PUBLIC EDUCATION IN THE PROVINCE OF PARANÁ: REFLECTIONS BASED ON THE REPORTS OF THE PERIOD BETWEEN 1854 AND 1874

Abstract

The work privileges the documental sources in order to interpretate the beggining
of public education in the Province of Paraná. It analyzes the reports and official letters in the
period between 1854 a 1864, besides the educational legislation of the same period. It aims to
understand how the beginning of the setting up of public education was possible and how this
process was taken by official authorities and by the teachers that worked with the population.
The leading theoretical perspective of the analysis of the data is fundamented in the
conception materialist-historical, since it is supposed that the production way of material life
and the social relations of it, enables the appearance and consolidation of some socialinstitutions such as public school. Writers such as Bloch, Farge, Sodré, Fávero, Miguel and
Wachowicz assist the analysis and interpretations. It is considered that the data provide
grouped information in new categories such as the need of public education, the training of
teachers, the inadequacy of schools, the need of school supplies, the discipline and
punishment, the school evasion. The analysis of the data provided by the sources was
accomplished taking in consideration the official speech and the teachers´ testimonies
registered in reports. The results show that in the beginning of the establishment of the
Province of Paraná, the public authority was interested, at least in the speech, in public
education without taking in consideration the real conditions of the province. The teachers´
reports allow the visibility of the problems that interfered in the education. The considered
issues are explained in a much wider context of the real conditions of the Province.