We analyze in this article the journey of Uchoa Cavalcanti (Inspector of Public Instruction of the Province of Pernambuco) to the Court and Provinces of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in 1879, based on the official report of this trip presented to the president of the Province and published in that same year in Recife. When reading this document, we paid attention to the general conditions of the journey and to the narrative constructed by the inspector as a strategy to discuss the representations that he produces, with special emphasis on those related to the Court and Province of Rio de Janeiro. To such end, we analyzed the sources utilized by the author, articulating them with what is produced by his personal testimony and experience. The report, entitled "Public instruction - study on the system of primary teaching and pedagogical organization of the schools of the Court, Rio de Janeiro and Pernambuco" has 293 pages distributed along an introduction, four parts, and a conclusion. As a whole, the inspector attempts to carry out his objective of contrasting the knowledge that he has with what he observes in loco. In this exercise, the inspector builds a narrative that helps to problematize recurrent theses in the historiography (general and of education) that establish the Court and the province of Rio de Janeiro as models for the nation. On the basis of this report the comparison within the country becomes necessary to fertilize reflections related to the variety of school forms at work in the 19th century, contributing to temper the thesis that a vertical power organized a single form for Brazil and her schools.
History of education; Comparison; Journeys