Drawing teaching in San Luis Potosí during the Porfiriato

Abstract

Drawing teaching in Mexico during the second half of nineteenth century became of major importance, in reason that the positivist philosophy considered this discipline as a fundamental tool for the intellectual and esthetical formation of the common citizen. The national educative project of President Benito Juarez introduced Drawing as an obligatory subject from primary to preparatory education. For this reason, such discipline stopped being an exclusive study for art academies, artists, architects and engineers. It became the base to the formation of several professions, as well as industrial, mechanical and graphic arts and for most of the occupations in that century. The regimen of Porfirio Diaz continued this project with several changes on the focus.

During the last thirty years of nineteenth century in the city of San Luis Potosí the study programs from primary to preparatory education were changed in concordance with national political lines. This work provides evidence relative to Drawing teaching in this city during the Porfiriato (1877-1910), in the Instituto Científico y Literario, in the Escuela Normal para Profesores and in the Escuela Industrial Militar, showing that even the teaching methods as the idea of the scientific, artistic and technique importance of this discipline were part of a federal educative policy that was introduced with high acceptation in the states.