The article deals with the Memoir on the Reform of Education in the Province of São Paulo, by Martim Francisco Ribeiro de Andrada, published in 1815 or 1816, and originally designed for deployment in the Province of São Paulo. The aim is to make a historiographical analysis of the Martim Francisco's document, considered in the historical moment of its development, in the light of the mentality of his generation, the genre of the work and the dialogue established with the Enlightenment debate. Having received an unfavorable opinion about its deployment, the text was subsequently submitted by him - now on the deputy condition - to the Commission Instruction of the first Constituent Assembly of independent Brazil (1823-1824), now proposing the development of a national education system. Are identified in the document the elements that denote the appropriation of the pedagogical debate of the French Revolution. There is a clear similarity, including formal, between this Memoir of Martim Francisco and Five Memories on Public Education, written by Condorcet, which gave theoretical support to the National Assembly Report (1791-1792) in Revolutionary France.
Martim Francisco Ribeiro de Andrada Machado; public education; Condorcet