The article examines the theoretical studies of Florestan Fernandes and his elaboration dedicated to the cause of public education in two periods: the first concerning the Law of Directives and Basis for Brazilian Education from 1961 and the second between the constituent of 1987-1988 and the preparation of the Law of Directives and Basis for Brazilian Education, till the year of 1995. It addresses questions of method to the sociologist's concepts study on public education and highlights the centrality of the concept of dependent capitalism to understand the changes, in his perspective, that represented an obstacle to the Brazilian universalistic educational reforms that characterize classical bourgeois revolutions.
Florestan Fernandes; Dependent capitalism; Bourgeois revolution; Public education; Law of Directives and Basis for Brazilian Education