By expropriating multi-billion dollar oil properties from foreign companies, Cárdenas returned to Mexico some of its lost pride and a hope for the future. Although agrarian reform came first on the nation's docket, there were other reforms to help man improve his lot. The ejidal bank aided the farmer by loaning him money for his plow, seeds, fertilizer, harvesting tools, oxen, mules, tractors. [Illustration: Hacienda Quinta Carolina, Chihuahua: residence of more than fifty rooms, 1892. Abandoned as of 1981.] By 1960, the last of the largest haciendas had been abolished: the Greene Cananea Ranch and the Hacienda Atotonilco had become agrarian property--millions of acres had returned to the people. Mexico had become a Spanish-speaking nation. Out of a population of forty million people, only two million were now unable to speak Spanish. By 1960, a school teacher earned 36,000 pesos a year, instead of 400 pesos annually at an hacienda. [Illustration: Hacienda de Caleturia, Puebla: silver door knocker.] By the 1970s, about 70 percent of the children were attending primary grades, while at the turn of the century, in pre-revolutionary decades, scarcely 10 percent acquired an elementary education. By 1980, rural schools provided at least two grades, and cities offered the primary cycle through the sixth year. Ideally, a child can now attend school at five years of age, learn through six years of primary, three years of secondary, two years of preparatory, followed by three to seven years at the university level. [Illustration: Hacienda de Chichén Itza, Yucatán: church.] Article 3 of the new constitution prescribes that education, whether in national, state, or municipal institutions, should develop all the faculties, encourage patriotism and an awareness of international solidarity, shun religious dogma, advance science, and oppose fanaticism and slavery. This progress was based on a past that combined two distinct traditions. Mexico's pre-Columbian culture had mastered concepts of intellectual and practical value, had a knowledge of astronomy, a number system, metropolitan and temple architecture, and made advances in writing, surgery and medical skills, sculpture and mural art, irrigation, and the construction of a system of highways.