The long, concrete, and imaginary presence of the history of education foreign textbooks in Brazil (1930-1980)

Abstract:

This paper results from a study on the foreign textbooks História da educação by Paul Monroe and História da educação e da pedagogia by Lorenzo Luzuriaga, published by Companhia Editora Nacional, between 1930 and 1980, belonging to the Collection Atualidades Pedagógicas. Methodologically, it has two analytical fronts. The first is to enter the production universe of these books since they are ‘concrete objects’ in circulation. The second is to investigate the forms of content organization, observing their meanings, as an ‘imaginary place’ of the History of Education (HE). Through this research, we conclude that these textbooks contributed to the memory of teacher training and the history of HE, whereby an educational past became its great lesson.

Keywords:
teacher education; book collection; historiography; materiality

Resumo:

Este trabalho é resultado da pesquisa sobre os manuais estrangeiros História da educação de Paul Monroe e História da educação e da pedagogia de Lorenzo Luzuriaga, publicados pela Companhia Editora Nacional, entre 1930 e 1980, pertencentes à Coleção Atualidades Pedagógicas. A perspectiva metodológica apresenta duas frentes de análise: a primeira é adentrar o universo de produção desses livros, visto que são “objetos concretos” em circulação; e a segunda é investigar as formas de organização do conteúdo, observando os significados enquanto “lugar imaginário” da história da educação (HE). Esta pesquisa conclui que esses manuais contribuíram para a memória da formação docente e para a própria história da HE, por meio de um passado educativo que se tornou a sua grande lição.

Palavras-chave:
formação de professores; coleção de livros; historiografia; materialidade

Resumen:

Este trabajo es el resultado de una investigación sobre los libros de texto extranjeros História da educação de Paul Monroe e História da educação e da pedagogia de Lorenzo Luzuriaga, publicados por la Companhia Editora Nacional, entre 1930 y 1980, pertenecientes a la Colección atualidades pedagógicas. La perspectiva metodológica presenta dos frentes de análisis: el primero es entrar en el universo de producción de estos libros, ya que son ‘objetos concretos’ en circulación; y el segundo es investigar las formas de organización del contenido, observando los significados, a la vez que el ‘lugar imaginario’, de la Historia de la Educación (HE). A través de esta investigación, concluimos que estos libros de texto contribuyeron a la memoria de la formación del profesorado y a la propia HE, a través de un pasado educativo que se convirtió en su gran lección.

Palabras clave:
formación de professores; colección de libros; historiografia; materialidad

Introduction

Of all man’s instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination (Borges, 1987, p. 05)¹⁵.

The epigraph from writer Jorge Luis Borges is an ode to the love for “the book," an invented object that transcends the usual senses of man. As the poet describes, the book is an extension of imagination and memory and, no matter how much time passes, it will continue to be enchanted by its meaning power.

Metaphorically, French poet Stéphane Mallarmé (1945)¹⁶ as a “transparent glacier of unfled flights” because it simultaneously establishes itself as an object, a symbol, and a metaphor, in a shape that carries senses. In this sensitive Mallarmé perspective, we can understand that the book is sculpted as a "concrete object" and an "imaginary place," able to provoke fascination through the meeting of text and shape. An imaginary place because it produces senses when reading, interpreting, and enjoying it, and a concrete object because it has characteristics that allow its handling (it can be touched and is visually accessible). The shape of the book, its pages, characters, and blank spaces invite different readers to respect its intentions.

With Mallarmé, it is also possible to learn that it is from the book that one worships, not alluding to religion but considering it an "accessory needed for celebration and celebrated divinity" (Fraisse, Pompougnac, & Poulain, 1997, p. 137). The book - established in the direct relation and interaction of subjects with worldly things; the literature book, especially - started to penetrate other spaces, such as the schools, suggesting a new form of relationship because, in the world of books, things happen quickly and everything changes: “[...] books, readers, and literature” (Escarpit, 1976, p. VII).

From this understanding, the History of Education (HE) books presented in this work suggest this new form of relationship - the school one - as a place that joins text and teacher, celebrating readings and interpretations. Under the perspective of these sensitive considerations, historians need to reflect on these “objects” circulating ideas, conceptions, and values (Chartier, 2001). Therefore, in this work, the main protagonists are the books called "school manuals," marked by the contours of a time, which raise reflections about the transformations in the ways of writing the history of education. Besides that, it brings the processes, the contents, and the ways to teach the History of Education to future teachers.

We consider the HE works as school manuals because they propose to “[...] at the same time introduce and summarize a theme [...]”, playing the role of mediation between certain knowledge and the ways to teach it. (Bufrem, Schmidt, & Garcia, 2006, p. 123). These books appropriate several contents to explain to future teachers the questions related to the past of school and education. According to the official programs, they also highlight the teachers' classes from the teacher education courses.

Considering the HE manuals, producing new titles and reprinting are connected to the necessities that emerged in the Brazilian education context, mainly the teacher training in action during the 1930s. Nothing was more significant than creating and organizing a vast pedagogical literature to occupy school spaces, with numerous books (manuals) of history, philosophy, sociology, didactics, psychology, and teaching methods used in teacher training courses.

This expansion scenario of the teacher-training book market since 1930 triggered studies about HE manuals, such as Toledo (2001) and Roballo (2012). We can observe that the Companhia Editora Nacional (CEN- National Publishing Company) would be one of the biggest (if not the biggest) publishing companies to publish HE manuals in Brazil, releasing Brazilian, foreign, new, and re-edited titles. There were eleven HE manuals published between 1930 and 1980 by CEN, belonging to the Coleção Atualidades Pedagógicas (CAP- Pedagogical News Collection), in the scope of the publishing project Biblioteca Pedagógica Brasileira (BPB- Brazilian Pedagogical Library), directed by Fernando de Azevedo, from 1931 to 1945, and by Damasco Penna, from 1946 to 1978. These manuals are described in Chart 1 with the following specifications: title, author, order following the number of the volume indicated by CAP, and year of editions/reprinting:

Chart 1 -The
eleven manuals of History of Education of the Pedagogical News Collection¹⁷.

It is difficult to measure the impact of these works in the educational field and, particularly, the delineation of the HE subject. However, the long-standing presence of these manuals in the teacher training courses, secondary and university levels, their printing numbers, and subsequent reprinting are evidence of the expressive circulation and production of meanings and representations about the educational past. In this perspective, in this work, we focused on two HE manuals written by foreign authors with the highest number of issues printed by CAP during a vast period, the one by North American Paul Monroe and the Spanish (exiled in Argentina) Lorenzo Luzuriga.

Paul Monroe’s work, História da educação [History of Education], first published by CEN in 1939 and reprinted 17 other times until 1987, had the highest circulation among the HE manuals in the collection, a total of 86,961 books. In its turn, Luzuriga’s work, História da educação e da pedagogia [History of education and pedagogy] was first published in 1955 and reprinted 16 times also until 1987, adding to up 80,240 books. Both works crossed decades summing up to more than 167,000 books that circulated in the country between the 1930s and 1980s.

Therefore, methodologically, this study seeks to understand the two HE manuals from an inventory dimension. The methodological objective is to take stock of the works, approaching their materiality, through two analysis fronts that consider the idea of the "concrete object" and the "imaginary place." The first front is to enter the universe of producing HE works, observing the movement of editions, the publishing company, the collection, their authors, and some technical, visual, and physical characteristics of the manuals (cover, back covers, cover page), which demonstrate the relevance of these works to subsidize the teacher training courses. The second is the investigation of the ways to organize HE content, observing the statements, the summaries, the chapters, and the narratives about the meanings of the HE that became important when contributing to deciphering the target public of these manuals and the forms to present the information considered useful to the subject.

Materiality and immateriality are inseparable when analyzing HE manuals because historical research should not be limited to the description of objects but aim to understand their intentions and the social reality that surrounds the use of these manuals, as Daniel Roche (2000, p. 13) explains:

The objects, the physical or human relationships they create, cannot be reduced to simple materiality, not a simple instrument of communication or social distinction. They do not only belong to the basement or attic, or simultaneously to both, and we should replace them with abstraction networks and sensibility essential to the understanding of social facts.

The existence of the schoolbook is connected to the educational systems established by the State, making its production conditions analogous to other books. The book is an artifact that is part of the culture. It became an HE study object in the last few years due to its interlocution with the New Cultural History and historians' concern to preserve it as a research and educational memory source. If societies started to consider that education should pass by the school, it was necessary to produce schoolbooks for students and, as Lajolo and Zilberman (1996, p. 121) explain, “[...] to have teachers, also trained by books and professional users of this instrument”. Besides this, there was also the need for

[...] typographies and publishing companies to print the didactic material teachers and students need in the classroom. [...]. However, this development also arises from politics and economy guided by the dominant class of a people. (Lajolo & Zilberman, 1996, p. 121).

In this sense, we highlight that the manuals keep their production history, ends, and uses. Therefore, making an inventory of HE works materiality is crucial to keep the history of the teacher training processes alive. As Bittencourt (2008, p. 9) stresses:

Under the apparent banality and deceiving familiarity, the school manual is a complex object. It is a cultural product whose roles are plural¹⁸: a triggering instrument of reading, a linguistic, ideological, and cultural vector, support - privileged for a long time - of the educational content, a teaching and learning instrument common to most subjects. Nevertheless, it is also a manufactured object, broadly disseminated worldwide, whose production and dissemination belong to an industrial and commercial logic.

According to Chartier, the works acquire meaning by establishing relationships among three poles. On one side, the "text analysis" deciphered in their structures, objectives, and intentions. On another, the "history of the book" beside all the objects and forms taken by the writing. Finally, the "[...] study of practices that differently take hold of these objects or their forms [...]" produces different uses and meanings (Chartier, 1999, p. 12).

Through the analysis of the materiality of the manuals, we can observe the aspects considered new, better, and permanent, showing the intentions that precede the editorial decision and graphic work. Besides this, it is possible to understand the delineations that HE writing took- “in book shape” - to support the teacher training processes.

“Concrete objects”: foreign HE manuals published by Coleção Atualidades Pedagógicas

Since 1930, commercial publishing companies have opened a front of publications of school manuals to attend a new group of readers: the normalistas (women training to become teachers in Normal schools). Especially between the 1920s and 1930s, the reformulations enacted in the curricula of teacher training courses in the context of the educational reforms provoked significant changes in the Brazilian editorial market. According to Toledo (2001, p. 52), the publishing houses started to invest in the production of schoolbooks for the curriculum of teacher training, privileging subjects such as “[...] didactics, psychology, educational biology, educational sociology, history and philosophy of education, among others". Under the influence of the discourses of education renovators, the 1930s was particularly determinant for creating book collections and school libraries for the school public.

In this scenario, it is possible to perceive the relation established between the publication of HE manuals and their use to subsidize the subject because the trajectory of the subject HE in Brazil was related to the Normal Schools. It was first introduced as a subject in the curriculum of Escola Normal do Rio de Janeiro, in 1928. Since 1930, HE started to be included in the curricula of Education Institutes and Normal Schools nationwide. In this trajectory, for decades, HE was seen as a character with a utilitarian character, responsible for offering lessons and examples of the educational past to future teachers.

The Editora Francisco Alves (founded in 1854) became the main publishing space for school books in the first five decades of the 20^th century, followed by Editora Melhoramentos, in 1915 and CNE, in 1925 (Hallewell, 2005). Interestingly, CEN and Melhoramentos had a catalog mainly supported by didactic books and were the leading sources for professionalization in the sector.

In 1931, CEN released the project BPB, organized by Fernando de Azevedo¹⁹, one of the prominent intellectuals connected to the ideals of renovation intended by Escola Nova, which took to the publishing companies the discourses, articles, and books in synch with the renovating ideals²⁰. BPB created five series (collections) to reach a vast public: 1 - Children’s literature; 2 - Schoolbooks; 3 - Pedagogical news; 4 - Scientific introduction; 5 - Brasiliana. The CAP published 135 volumes with diverse themes, aiming to culturally and professionally improve teachers through the circulation of books, mainly in teacher training schools. Fernando de Azevedo coordinated the BPB and took over CAP until 1945. After this period, he was substituted by João Baptista Damasco Penna, who continued to be a director of CAP and the Collection Scientific Introduction until 1978.

In CAP, three HE works were published during Fernando de Azevedo (1931 a 1945) management: Noções de história da educação[Notions of History of education], by Afrânio Peixoto (1933); História da educação [History of education], by Paul Monroe (1939); and Noções de história da educação [Notions of History of education], de Miranda Santos (1945). Thus, two national manuals and an international one, starting the process of diversification of authors and content proposals about HE.

Under the direction of Damasco Penna (1946 to 1978), eight HE manuals were published: A pedagogia contemporânea [Contemporary pedagogy], Pedagogia social e política [Social and political pedagogy], História da educação e da pedagogia [History of education and pedagogy], História da educação pública [History of public education], by Lorenzo Luzuriaga; História da pedagogia [History of pedagogy], by Rene Hubert; Pedagogia geral [General pedagogy], by Leif and Rustin; A educação secundária [Secondary education], by Geraldo Bastos Silva; Tratado das ciências pedagógicas: história da pedagogia [Treaty of pedagogical sciences: history of pedagogy] by Maurice Debesse and Gaston Mialeret.

We can observe that some manuals no longer present the term "History of Education" (História da Educação) in their titles, preferring "History of Pedagogy" (História da Pedagogia). Despite the title changes, the manuals remain similar, privileging in their texts the past of different civilizations, educational institutions, the evolution of pedagogical ideas, and the trajectories of a canon of educators that produced theories about the educational theme.

We also point out that some manuals emerged from the concomitance between the establishment of the subject HE and the classes given by the teachers, as is the case of the work Noções de história da educação [Notions of History of education ] (1933) written by the Brazilian author Afrânio Peixoto. After Peixoto’s manual, there were many manuals written by Brazilian authors published between the 1930s and 1970s, as we can see in the following list (except those edited by CEN previously mentioned)²¹: Pequena história da educação [Short history of education] (1936), by Sisters Francisca Peeters and Maria Augusta de Cooman, from Editora Cia. Melhoramentos; História da educação [History of Education] (1941), by Bento de Andrade Filho, from Editora Saraiva; Esboço da história da educação [Draft on the history of education] (1945), by Ruy de Ayres Bello, from Companhia Editora Nacional²²; Lições de história da educação [Lessons of History of education] (n.d.), by Aquiles Archêro Júnior, from Coleção Didática Nacional; História da Educação [History of Education] (1953), by Bento de Andrade Filho, from Editora Saraiva; História da educação luso-brasileira [Portuguese-Brazilian History of Educaiton/ (1966), by Tito Lívio Ferreira, from Editora Saraiva; História da Educação Brasileira: a organização escolar [Brazilian history of education; a school organization] (1978), by Maria Luisa Santos Ribeiro, from Editora Cortez & Moraes; História da educação no Brasil [History of education in Brazil] (1978), by Otaíza de Oliveira Romanelli, from Editora Vozes; among others.

Among the foreign manuals published in Brazil (except those published by CEN), translated or not, we highlight: Historia general de la pedagogia: especial consideracion de iberoamerica [História geral da pedagogia: consideração especial da Ibero-América] (1944), by Francisco Larroyo, from Editora Porrua; Historia de la educacion y la pedagogia [História da educação e da pedagogia] (1949), by P. Ramón Ruiz Amado, from Editora Poblet (Buenos Aires); Historia de la educacion [História da educação] (1962), by Carrol Atkinson and Eugene T. Maleska, from Editora Barcelona; História da educação moderna, teoria, organização e práticas educacionais [ History of modern education, theory, organization, and educational practices] (1970), by Frederick Eby, from Editora Globo; História geral da pedagogia [General history of pedagogy] (1970), by Francisco Larroyo, from Editora Mestre Jou; História da educação [History of education] (1987), by Thomas Ransom Giles, from Editora EPU; among others.

We can see that different publishing companies were responsible for increasing the production and circulation of HE manuals in Brazil. However, from this sample, we perceive CNE as one of the main companies publishing HE manuals through CAP. It is important to highlight that from the 1950s to the 1980s, the HE works of Luzuriaga and Monroe were responsible for a significant part of the CAP’s reprinting.

In the 1970s, there were eight reprints of the manual História da educação e da pedagogia, by Luzuriaga (1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979) and, in the 1980s, there were six reprinting (1980, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1987). Monroe’s manual, in the 1970s, was reprinted seven times (1970, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979), and in the 1980s there were four reprintings (1983, 1984, 1985, and 1987). In the table below (Table 1), we present the two works and their number of copies by year of edition:

Table 1
Number of copies of HE manuals from the Coleção Atualidades Pedagógicas⁵.

Edition	Circulation Number Author/Title (Year)
	MONROE História da Educação	LUZURIAGA História da educação e da pedagogia
1st	4,150 (1939)	4,040 (1955)
2nd	4,025 (1946)	4,026 (1963)
3rd	4,050 (1952)	4,050 (1967)
4th	5,075 (1953)	3,030 (1969)
5th	5,011 (1956)	3,012 (1971)
6th	7,940 (1958)	7,991 (1972)
7th	4,026 (1968)	3,876 (1975)
8th	3,010 (1969)	3,909 (1976)
9th	4,084 (1970)	4,038 (1977)
10th	8,934 (1972)	5,000 (1978)
11th	4,049 (1976)	5,000 (1979)
12th	4,086 (1977)	5,000 (1980)
13th	5,068 (1978)	4,848 (1982)
14th	10,000 (1979)	5,226 (1983)
15th	3,916 (1983)	6,783 (1984)
16th	3,214 (1984)	5,196 (1985)
17th	3,156 (1985)	5,215 (1987)
18th	3,167 (1987)
Total of books	86,961	80,240

• Source: Toledo (2001).

As can be seen in Table 1, the increase in HE manual reprints probably happens due to two interconnected events: the increase in enrollment in primary education and teacher training institutions²³. Since the 1970s, there has been a sharp increase in the reprint of HE manuals while a decrease in the number of new publications. One hypothesis is that the fall in the publication of new titles, as well as the increase in reprints, occurs due to the change process that emerged in the HE²⁴ field.

In this movement, it is clear that Monroe’s and Luzuriaga’s foreign manuals earned a vital space in HE in Brazil. These works crossed their original frontiers and gained power, becoming a “[...] precious resource to think about the essential: the construction of a social bond, an individual subjectivity, the relationship with the sacred [...]”, as we can reflect based on Chartier (1999, p. 9). That is, the translated texts ²⁵ for Portuguese are not a problem but broadened a set of works to support the HE subject, legitimizing exemplary writing models, and also pointing out the interrelation between different cultures and the dissemination of famous teachers.

One of these exemplary writing models was the manual A brief course in the history of education (1907)²⁶, by Paul Monroe, published in Brazil thirty-two years after its release in the United States under the title História da educação (1939). Monroe (1869-1947), author of one of the most re-edited manuals in Brazil, was named in 1897 as a professor of History in the teacher training school Teachers College at Columbia University. In 1899, he became a HE Associate Professor, and three years later, he assumed the HE chair until his retirement in 1938. Besides being a professor, he was the director of the School of Education of Teachers College (1915 to 1923). In 1923, he became the International Institute of Teachers College director. In his long career, we highlight that the author was part of a group of teachers dedicated to the promotion of a progressive movement of education in the United States and other parts of the world, mainly in the 1930s and 1940s.

Lorenzo Luzuriaga (1889-1959), a Spanish pedagogue, published his manual História da educação e da pedagogia, in 1951, in Argentina, during his exile. A socialist, Luzuriaga abandoned Spain when the civil war started in 1936 because of political persecution. In Argentina, he was a Pedagogy, HE, and Pedagogical Psychology professor at Universidad Nacional de Tucuman between 1939 and 1945. In 1944, in Buenos Aires, he was the director of the Pedagogical Collection from Editorial Losada, where he published 15 books, among which his work História da educação e da pedagogia, whose third edition was used for CAP.

Besides books, he wrote 112 articles at the Revista da Pedagogía [Pedagogy Journal]. Based on his broad political and educational experience, the socialist Luzuriaga became one of the leading representatives of educational themes, always grounded on “[...] laicity and rationalism [...]”, defending a national education to all (Liébana, 2003, p. 1). Similarly, the teacher Luzuriaga professor, engaged in the New School Movement, defended a single and unified school.

This study also points out that several Brazilian researchers dedicated themselves to the study and research of these two foreign authors. This is the case of Warde (1998), Gatti Jr. (2011, 2012), and Roballo (2012), who focused on the work of Lorenzo Luzuriaga. For instance, Gatti Jr. (2012) researched the principal foreign authors of HE manuals indicated in the subject syllabuses, among which Lorenzo Luzuriaga is recurrent. There are also many studies about Paul Monroe’s work in Brazil, highlighting the one by Silva and Gondra (2011), who analyzed this author’s contribution to the model of narrating and teaching HE.

Without exception, through their manuals (covers, front pages, book flaps, and back covers), CAP sought to show the position occupied by these HE teachers-authors. In the manuals, it is clear that the author is writing from a place of authority concerning the teachers and students of Teacher training courses. For example, in many statements about Luzuriaga in the flaps of his work, he is described as an author with extensive pedagogical experience, demanding and rigorous when informing and giving his opinions. We also point out the remarks about Monroe (1958), for example, in the flap of the 6th edition of his manual, under the direction of Damasco Penna, in which Monroe is presented as a name of “[...] highest level in the North-American pedagogy [...]” and the author of one of the most known works about HE, as shown in Figure 1:

Figure 1
Remarks about Paul Monroe.

About this, the HE manuals were not presented anonymously to future teachers. On the contrary, HE writing was validated by a combination of factors: the presence of the HE subject in teacher education; the organization and order of knowledge used for this end; and the works of renowned authors who, with their credibility and experience, write about HE.

We can perceive the relation of credibility, experience, and visibility in the covers of HE manuals that, despite the differences between the directions of Azevedo and Damasco Penna, seek to disseminate the collection, the publishing company, the editor, the author of the manual, the volume, and, in some cases, the translators, presenting the product, as we can see on Figure 6:

Figure 2
Layout in the manual covers - from left to right, from the Azevedo standard to Penna one.

Even under one direction, such as the one by Damasco Penna, the layout changes from one edition to another highlight the author's name and the collection, as seen in Figure 3 below. According to Toledo (2001, p. 105), covers represent “[...] the identity of the collection and its affirmation as such, within the book market that, since the 1930s, became increasingly more competitive". The covers also call the attention of the target public to the HE editorial project.

Figure 3
Layout changes in the covers of the HE manuals by Luzuriaga under Penna’s direction - from left to right: 1975 and 1977.

In the same analytical key, the students and teachers find on the cover pages the essential data about the works: the name of the author, title, and subtitle (if it is the case), edition, publishing company, place and date of publication, among other information, such as the translators, when the original work was not in Portuguese. Generally, under Azevedo’s and Penna’s guidance, the names CAP and BPB were placed on the top of the page, the author's name right below with the indications of their professional qualification. The title of the work, the publishing company, and its location were on the lower part of the page. In foreign manuals, the publication year appears on a separate page with the original data (title, publication year, and publishing company).

It is interesting to see that, in the sixth edition of Monroe’s manual from 1958, Figure 4, they point out that the author is a “Doctor in Philosophy- Professor of History of Education at the Teachers College of Columbia University (New York)," while in the 1939 edition, the author is described only as a professor at “Teachers College."

Figure 4
Title page of Monroe’s manual in 1958.

Thus, the publishing company, the collection, the authors, the covers, the front pages, and the flaps make us reflect on the choices made over how HE reached the readers, i.e., students from teacher-training courses and their teachers. The value of HE writing is built on the dimension of the book as a concrete object because the material characteristics of the manuals establish a reading protocol, as highlighted by Batista and Galvão (2009). In this protocol, the intentions of the author and the editor join those of the possible readers to guide them through the book.

As we will see next, from the "concrete to the imaginary," the external elements together with the internal ones, which organize the manuals, such as prefaces, summaries, chapters, references, and others, suggest a type of reading and build meanings. These meanings are related to the past of education, school, and teaching.

From the “concrete to the imaginary place”: HE manuals and their relation with the readers

Targeting the courses of teacher training, the HE manuals entangled the curriculum regulations and the pedagogical and commercial dimensions. Besides being organized from editorial decisions regarding their format, cost, and number of copies to be printed, they also played a pedagogical/educational role determined by an organization typical of the HE contents to be taught.

This way, the structure that transforms the HE manuals into imaginary places pervades how they articulate HE knowledge to future teachers' reading and learning processes. Within these works, some elements organize the reading of their pages, such as prefaces, summaries, chapters, references, and illustrations (in the case of Monroe’s manual²⁷).

Besides these elements, the manuals present narratives about the proposed themes with a didactic tone, guiding the educational activity to make it more efficient, promoting learning through different resources, and allowing reading multiplicities. In this perspective, we highlight Choppin’s (2004, p. 559) remarks:

Books’ internal organization and their division into parts, chapters, paragraphs, the typographical differences (font, body text, underlines, margins, colors, etc.) and their variations, the distribution and spatial disposition of the several textual or iconic elements in a page (or a double page) or of a book were the objects of few studies, in a historical perspective. However, these configurations were quite specific in the didactic book. In fact, typography and paging are part of the didactic discourse of a book used in the classroom, as are its texts and illustrations.

In this sense, it is a fact that each book, “[...] each support, each structure of transmission and reception of the written text, deeply affects its possible uses and interpretations” (Chartier, 2003, p. 44-45). Hence, the principles that guide the narratives in the school books presuppose deciphering other principles that ground their production, circulation, and communication processes. Texts and supports are deeply connected, mutually inspiring each other. HE manuals guarantee, from their theoretical and methodological forms, the composition of narratives that frame a selection of socially-valued knowledge, which correspond to and answer the needs to teach and learn about HE themes.

Comparing Monroe’s and Luzuriaga’s manuals, we can see similarities in the organization and content choice. The books have summaries that organize the chapters and statements that establish the separation between chapters, always presented in bold and caps lock (highlight), anticipating the content²⁸. The subtitles, divided into smaller sections, present brief, separated texts to make the HE explanations more accessible to future teachers.

The courses that opted for the work História da educação (1939) by Monroe chose a model reference for other HE books. This statement comes from the many mentions of this author in manuals, such as those of Afrânio Peixoto and Miranda Santos. Besides, it is possible to see similarities related to the structure, the organization of manuals, and the themes approached by HE. Monroe, similar to Peixoto and Miranda Santos, opted to organize the narratives from the chronology of different civilizations, dividing the chapters into Primitive Peoples Education; Eastern Education; Greek and Roman Education; Middle Age Education; Renaissance Education; and Education in Modernity.

In this HE content organization, naturalized and limited, Paul Monroe affirmed that the study of types of education from the past would allow the understanding of later and more complex stages of education. The study of educational theories, which survived in the educational institutions “[...] controlled by religious associations or by certain dominant classes in society” (Monroe, 1968, p. 370) shown through the curricula and educational programs, allow us to understand education and its history:

The objective of the old education of effort was to develop the power of voluntary attention, application, and willpower in children, allowing them to go over obstacles or enact daily experience tasks. The new education of reconciliation aimed to reach the same end by immediately appealing to spontaneous attention and children's interests (Monroe, 1968, p. 368).

Therefore, for Monroe, history is presented to teachers as a synonym for social life, and education plays a part in the construction and improvement of society. In the summary of Monroe's work, the word education is in the title of the chapters, establishing the content to be studied, for example, chapter I, “Primitive Peoples: Education on its simplest expression"; Chapter II, “Eastern Education: China as the standard"; Chapter IV, “The Romans: Education as training for practical life”; Chapter V, “Middle Age: Education as discipline”; and other chapters written under the perspective of pedagogical ideas and educational tendencies.

In this way, education is established as a factor of progress and evolution to show that, from the primitive people until the time considered modern and contemporary, education is seen as a way to shape society as its guardian.

In the manual História da educação e da pedagogia (Luzuriaga, 1963), the author describes for the future teacher that education is configured as the broad action exerted by society over younger generations to conserve and transmit to them the collective existence. The author approximates himself to the perspective of French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858-1917), who saw education as the way society perpetuates itself. Luzuriaga also affirms that education, as an active agent of social change, would be responsible for transmitting moral values that integrate society and, under this condition, teachers from the early years could provoke changes in education and, as a consequence, in society.

As Monroe, Luzuriaga stresses that, in the historical development of education, we can see different phases, such as Primitive Education, Eastern Education, Classic Education, Medieval Education, Humanist Education, Reformed Christian Education, Rationalist and Realist Education, Naturalist Education, National Education, and Democratic Education; all of them with particular characteristics, though not exclusive or unique, “[...] because human life cannot be reduced to simplistic schemes” (Luzuriaga, 1972, p. 5).

To Luzuriaga (1963, p. 9), HE does not study the past for the past, “[...] as something dead, just for the erudition [...]”, but as an explanation for the “[...] current state”. Present education is a phase of the past and a preparation for the future. The author highlights for the teachers that HE studies is a way to improve current education because it informs about educational reforms, the danger of utopic ideas, and anachronistic, reactionary resistances that education had been experienced. Besides these definitions, the author describes that HE has its history, which portrays the change and development of education and, on the other hand, is part of the culture, historically conditioned, varying according to the characteristics of peoples and times.

In this analytical perspective, Monroe and Luzuriaga offer teachers descriptions of education and civilizations, adjusting to the idea of evolution and present a spatial-temporal sequence based on a Eurocentric view and, as Dussel (2005, p. 55) analyzes an “[...] ideological invention”. In the authors' work, education has primitive people at its genesis. From them, they follow with the descriptions of the development of civilizations that close with the modern and contemporary period, showing that the later stages become more complex.

The authors write similarly about these periods when praising the principles of universal, free, and obligatory education. Using Luzuriaga’s words, historically, it is possible to perceive that a movement of action and reaction between society and education, between this and culture, and among nations established itself.

It is essential to point out that Luzuriaga defends and describes in detail the movement for Escola Nova in his manual, dividing it into specific groups. The first would be the new schools inspired by the first English schools of Abbotsholme and Bedales, which started the movement in Europe, around 1890. The second would be the experimental schools, from the pedagogical and technical type, which originated in the United States, mainly by the influence of the university school of Dewey, in 1896. The third group would be composed of "active schools," with a methodological character, inspired by new methods and created by educators, such as the “Children’s House” by Montessori, the “School for Life" by Decroly, both from 1907 and the “Dalton School," by Parkhurst, from 1918. The fourth would be "experience and reform schools" encompassing several institutions of an official school system, such as those reformed by Kerschensteiner, in 1896 and by Sickinger e Washburne (Luzuriaga, 1963).

Paul Monroe does not present deep descriptions of new schools, probably because his work was written when the discussions on the theme were starting. The author briefly cites Dewey as the teacher responsible for defining education as a process to reconstruct experience, harmonizing the individual and social factors. However, in the final pages of his book, Monroe affirms that a new sense of education was present, seeking to combine preparation for citizenship, adjustment to society, life preparation, and the harmony of nature with the educational process.

The authors also present the educators’ canon (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Erasmus, Rabelais, Montaigne, the Jesuits, Luther, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Herbart, among others) who theorize education and formulate an assemble of ideas and concepts that grounded pedagogical doctrines. To portray the pedagogical doctrines developed in the past, Luzuriaga uses the term "pedagogical ideas," while Monroe uses "tendencies," both indicating the trajectory of the main educational theories. The texts represent the primary doctrines that marked the past, or better, they describe the philosophers, educators, priests, and sociologists who inspired many generations of teachers with their ideas. This way, the doctrines would be connected to the trajectory of the great educators, who, since distant times and civilizations, would be responsible for fomenting new educational ideas and providing consistency and guidance to new cultural and educational aspirations.

It is noteworthy that, in the description of the educators and pedagogical doctrines, the intertextuality among HE manuals prevails. This is the case, for example, of the manuals by Miranda Santos, Hubert, Peixoto, and Luzuriaga, which incorporate Monroe’s ideas into their narratives. In Vieira’s words (2011, p. 98), Monroe and other authors are used to “[...] sacralize interpretations that, far from being demonstrated, are presented to the reader endorsed by the authority of the authors and their interlocutors”.

In HE writing, educational institutions or schools are also valued and converted into institutionalized spaces associated with the development of civilizations. School is established in a privileged locus to access cultural goods produced and valued by humanity. On Chart 2, we present considerations from two manuals that affirm the importance of the relationship between the educational institutions past to HE:

Chart 2
Meanings given to the educational institutions.

Consequently, in the manuals, HE is established as knowledge to be taught, learned, and apprehended using the concepts proposed by Bittencourt (2008). A knowledge that privileges education and its history, highlighting the evolution of civilizations in different historical periods connected to the development of human life, mainly through school education. Among the most defended ideas, which interconnect education with the processes of societal evolution, the one about HE as a study of the past and a way to explain the present and predict the future stands out.

The conceptions presented in the texts, based in the past as a lesson for the present, reveal and shape narratives that effectively establish HE as a forming subject that, when indicating its limiting term - of education - focuses on a conception more educational than historical, and more valuable than a matrix. In this perspective, the role of HE, agreeing with Warde (1998, p. 91-2), was to “[...] answer the need of future teachers to consider the duty to be educational, the most elevated human values to be preserved and awakened [...]”, what would make it useful by offering justifications for the present.

Final remarks

Due to the valorization of teacher training books, as well as Jorge Luiz Borges (1987) words, HE manuals were considered an extension of memory and imagination because they disseminate and legitimize representations of what should be critical for teaching in training courses. For this reason, the manuals were, at the same time, a “symbol and a metaphor” because they express meanings to those that handled them.

To resume Mallarmé’s expressions (1945) in this work, the “concreteness” of HE manuals lies in the reflections about the elements that organized their distribution for teacher training courses. The publishing company and publishers, the collection, the authors, and the elements that visually present the importance of these materials (such as covers, front pages, and book flaps) didactically inspire their use and guide the educational activity of teachers and students. This “ideal” led to the possible senses attributed to HE, regarding the reading and interpretation of contents about education and its history, and the senses expressed to the teaching profession and teaching.

Confronted by this, two questions stand out. The first refers to the foreign works of Luzuriaga and Monroe, who had many books, confirming the circulation and existence of exchange between national and international HE writings. The second refers to the publication trajectory of manuals as a witness of the changes in the curricula and teacher training programs since 1930, from the apex of reprinting in 1970, due to the increase of enrollment in secondary and higher institutions of teacher training and primary schools, as well as the fall in the production starting in the late 1980s related to the changes in the HE field.

By crossing the frontiers of their countries and the timeline, for decades Monroe’s and Luzuriaga’s books preserved in their structure the historical-universal grounding and the practical and utilitarian role. Supported by a historical-universal concept, their contents are based on brief studies about historical periods, relating them to an educational past. Furthermore, in a practical and utilitarian role, they taught future teachers knowledge about the history of the school and pedagogical and teaching doctrines, considered important contents for their training and work.

In this logic, the manuals are similar to the definitions of HE. The authors agreed that HE was important to unveil civilizations, past conquests, and great educators' profiles. They also agreed on the idea that HE would stop teachers to be alienated from the past of the history of education, which would be used to understand the present and prepare for the future.

Finally, the educational past became a great lesson of the manuals. In the fusion between the "concrete" and the "imaginary," HE manuals represented the articulation between types of knowledge, moral values, and behaviors needed for future teachers. Besides this, they became mediating instruments of learning processes about the history of education, school, and teaching.

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• 15
  Jorge Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires in 1899 and died in Genebra in 1986. He was a writer, a poet, translator, literary critic, and essayist. In 1923, he published his first põem book Fervor de Buenos Aires. The text in the epigraph is entitled “The book” found in the book Cinco visões pessoais, published by Editora Universidade de Brasília, in 1987.
• 16
  Defined the book The symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé was born in Paris in 1842 and died in 1898. Inspired by Charles Baudelaire, he wrote many books, among them: Hérodiade [Herodiade] de 1869, L'après-midi d'un Faun [Afternoon of a Faun] in 1876, and Oeuvres complètes [Complete works] 1945.
• 17
  We used the CAP's title classification following the organization proposed by Toledo (2001), adding to the manual Pedagogia geral [General pedagogy] by Leif and Rustin, as its content was similar to that of the works listed.
• 18
  Lebrun (2006).
• 19
  The name Fernando de Azevedo heading BPB was significant because he was a renowned intellectual, as he would grant popularity to the collection, thus creating “[...] the need to consume the allocated texts, because he was an authority in the subject [...]”, and not due to the Manifesto dos pioneiros da Educação Nova from 1932, as BPB had already been released the year before the Manifesto and the conflict established between the “renovators” and the “Catholics” (Toledo, 2001, p. 58). However, we highlight that the Reforma do Distrito Federal from 1927, and the Manifesto gave Azevedo a status of intellectual and political authority in the educational field and the country's political scenario.
• 20
  Octalles Marcondes Ferreira, owner of CNE and Editora Civilização Brasileira, subdivided the editorial market into two fronts: CNE for the ‘renovators’ connected to Azevedo and the Civilização Brasileira for the ‘Catholics, encompassing in this period different readers with different publications (Toledo, 2001).
• 21
  The books listed, Brazilian and foreigners, for the most part, are part of the catalogs of Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro and the Biblioteca de Educação at Universidade Federal do Paraná.
• 22
  Ruy de Ayres Bello’s book (professor of the Universidade do Recife, the Universidade Católica de Pernambuco, and the Instituto de Educação de Pernambuco) are not part of the Coleção Atualidades pedagógicas.
• 23
  According to the Anuário estatístico do Brasil, there was a significant increase of students enrolled in Normal Schools between 1945 and 1971. We also point out that the Reforma Universitária de 1968 (1968 University Rerfom) officialized the curriculum structure of the Pedagogy courses that, created in 1939, would expand all over Brazil.
• 24
  The HE field currently differs from the reality observed in the last century because the Work Group in History of Education was created at Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa (ANPEd- National Graduate and Research Association)in 1984. In 1999, the Sociedade Brasileira de História da Educação (SBHE- Brazilian Society of History of Education) was founded, as well as other research groups connected to graduate programs in education around the country. All this movement was supported by debates about the historiography of the History of Education who have been leading intellectuals in the area, such as Mirian J. Warde, Martha M. M. C. de Carvalho, Clarice Nunes, José G. Gondra, Carlos Eduardo Vieira, among others, to understand the itinerary, the changes, and the HE construction and writings nationally and internationally.
• 25
  This work will not analyze the translations and/or translators. However, about the translation process of the manuals, we understand from Ricouer (2011, p. 27) that, though they are not “[...] linguistic absolutes [...]” abolishing the differences between the national and the foreign, they were welcomed as they established a dialogue between cultures.
• 26
  Among the Brazilian authors inspired by Monroe, we point out the books from Peixoto and Santos, according to the research conducted by Roballo (2007, 2012, 2021).
• 27
  Monroe's manual presents around thirty images about past civilizations, schools, universities, and classrooms, among others, becoming a communication resource that materializes notions about the values and behaviors of particular societies in different historical contexts.
• 28
  As Chartier (2004) explains, this strategy that separates the text into chapter titles or line changes is like an inscription in the book of what the editors believe is reading: “[...] one that is not excellent nor continuous, but that takes and leaves a book, only deciphers with easiness the brief and closed sequences, demanding explicit marks” (p. 272-273).
• 42
  Peer review rounds: R1: three invitations; one report received. R2: one invitation; one report received.
• 43
  How to cite this article: Roballo, R. O. B. (2023). The long, concrete, and imaginary presence of the history of education foreign textbooks in Brazil (1930-1980). Revista Brasileira de História da Educação, 23. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4025/rbhe.v23.2023.e273
• Funding: The RBHE has financial support from the Brazilian Society of History of Education (SBHE) and the Editorial Program (Call No. 12/2022) of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).
• 41
  Note: English version by Viviane Ramos ([e-mail]).

Edited by

Responsible associate editors:Ana Clara Bortoleto Nery (UNESP) E-mail: [e-mail] https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6316-3243

Andréa Cordeiro (UFPR) E-mail: [e-mail] https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6963-5261

Gizele de Souza (UFPR) E-mail [e-mail] https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6487-4300

MMarcus Levy Bencostta (UFPR) E-mail: [e-mail] https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3387-7901

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  24 July 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  29 Sept 2022
• Accepted
  29 Mar 2023
• Published
  30 June 2023