AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM, PEYO MERCÉ AND THE EDUCATION OF THE PUERTO RICAN IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF PUERTO RICO: 1940-1960’s

While the students in the USA were exposed to the glories of Washington and Mark Twain and the rest of that country’s classics, we read Hostos, de Burgos, Rodríguez de Tio, Alonso, Díaz Alfaro. Their exceptionalism was not part of our curriculum, if anything, it was their colonialism and the negative or positive effects on the Puerto Rican identity and economy what we studied. Colonized or not, there were major differences in how we viewed them and how they see themselves. To read the story by Abelardo Díaz Alfaro about the rural teacher named Peyo Mercé can serve to begin understanding the educational crack that separated us from them.*

*For more information and sources on this topic, read some of my entries on this blog; but you must do the search. And do not confuse public schools in Puerto Rico with the private ones, since they not only reflect who pays for the education, but another crack in type of student population (no 'blanquitos" in the public ones), content, purposes and methods.