This contribution outlines the historical development of the Mexican education system, presents an overview of its institutional and organizational structure since 1921, and discusses selected educational trends. The chapter argues that throughout the twentieth century, the system struggled to catch up with a dramatically expanding population that was divided by enormous social, economic, and cultural inequalities and that a number of contingent mechanisms were devised in order to standardize unequal growth in different areas and compensate for social and economic problems that schooling per se could not resolve. It will be