A CONSOLIDAÇÃO DA MATERIALIDADE NO AMBIENTE ESCOLAR DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL

Abstract

This work investigates the interconnection between the materiality of the school environment and the academic contents prescribed by public instruction laws for primary education in 19th century Brazil. The theoretical-methodological resource to be used is based on conceptions originating from historical materialism in its Gramscian version. Materials for teaching reading and writing, such as primers and reading books used in schools, constitute valuable indicators of the configuration of pedagogical practice in the 19th century. However, analyzing them in isolation is not enough to unravel this reality. Perceiving other infrastructure conditions is also crucial to understand the process of learning to read and write. The analysis relates to and, to a certain extent, confronts what is established by laws and regulations of public instruction, by the guidelines of provincial governments,  by the regulations of municipal education councils, etc., and the materiality found in inventories of transmission or assumption of teaching positions. Through these documents, it is possible identify the existence, or lack thereof, of teaching materials (in addition to books) and other components of this reality such as sand benches, pens, slates, notebooks, school desks, maps, attendance books, etc. The analysis of this documentary corpus allows us to affirm that the reading and writing teaching system in Brazil was constituted within the most modern standards of the time, considering the particularities of a slave society. This conclusion refutes the "positivist/republican" interpretations that insist on devaluing the efforts of the provinces in favor of public instruction after the Additional Act of 1834.