Page:Pedagogía Tolteca.djvu/34

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. It went beyond, in values, attitudes, feelings, that formed "an own face and a real heart".

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. Fr. Bernardino Sahagún transcribed the children delivery speech to the Telpochcalli:

"Here has brought you our Lord, creator of heaven and earth; we let you know that our Lord was served to make us deserve a creature, as a jewel or rich feather, that was born with us; by venture will raise and live; and he is male, it is not convenient that we teach women duties, having him home.
Therefore we give him to you as your son, and we ask you to take care, as you are charged of creating the boys and young men, showing them the ways, and so they serve the gods…"

Children and young people of both genders, were taught not only science, as mathematics, astronomy, biology, or the arts like singing, music and dance; In addition to learning to speak correctly; read and paint their codices, teachers taught some to sow and harvest land, to build, carve, cast, etc. To the girls, planting, cooking, healing, raise, grow plants, weaving and embroidery. Sports and dexterity games were practiced