A Educação popular no Brasil Império: as primeiras iniciativas de escolas noturnas em Alagoas (1870-1889)

Abstract

This work seeks to understand the bidding process for the people of the school with a focus on creation and deployment of the evening schools of the Empire of Alagoas in the period 1870 to 1889. It also aims to understand the reasons why the intellectuals of the empire devoted their time to adult education when the emphasis at that time was given to training children. The research makes use of documentary sources produced by the presidents of the province of Alagoas, directors of public instruction, the minister's business empire, as well as national and local education laws. The sources were also important periodical published by the Journal of Alagoas, Gutenberg and The Liberal, in which circulating advertisements offering evening classes for primary and maps produced by the school inspectors and teachers. Contributed to the dialogue with the documentary sources some ideas and concepts developed by authors such as Bloch (2001) and Farge (2009). For a broader view about the nineteenth century were important studies Gondra and Schueler (2008), Primitivo Moacyr (1939) and Viotti (2010). From the standpoint of the more specific History of Adult Education, contributions Lemme (1940) and Paiva (2003) were few references to access, given a lack of production on the most current area. Before the confrontation between the remains found and literature, it was concluded that the offer from school to people in the Brazilian Empire was part of a civilizing project in pursuit of building a national identity on concepts and visions of liberal ideals of European countries, particularly France and England. The net creation of night schools in Brazil was the 1870s, as the most promising of them, a trait that also marked the founding of such institutions in Alagoas. In total 31 schools were recorded, distributed in several cities like Maceió, Penedo, Alagoas (now Marshal Deodoro), Atalaia, Traipu, São Miguel dos Campos, São Luiz do Quitunde, Viçosa, among others, whose length of stay was minimal due to the difficulty to afford them and to ensure student attendance. Commit them resulted from action or praiseworthy "goodwill" of some members of the intelligentsia. The survey found that teachers of evening schools, in general, were those who taught the day shift, for which they received a bonus when not engaged in the activity for free. The biographical features of some of these teachers reveal that some of them belonged to the intellectual elite of the province of Alagoas and publishing in local newspapers, linked to the abolitionist movement