Moisés Sáenz

Moisés Sáenz (1888–1941) was a leading education advocate and reformer of education in Mexico during the first half of the 20th century. Many of the philosophies and programs that Sáenz introduced during his tenure as Sub-Secretary for the Secretariat of Public Education in the 1920s came from the influences of his mentor, John Dewey.

Moisés Sáenz was born in 1888 in the northern Mexican town of Monterrey. His family was one of the relatively few Protestant families in Mexico at the time, something which had a strong influence on the path Sáenz’s life would take. Moisés had a brother, Aaron, who also rose to prominence in post-Revolutionary Mexico, first as a politician (he served as both Secretary of Public Education and Governor of Nuevo León) and later as a sugar baron known to some as the “king of Mexican sugar.”

As a member of a Protestant family, Sáenz was strongly influenced by the strong education tradition set by Protestant missionaries, starting in the late 1820s. Because each Protestant was expected to be able to read the Bible on his or her own, literacy was an essential skill. A major feature of this effort was the founding of schools, in both urban and rural areas, which allowed local children to gain access to a quality education that often would otherwise have been inaccessible.

The majority of Sáenz’s childhood education took place at the hands of Protestant missionaries. His elementary school years were spent in his hometown of Monterrey from 1896-1902. He them moved to the Coyoacán Preparatory School for Boys in Mexico City in 1903, where he remained until 1908.

After graduating from Coyoacán at age 20, Sáenz obtained a teaching credential before moving to the United States to further his education in 1909.

Once in the United States, Sáenz remained within the Protestant educational sphere. He attended Protestant-affiliated Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania. After graduating from Washington and Jefferson, Sáenz began his post-graduate studies across the Atlantic at the University of Paris before returning to the United States to pursue his doctorate at Columbia University.

At Columbia, he met John Dewey, who became a mentor to Sáenz and helped to shape many of the theories and policies Sáenz would pursue throughout his professional career.

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