Martín Beltrán Saucedo

In this article we present the results of the historical-pedagogical research, which objective was to establish the premises for the development of the novohispanic Schools of Arts and Crafts as predecessors of current Mexican technical professional education, through a documentary-bibliographic study. Th e authors found, that the prerequisites of the appearance of the Mexican technical professional education system were created since the 16th century, and the novohispanic Schools of Arts and Crafts were the grounds for its development. In addition, the premises for the development of the novohispanic Schools of Arts and Crafts were the introduction of new agricultural, textiles, construction, and mining extraction technologies to the new continent by the Spanish, and the request for Amerindian peoples’ instruction for its use. Th is teaching was provided by the conquistadors along with the evangelization and Castilianization of the natives in the Schools of Arts and Crafts. Later, in the 18th – early 19th centuries, there were opened the new Schools of Arts and Crafts (the schools for workers) of engraving, painting, mining, spinning, weaving, etc. – the direct predecessors of the current technical professional schools.

The different economic models implemented by the states in the last decades range from a simple tendency for accumulation and growth in terms of the Gross Domestic Product to the development of people’s well-being under the premises of sustainability. Those that invest in individual development through education in strategic areas, facilitate the generation of intrinsic value, without relying on the exploitation of their natural resources or on the physical labor force of their citizens, thus achieving the effective sustainable development. In this paper, we analyzed the importance of introducing legal and political changes, focused on encouraging education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), mainly in those economies that are oriented on the structural or developmental paradigm, whose most current form of expression is found in the theory of the New Structural Economy, to favor endogenous growth in accordance with the sustainable development paradigm, using LATAM as an example.