Para os grandes males, os grandes remédios

In 1903, about two hundred representatives of the producing classes met in Belo Horizonte for the achievement of the Agricultural, Industrial and Commercial Congress of Minas Gerais.These men were invited to discuss means to leverage the state progress, which faced severe economic crisis, chiefly due to the fall in coffee values, its main export product.The congress was an initiative of the president of the state, Francisco Salles, headed by João Pinheiro da Silva, and aimed to hear representatives of productive activities.Coming from various regions, particularly the Centre, the Mata and the South, they built a broad panel of Minas Gerais' economy, in which they introduced questions about education.In this thesis, using mainly journalistic sources, legislation and biographies, we sought to analyze these events together and separately, identifying authors, objectives, receivers and references to the understanding of what should be vocational education, namely the education considered necessary and propitious to economic progress in the late nineteenth century to the twentieth.The representatives of the producing classes presented instruction propositions with different approaches regarding the type of school, its modalities and levels.It was also possible to identify common aspects of coeval educational debate, such as the association of economic backwardness to the lack of instruction to prepare for work.Thus, the representatives pointed out the need to modify techniques, procedures, tools and materials for a more modern and rational production and advocated propositions on the formation of leaders of productive activities and technical staff and on the worker education

Art · Backwardness · Economic growth · Economics · Humanities · Legislation · Leverage (statistics · Political science · Vocational education · Education Pedagogy and Practices · History of Education Research in Brazil · Law · Rural and Ethnic Education