The article analyses the training of teachers by normal schools in Sao Paulo from 1890 to 1931, period guided by the adoption in the school system of ideas of the Republican Enlightenment. According to the spirit of federation that took over the country and the Enlightenment ideas, aligned with the positivism and the liberal conceptions, the public school should be improving and expanding. The normal schools were the ideal institutions for such training and at the same time, indicated that women have all the qualifications to take care of the children education. Attempts to deploy the co-educational system, targeting equal education for the two sexes, proposal which has restrictions on families, educators and the Catholic Church, it caused some discussions that ultimately fall into the void in light of the most pressing educational issues.
normal schools; training of teachers; co-education