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The discourse about education in early independent Mexico was characterised by its concern with the creation of a civic culture suitable for the new, autonomous and republican order. In this article I examine the political significance of the pedagogical techniques and methods most highly praised and used in this period for the attainment of such aim -namely those of the monitorial system of education. The first section consists of a brief review of the introduction of the monitorial system in Mexico. In the second section I examine the ways in which that system was perceived and adopted, and the civic and republican attributes conferred on it. I contrast the discourse of the manuals produced in Mexico with that of those published in Britain, its country of origin. The last section is devoted to the specific way in which the teaching of civics within the monitorial system was prescribed; this includes an analysis of the textbooks of civic education, known as 'civic catechisms', in particular of the manner in which their rhetorical strategies were deployed to control the experience of learning.