and rural culture in contempt. In the 1930s, during the early presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–40) there was a push for "socialist education" at all levels. The policy made public schools sources of anti-religious ideology fueling resistance by Catholics. The government expanded normal schools for teacher training after the Mexican Revolution of 1910. As the federal government consolidated power through the formation of the National Revolutionary Party (PNR) in 1928 and its new iteration in 1936, the Mexican Revolutionary Party (PRM), teachers played an important role in the creation of national worker and national peasant organizations. Public education "contributed to the consolidation of an authoritarian single-party regime." When the Mexican government implemented its policy of socialist education, it directly targeted religious-affiliated, private schooling. Students in these schools were barred from receiving valid educational certification, which effectively prevented many from entering professions. The aim of socialist education was to create a "useful and efficient worker capable of assuming leadership of the national economy, employing methods of modern science with a profound consciousness of collective responsibility ... an indispensable precondition for the coming of a state in the hands of the working classes." The conflict was violent at the National University in Mexico City, which in 1929 had become autonomous from government control, but there was also conflict at regional universities as well, mainly student strikes. Cárdenas backed away from socialist education. Catholic student groups' mobilization against socialist education had lasting consequences, with leaders in the Catholic Student Union playing an important role in the founding of the conservative, pro-Catholic National Action Party in 1939. Education, post-1940 When President Cárdenas chose Manuel Avila Camacho as his successor, he chose a moderate, particularly on church-state issues where education was contentious. In office, Avila Camacho ended socialist education. Initially, the Ministry of Education continued various policies from the Cárdenas era, but with Avila Camacho's appointment of Jaime Torres Bodet as head of the SEP, government policy sought to raise educational standards and invest in teacher training. Torres Bodet founded the National Institute of Teacher Training. He sought to create a curriculum that was nationalist and democratic. "Education was to be secular, free of religious doctrine, and based on scientific truths." During the period ca. 1940–1960, Mexico experienced sustained economic growth, the so-called Mexican Miracle, which saw increased urbanization and industrialization. The idea that education was a determinant of economic development took hold and the