The members of the Athenaeum gave to Mexican education system a wider vision which rejected racist biological determinism and which found a solution for the cost of social adjustment problem generated by the processes which change society as industrialization or urbanization.
Against the official position of Justo Sierra, porfirian minister of Instruction, and the "científicos" (pejoratively nicknamed in the Mexican slang), José Vasconcelos and the Athenaeum generation promoted criticism of the philosophical sole vision (positivism and determinism).
Finally, in the summer of 1909, Antonio Caso organized a series of conferences[5] dealing with the history of Positivism, given at the National Preparatory School, an institution founded on positivist principles and source of Mexican educational since its creation in 1868.
Members of the Ateneo such as Alfonso Reyes stressed the importance of classical scholarship and additionally looked to the works of modern continental philosophers such as Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Bergson, as well as Spanish writers such as Jose Ortega y Gasset, to propound new values for human societies which were contrary to scientific and positivistic trends in thought.
In 2009, the group launched the first edition of the Escuela de Formación Humana, a course for young people between the ages of 15 and 21, which included workshops in philosophy, art appreciation, ethics, public speaking, assertiveness and human rights.