Presentation of the dossier: Nineteenth century teaching: contributions of the history of education in the problematization of gender, ethnicity and teacher protagonism issues

Introduction

This dossier is composed of four articles on nineteenth-century teachers with clippings covering different regions, periods and issues³. The aim of this set of reflections is to bring contributions from the history of education to the questioning of gender, ethnicity and protagonism issues in the exercise of the teaching profession, considering the regional singularities of the territory in a given period of Brazilian history, the Nineteenth century.

Teaching is an indispensable part of the educational processes foreseen in the nineteenth-century projects of civilization, progress, and order of societies, designed by governmental agencies or not. The public teaching, in such circumstances, confers on the office the peculiarity of acting on behalf of the State, but also of being peculiarly affected by it. In the same way, it acts in society and is affected by it and its social demands, although some are configured as flags of certain groups. Both conditions continually provoke teachers to position themselves with gradations of greater or lesser conformism or insubordination, becoming actors of an agenda that they are called to fulfill.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the occupation was significantly regulated by laws and official customs marked by the regional diversities, imperatives and urgencies that, together with the teaching experiences (Schueler, 2001; Munhoz, 2012), give different shades to the processes of constitution of the profession. They also signal the problems and effects of the process of inculcation of values, of conformation and of the population’s adherence, through education, to a governmentality project, which considers the recurrent insurgent movements throughout the Empire.

Understanding and analyzing these aspects allow denaturalizing ideas and images produced around the profession of teacher, as well as deconstructing long-held deep-rooted beliefs in the academic world. The persistence of the theme of teaching in the composition of the axes of the congresses of the area such as the Brazilian Congress of History of Education and the Luso-Brazilian Congress of History of Education and the expressive number of works refer to the emergence of new approaches, but also indicate that theme is still an important object of studies on the history of education and the field of education.

The articles that compose the dossier, with regard to temporal clippings, deal with experiences that began in the 1820s and advanced into the late nineteenth century. The greatest concentration of studies in the second half of the century is related to the expansion of schooling and written culture, the opening of schools, training institutions and the creation of journals. This growth has increased the production of records that are taken as research sources. In this period, some government measures related to Public Instruction, such as the law of October 15, 1827 and the Act of 1834 (additional to the Constitution of 1824), triggered a significant growth in the school network and teachers. Internal milestones in the history of education - both from the central sphere, as well as those mentioned, as well as provincial ones - mark the periodizations, as well as the events of the political history of the regions and the Empire of Brazil.

Thus, teachers’ trajectories are analyzed in regions with different characteristics, ‘central’ and ‘peripheral’, immersed in different social and economic rhythms. They are central locations - such as the Court - or more geographically distant from imperial power such as the Province of Parahyba do Norte. The Court had great urbanization and was the most populous among the clipped localities; São Paulo was a little urbanized capital, but it was among the most populous regions of the province. The village of Cotia, serving as a counterpoint, presents a caipira cultural background of a region of the province of São Paulo.

Fernanda Moraes, in the article titled ‘Male and female teachers of Primary public schools in Cotia (SP, 1870-1885): pulling the strings of the name’, analyzed the work of teachers of first letters in Cotia - municipality neighboring the capital of São Paulo, between the years 1870 and 1885. In tracing the public life of 14 teachers, the author identified their presence in public positions and/or in diverse functions, concomitant or not to the exercise of teaching. They were subjects who worked mainly in the last quarter of the century in a peripheral location - Cotia - geographically close to the capital of São Paulo, but far from the economic growth observed in other regions of the province. While many localities in São Paulo experienced the economic development provided by the coffee culture and installation of the railway line, Cotia was experiencing a process of retrocession precisely because it was an important point of the tropeirismo that fell with the railroad. Fernanda Moraes pointed out that in spite of the economic stagnation, schooling was expanded in the region and emphasized the importance of the family environment and the relations between male and female in the configuration of the teaching in the XIX.

Angélica Borges, in the text entitled ‘Places of teaching in the Imperial Court: the protagonism of Professor Candido Matheus de Faria Pardal’, presents a reflection about the trajectory of a teacher who taught and circulated through different school spaces, but also for religious, recreational, social and political spaces, in the capital of the imperial government, the most urbanized place in the period. Candido Matheus de Faria Pardal (1818-1888) has been teaching for at least 42 years - in primary, secondary and vocational education - in public and private institutions for boys and girls. The professor also acted as an examiner and wrote compendiums. Angélica Borges highlighted how Pardal extrapolated school boundaries in various religious, social, cultural, political, and economic associations, and in different public positions, establishing a series of relationships from the school with teachers, rulers, students’ families, neighborhood, the city and the foreign world, in a moment of intensification of the process of schooling in the society of the Court - for more than four decades - crossing three quarters of the XIX. Through a teacher’s prolonged trajectory in a central location, the author reflected on the different relationships established between teaching, schooling and city.

From a provincial clipping, Surya Aaronovich Pombo de Barros, in the article entitled ‘Graciliano Fontino Lordão: a black teacher in Parahyba do Norte/Brazil’ highlights in the light of the history of education of the black population in Brazil the trajectory of Professor Lordão (1844-1906), the son of a black woman of whom we have little information and a Catholic friar, who was a teacher and held relative prominence in local society. Surya Barros follows the path of schooling, the exercise of teaching (as a private and public teacher of first letters and of Latin) and the political action of Lordão as provincial/state deputy for four terms, and leader of the Liberal Party. The author questions the impact that the presence of a black teacher may have had on students and the possible relationship between racial belonging and some of their teaching practices such as having a student who was the son of a slave or opening a night class for adults. Its purpose is to highlight the possibility of social ascension that education could represent for the black population without disregarding the obstacles, exclusion and precariousness experienced by these subjects.

Fabiana Garcia Munhoz, in the article titled ‘Beyond domestic gifts: the trajectory of teacher Benedita da Trindade in São Paulo's all-girl schools’, addresses the trajectory of the pioneer public teacher of first letters of the city of São Paulo, Benedita da Trindade do Lado de Christo. The author interprets questions that have crossed the female teaching in this province, problematizing the legislation that created the public classes of first letters for girls and, based on the trajectory of Master Benedita, highlights the issue of the specific knowledges provided by law (domestic gifts) resuming previous studies (Hilsdorf, 1997; Rodrigues, 1962) and the interpretation of this historiography that the Master resisted teaching the domestic gifts provided by law. Operating in a micro-historical perspective, Fabiana Munhoz analyzes the entrance into the teaching profession with the novelty represented by the public contests among the female population; highlights the performance of female teachers as examiners of the new candidates and establishes some relationships between the teachers’ experiences and the places they occupied - or sought to occupy - in women’s instruction and teaching transmission among women in the city of São Paulo in the mid-nineteenth century.

The articles in the dossier emphasize the heterogeneity of teaching - and schooling - throughout the nineteenth century. There were three approaches with local and one provincial clippings. In a caipira context, such as that of the village of Cotia, we observed a network of teachers in activity and the expansion of the school network. We accompany the teaching subjects - men and women - in their relationships, cooperations and conflicts to carry out the first letter classes in a o6 with an economy close to subsistence. Almost half a century earlier, a few kilometers from the small village of Cotia, in the capital of the province of São Paulo (a little urbanized in the period, but provincial capital), female teaching was inaugurated and exercised by a teacher who lived with other teachers, students and families, city councilors, provincial inspectors and presidents, and dealt with issues related to admission, examinations, knowledge of women’s classes and transmission of the teaching profession. To the modest urbanization of the province of São Paulo, where we follow a feminine experience, the dynamic scenario of the Court is contrasted. In addition to the regional contrasts and the time spacing, the gender difference weighs on the teaching experiences of the subjects investigated.

The diversified trajectory of Professor Pardal crosses and is crossed by multiple spaces of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Being a man, the public life of the master was very busy (and recorded in sources) in religious, social, cultural, political and economic associations. His experience indicates an urban character of the teaching as the teacher and the students entered and opened the schools for these spaces. In the same Empire of Brazil, in a province of the North of the Empire⁴, quite distant from the Court and with an economy based on agricultural production (sugar and cotton), livestock and slave labor combined with free labor, we follow the trajectory of a black teacher and the impacts of his performance in a country where slavery was legally permitted and a source of wealth production that was concentrated in the hands of a minority of the population.

To regional differences is added the thematic diversity of investigations. As we have already emphasized, there were a variety of objects - from the movement of teachers and their presence in other spaces of the city, exercising a teaching role, family relations, transmission of teaching to racial and gender issues. To support the analysis, a diverse collection of sources was mobilized. Interpretations are constructed from careful research into archives and systematization. Among the sources, we highlight the handwritten documents of the Public Instruction of state archives; nineteenth-century press; reports of Instruction inspectors and provincial presidents; official reports and educational legislation.

The articles of the dossier bring contributions from the history of education to the reflections on the nineteenth century teaching and show the different possibilities of focusing on teaching. Pardal, Lordão, Benedita da Trindade and the various professors of Cotia carried out stories of negotiation and conformation in face of the constraints imposed, as well as resistance, daring and struggle for insertion and intervention in society through teaching. Each in its own way, from the possibilities, from its regional, gender, or ethnic condition, left its share of contribution for us to understand and constitute the multifaceted pages of teaching in the history of Brazilian education.

Referências

• Gregório, V. M. (2012). Dividindo as províncias do Império: a emancipação do Amazonas e do Paraná e o sistema representativo na construção do Estado nacional brasileiro (1826-1854). São Paulo, SP: USP.
• Hilsdorf, M. L. S. (1997). Mestra Benedita ensina primeiras letras em São Paulo. São Paulo, SP: Plêiade.
• Munhoz, F. G. (2012). Experiência docente no século XIX: trajetórias de professores de primeiras letras da 5ª comarca da Província de São Paulo e da Província do Paraná (Dissertação de Mestrado em educação). Faculdade de Educação da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo.
• Rodrigues, L. M. (1962). A instrução feminina em São Paulo. São Paulo, SP: Escolas Profissionais Salesianas.
• Schueler, A. F. M. de (2001). Culturas escolares e experiências docentes na cidade do Rio de Janeiro (1854-1889) (Tese de Doutorado em educação). Faculdade de Educação da UFF, Niterói.

• 3
  The articles that compose this dossier were presented in a Coordinated Communication format entitled ‘19th Century Teaching: Regional, Gender and Race singularities in teaching trajectories’, at the IX Brazilian Congress of History of Education, held in 2017 in João Pessoa, State of Paraíba, in the thematic axis ‘Teacher Training and Profession’.
• 4
  During the nineteenth century, the expressions ‘provinces of the north’ and ‘of the south’ were used, but without official organization. What was denominated of North region was related to the current north and northeast (Gregory, 2012).

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  14 Jan 2019
• Date of issue
  2018

History

• Received
  13 Nov 2017
• Accepted
  09 Aug 2018