Competing Representations about how Families Educate Children (Province of Paraná, 1853-1889)

Abstract

Over the history of the Empire of Brazil, there were at least three different and mutually opposing representations about how families should educate children: the regalist, the liberal and the ultramontane ones. These representations manifested disputes over power between the two institutions that produced them: the State, with its regalism and liberalism, and the Catholic Church, with its ultramontanism. The goal of the present work is to analyze the different representations about the role of families in the education of children as proposed by regalists, liberals and ultramontanes, in a specific region of the empire, i.e., the Province of Paraná, from 1853 (when it separated from São Paulo) to 1889 (the year when, with the end of the empire, the relationship between the State and the Church started to be seen in a different perspective). The key concepts in this paper are Peter Burke’s notion of social role and Roger Chartier’s conception of representation. The sources investigated are printed material that put these representations in circulation in the Province of Paraná: the Constituições Primeiras do Arcebispado da Bahia [First Constitutions of the Archbishopric of Bahia], reports, sermons, newspapers and a catechism. The historical route followed in this article evidenced that, in the 19th century in this province, the role of families in the education of children was the object of significant debates between State and Catholic Church agents, who produced about it the different representations analyzed here. Regalists, liberals and ultramontanes chose this education as a way to affirm their place in the social arena and to shape society according with what they aspired to in their world representations.