The aim of this work is to analyse the debates about the creation of the school subject physical education in Brazil, promoted publicly and with an obligatory character. The study delayed in works produced between 1880 and 1915. Holding as presupposed the close relationship between the particularity of the Brazilian debate with the wider questions related to the world-wide capitalism, it was searched how they influenced and were influenced by educational discussions concerning physical education. The dialectical relation between the whole and the specific was stablished so as to analyse the educational thinking referring to two aspects: the consideration of physical education in its social relevance and the methodological concerns which allowed it to exert this role. It was possible to note how physical education was debated as one of the main points for finding solutions for the crises which were triggered by the Brazilian society transformation in the period. Also, a severe concern from teachers and supporters of those educational modality in imputing to its activities an educative character much wider than the mere anatomic and physiology corollary, was verified. Finally, it was interesting to observe that, despite these ideas have their bases in the world-wide and Brazilian historical reality in the end of the XIX century and in the dawn of the XX century, they did not have the same results that were experienced by the American and European realities. In Brazil, the ideas about physical education and its social importance had to wait the events occurred in 1930 in order not to be regarded only as a noble ideal, but as an educational reality.
physical education; Brazil; XIX century