunts, political relatives, but above all, with godparents, who had at various childhood and youth stages, a "commitment" with the education of the Godson, was fundamental in the educational development of the child. ”

“ It is then education, which enabled the individual, the family and the community, to feed, sustain health, organize and live in harmony in society. But more importantly, education is what allows maintaining the social purpose order and achieve the higher abstract projects of a civilization over time.
6. - EDUCATION AS CULTURAL LEGACY. Cultural heritage is divided into two areas, the tangible cultural heritage, which refers to "objects", such as pyramids, steles, ceramic, codices, etc. And intangible cultural heritage, which refers to "subjects", namely persons. ”

“ Another human being feature, was that they possessed a great responsibility for development and equilibrium of the world they lived in. The common human being was called "macehual", which means, "the deserving" of the sacrifice of the gods. ”

“ Domestic education, which began after weaning, at three or four years, was intended to induce adulthood techniques and obligations as soon as possible in the child. A world in which manual labor was common to all, offered children the opportunity to participate in adult activities much earlier than, for example in our mechanized culture. Parents supervised the training of boys and mothers instructed girls. ”

“ The Toltecáyotl has the same philosophical value and the same human depth as Hinduism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. Wisdom that for thousands of years has guided the people’s existence, which conforms the Anahuac civilization throughout eight millennia, since the agriculture invention until our days. ”