O Ato Adicional de 1834 e a instrução elementar no império: descentralização ou centralização?

Abstract

The following research seeks to understand the organization process of elementary public education in Brazil imperial. A study comparing the implemented actions by the Imperial Court, Rio de Janeiro, Mato Grosso and Paraná provinces was done. The main goal is to understand the State action in the definition of the politics of public education, in the period 1834-1889. The start point was the Additional Act of 1834, since historiography gives it the responsibility of the failure and disorganization of education in the provinces. For most of historians the decentralization fragmented the meager projects and resources available, contributing to the proliferation of contradictories laws, putting down the elementary education in Brazil imperial. Therefore, this study intents to raise the debate with the Brazilian educational historiography according to the Additional Act of 1834, and the form of organization of the elementary instruction in the Empire. The research basically uses the primary sources, highlighting the reports of the ministers of the ministry of the Empire business, provinces chairmen, the inspectors of public instruction, educational legislation produced by the four administrative units in the correspondent time in addition to several authors of the nineteenth century. The study of the primary sources has brought to light a significant number of information, which allows the review of the historiographical debate on the form of organization of elementary education in the Empire. The studied documents establish clear links between the organization of public education in the provinces and the project of construction and constitution of the Imperial State and the Senior Class. The documents also show the political strength of the conservative group in the Court and Rio de Janeiro Province. The principles of order, hierarchy, centralization and morality constitute the columns in the organization of public elementary education aiming to prepare the future citizens to live in an ordered society, where each class should occupy a place and function in the social structure. The study is divided into three parts. The first, entitled - The Additional Act: The education in a crossroad, which way to go? Made of two chapters: the first about the independence to imperial crises: the dialectic of power, and the second, The Additional Act: limits, possibilities and historiography. The second part - the imperial public education from primary sources- which the history of each compared unit was written based on the reports of the ministers, province chairmen, inspectors, articulating with all the legislation being produced, ordered and implemented in each of the administrative units. The third was named- The educational legislation and the construction of the empire- divided into three chapters: first, The agents of inspections into laws, speeches and action. Second: Curriculum: Instruct or educate? and Third, The Professor: the process of selecting the agent of civilization. Where the central sources were the regulations, in the same time, the reports of the inspectors, chairmen and the authors of the nineteenth century were also used. The search allows saying that the primary public instruction was relevant for the construction and dissemination of the model of Society and the State that became victorious over the nineteenth century, which still manifests many practices nowadays.