Primary instruction reforms in the province of Goiás, Brazil, in the imperial period (1822-1889)

Abstract

The Additional Act of 1834 established the representational councils in the provinces in the place of the general councils of the provinces and empowered them with important roles, within which, the role to legislate about public instruction and to create conditions to carry them out. So each province of the empire organized its own instruction, creating a varied net of public and private schools. In this context, the province of Goiás set up its educational legislation, of which, we point out the Law number 13 of 1835 as well as the regulations of instruction of 1835, 1856, 1869, 1884, 1886 and 1887. The present work proposed to analyze both the legislative content and the historical context which brought about the legislation. The applied methodology is bibliographical and documental analysis. The educational legislation of the Goiás province was decreed by the presidents unopposed of the Provincial Assembly. The opposition, when they existed, was carried out partly by the cultural and economical elite of the province, which envisaged to take up the political power and used the press to deliver its own critiques. It conquered enormous power in the 1880 decade through the Bulhões oligarchy. The production of various regulations was not sufficient to overcome the poor situation of the instruction in the province, considering the difficulty to put them into practice, without exception, mainly due to the lack of financial resources.