The Aztecs' Huehuetlatolli: "discourse" and education by tradition

Abstract

Current paper shows that the role of ‘ritual discourses’, cultivated within families and schools in the Spanish pre-conquest Aztec society, was the formation of warriors, clerics and Aztec power-ridden people according to the requirements of the period. The ancient discourses or Huehuetlatolli, one of the first educational models developed on the American continente, are analysed as na oral heritage of a far-gone past which should be preserved and transmitted to future generations as received. Imbued with social, political, cultural and educational issues, these oratory artifacts are importante didactic and pedagogical manifestations which made their appearance in the works of the first European missionaries who adapted and employed them in the missionary process and in the chronicles and reports of the Conquest and Colonization periods. The huehuetlatolli are a witness of a society which had clearly in mind the type of person it wanted to form.