Liceu de Artes e Ofícios de Alagoas (1884-1917): Um resgate da História da educação na transição do Império para a República

Abstract

The current study is about the School of Arts and Crafts of Alagoas, created in 1884 and extinct in the final of 1910s. This institution intended to meet the demands of workmanship, providing the poorest people the education of first letters and crafts. In this research we highlight the reasons that led to the establishment of the School of Arts and Crafts, as well as the relationship between the initial project and daily outspread of the institution. The sources used to compose the work were official documents and publications about the subject, besides of old newspapers and institutional documents. The qualitative approach of documental study allowed revealing: the institution's culture elements; tensions among their actors, who created and work on it; resistance strategies; and organizing. The history of the School of Arts and Crafts was writing in the context of transition from Empire to Republic. Additionally, it was marked by tensions registered during the replacement of slave labor by free one. Sometimes, proposals and practices in the School of Arts and Crafts during its organization and implementation have changed, however, the vocational educational opportunities for employees and their children remained as the cornerstone of the institution during the cited transition. The education for this population assumed, specially, the sense of adjustment and control of physical and moral conduct. Despite the affirmation of the role of School of Arts and Crafts in the process of modernization and industrial development that characterized the period, the primacy of the humanistic education on vocational education is evident. To study about the education in Alagoas of XIX century gives us the opportunity to know more about our own history, despite the reduced information, especially when the subject is the education of population economically poor. Thus, the reconstruction of the experience of School of Arts and Crafts will contribute to the expansion of the History of Education in Alagoas, helping to elaborate a historical profile of local and national education during the transition between the Empire and Republic.