Organização da instrução pública primária no Brasil: impasses e desafios em São Paulo, no Paraná e no Rio Grande do Norte (1890 1930)

Abstract

This thesis aimed at discussing how primary school was organized in Brazil during its first Republic (1890 30). It focuses on official documents; especially, educational law and presidential messages aimed at congressmen from states of São Paulo, Paraná, and Rio Grande do Norte. Mapping the making of primary education in theses states was primordial to fulfill research goals. It has made possible to enlarge the analytical scope on education ideas and to understand on what basis republicans supported their discourse in incorporating in the latter the need for establishing primary education. For that, it follows methodological guidelines from comparative history, which allows explaining partially differences and convergences, similitude, permanence and breakthrough in the social settings taken here as comparison elements. Sources to develop it have included laws and enactments, reports and State government messages. All were analyzed according to theoretical principles aimed at supporting the following hypothesis: there were dissonances between what certain presidential messages state and what happened indeed; in other words, actions put into practice weren t able to materialize republican expectations regarding public education. Results point out to problems such as the setting up and institutionalization of schools, which means, its materialization after all, creating schools meant mostly publishing a legal document to formalize their existence It has become evident the permanence of educational elements from the imperial past, such as an array of school types isoladas (single classroom schools), singular, rural, urban, standard, unitary, of first-letters, rudimental; on the other hand, these schools existed simultaneously with grupos escolares: schools where pupils were divided into classes according to their level of attainment. Grupos escolares put in relief a movement to constitute another school model; at the same time, they pointed out a civilizing process. As such, they re an important space to understand the state s intervention to civilize population, as state s presidents reports tell. These school modalities, however, meant a strong antithesis to the notion of a modern Brazilian education, since they reveal contradictions in dualisms such as the archaic and the modern, urban education and rural one, and the capacity of schooling among grupos escolares and escolas isoladas. In addition, they point out the permanence of such contradictions even in São Paulo, a state where development rates were the highest during the first Brazilian Republic.