born 1486?, Ghent, Flanders [now in Belgium] died 1572, Mexico City
Franciscan monk who founded the first school in New Spain (Mexico) and laid the foundations for future Indian education in the Spanish colonies.
In 1523 Gante (Spanish for “Ghent”), then confessor to the emperor Charles V, went to New Spain, where he established a village school for Indian children in Texcoco. Because he believed that education and religion should be natural parts of everyday life, Gante studied the native Indian language and taught reading, catechism, and native arts in both Spanish and the local dialect. Three years later he founded a similar school in Mexico City. There, teaching in both languages, he welcomed children and adults from all economic and social levels. His Doctrina cristiana en lengua mexicana (“Christian Doctrine in the Mexican Language”) was published in Antwerp in 1528 and in Mexico in 1553.
Link to this article and share the full text with the readers of your Web site or blog-post.
If you think a reference to this article on "Pedro de Gante" will enhance your Web site,
blog-post, or any other web-content, then feel free to link to this article,
and your readers will gain full access to the full article, even if they do not subscribe to our service.
You may want to use the HTML code fragment provided below.
We welcome your comments. Any revisions or updates suggested for this article will be reviewed by our editorial staff. Contact us here.
Regular users of Britannica may notice that this comments feature is less robust than in the past. This is only temporary, while we make the transition to a dramatically new and richer site. The functionality of the system will be restored soon.