The establishment of Preparatory Studies and the struggle between José María Luis Mora and Juan Rodríguez Puebla for the defense of corporative rights [Mexico City, 1833-1834]

Abstract

In October 1833, as part of the implementation of the liberal educational reform, the Mexican intellectual José María Luis Mora and the dean of the Colegio de San Gregorio, Juan de Dios Rodríguez Puebla, experienced an ideological clash when they tried to impose high school studies in the abovementioned school, dedicated to the education of the Indian leaders’ children. This article analyzes not only this incident, which evidences the cultural clash produced by that educational proposal, but also the shortsightedness that an educational liberalism produced as the only answer to a series of problems that are made visible here. Likewise, the article examines the suggested subjects of this new study program, the teachers, the students and the financing problems that the proposal for the implementation of Preparatory Studies (Establecimiento de Estudios Preparatorios), one of the cornerstones of this reform, had in its short life.