“Adorned with modern concepts”: circulation of foreign references in the Apostillas de pedagogia, by Balthazar Góes (1905)

ABSTRACT

This text aims to analyze the circulation of foreign references present in the Apostillas de Pedagogia (1905), by Balthazar Góes, a teacher at the Normal School “Ruy Barbosa”, in Aracaju/SE, at the beginning of the 20th century. It starts from the initial assumption that the institutionalization of the intuitive method was done through didactic manuals, teaching programs and newspapers, in view of the government program for educational renewal in Sergipe. During this period, the intuitive method was seen as a milestone in a modernizing project for Brazilian primary education. Thus, this teacher’s contribution is not limited to reading and citing international references on the intuitive method, but is the result of a collective process, modeled by several groups that created repertoire and performances, in the terms of Faria Filho (2012), Tilly (1995) and Alonso (2012). In line with the guidelines of modern Pedagogy, the knowledge transcribed in the Apostillas de Pedagogia allowed an analysis of the circulation of foreign references, especially those linked to the work Lesson of Things, by Norman Calkins (1886) and Pestalozzi’s publications (1996), present in the dissemination of the intuitive method in Brazil and Sergipe. Therefore, Balthazar Góes performance in the production of the Apostillas de Pedagogia (1905) and their dissemination in the classroom manifest themselves as performances of a specific “cultural repertoire”, influenced by foreign references.

Keywords:
Intuitive method; Foreign references; Cultural repertoire

RESUMO

Este texto tem como objetivo analisar a circulação de referenciais estrangeiros presentes na Apostillas de pedagogia (1905), de Balthazar Góes, docente da Escola Normal “Ruy Barbosa”, de Aracaju/SE, no início do século XX. Parte-se do pressuposto inicial de que a circulação de referenciais estrangeiros foi feita por meio de livros traduzidos e produção de manuais didáticos, tendo em vista o programa de governo para a renovação educacional em Sergipe. Nesse período, o método intuitivo foi visto como marco de um projeto modernizador da instrução primária brasileira. Assim, a contribuição desse professor não se restringe apenas à leitura e citação de referências internacionais sobre o método intuitivo, mas é resultante da apropriação desses referenciais para a produção de um “repertório cultural”, nos termos de Faria Filho (2012), Tilly (1995) e Alonso (2012). Alinhados às diretrizes da Pedagogia moderna, os saberes transcritos na Apostillas de pedagogia permitiram a análise acerca da circulação de referenciais estrangeiros, especialmente ligados à obra Lições de coisas, de Norman Calkins (1886) e as publicações de Pestalozzi (1996), presentes na difusão do método intuitivo no Brasil e em Sergipe. Portanto, a atuação de Balthazar Góes na produção da Apostillas de pedagogia e sua divulgação em sala de aula manifestam-se como performances de um “repertório cultural” específico, influenciado por referenciais estrangeiros.

Palavras-chave:
Método intuitivo; Referenciais estrangeiros; Repertório cultural

Introduction

Norman Calkins’s lessons on things are not a discipline; they are the best of teaching processes. They consist of placing an object - a figure or drawing - under the control of children’s senses, allowing them to discover its characteristics and ultimately give it its proper name, always obeying the fundamental principle: from the simple to the complex; from what is known to what is unknown... By an ascending gradation, without leaps, childlike minds are thus enabled to safely enter states of any order (Góes, 1905, p. 83).

Reading and citing foreign authors was a common practice among educators, politicians, and intellectuals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This text, due to its limitations, will highlight a time marked by the global circulation of cultural subjects and objects, through the production and circulation of books, manuals, textbooks, periodicals, and school materials, driven by the demand for educational modernization. This text comes from the Modern Project, modernity, modernization: education in Brazil’s projects - centuries XIX and XX¹ and it was built with the objective of understanding the circulation of references present in Apostillas de Pedagogia (1905), by Balthazar Góes² (1853-1914), teacher at the “Ruy Barbosa” Normal School, in Aracaju/SE, at the beginning of the 20th century.

In Góes’s (1905) understanding, education was intended to promote “the study that seeks the appropriate means to develop and perfect man’s faculties and inclinations to make his life easier” (Góes, 1905, p. 14). In this sense, education was focused on preparation for life and pedagogy, considered “the art of educating children” (Góes, 1905, p. 13). Apostillas de Pedagogia by Balthazar Góes became a performative instrument used at the “Ruy Barbosa” Normal School. As was common at the time, the work was the result of notes taken, readings and citations of foreign references made by the teacher in the classroom and the planning of the subjects taught.

To achieve what is proposed textually, the question arises: How were foreign references present in the Apostillas de Pedagogia (1905), in view of the performative action of Balthazar Góes?

The work cited in the epigraph was published in 1905 and consists of a methodological work. Balthazar Góes published, after many years of teaching experience, the work Pedagogy - Apostillas de Pedagogia - preceded by some notions of Psychology gathered from good teachers, which brought together precepts of the intuitive method of the so-called “good teachers”. The quote that Goés makes from the work Primeiras Lições de Coisas - manual de ensino elementar para uso dos paes e professores, of the American professor Norman Alisson Calkins³, translated by Rui Barbosa and published in 1861, opens a path to understanding of a modernizing project for Brazilian primary education, based on foreign references. Figure 1 shows the book cover of Lições de coisas:

Figure 1:
Cover of Lições de coisas, by Calkins (1886), translated by Rui Barbosa

Considered guides for implementing the intuitive teaching method by elementary school teachers, lesson manuals began to gain strength from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, covering the content to be taught in elementary school, as well as the methodological recommendations to be followed by the teacher. According to Calkins (1886, p. 20), his work differed from others in one important way: “it exemplifies to the teacher the manner of proceeding, at each successive step, in developing the minds of children. After explaining what must be practiced, it goes on to show by demonstrative examples how to do it.”.

Teaching, previously centered on books and texts, gives way, in Norman Calkins’s manual, to the scientific study of things, centered on the child’s experience and observation. As a consequence of this focus on teaching things, the textbooks previously used by students “[...] lose their role as the primary repository of knowledge to be memorized, with emphasis then placed on the teacher’s book-the manual-transformed into an indispensable guide and support for their work” (Auras, 2003, p. 1). It was no coincidence, therefore, that the manuals enjoyed great success in the early 20th century among Brazilian teachers, whose training at the time was quite deficient.

For this reason, Rui Barbosa, translator of Primeiras lições de coisas - manual de ensino elementar para uso dos paes e professores, believed that this manual, by pointing out a “new spirit” and a “new pedagogical direction” for elementary education constituted a sure path toward the “modernization” and “regeneration” of Brazil. A supporter of liberal principles, Rui Barbosa considered school education the main factor in Brazil’s development, believing it essential to modify the pedagogical practices then in force in the country’s schools, considered boring and archaic, by giving them a new pedagogical horizon, adapting them to the modernizing political project being pursued in Brazil. Here, a new question arises: What is the role of translators like Rui Barbosa?

The analysis of the translation and publishing practices of Norman Alisson Calkins’s work in Brazil touches on a reflection on the role of translation, adaptation, and the resignification of foreign pedagogical ideas in the Brazilian context. This analysis emphasizes the importance of identifying criteria for the selection and/or composition of translated titles, interrogating the strategies of the publishers that released them, in order to establish their place in the cultural circuit established by the editorial formula, but also paying attention to the construction of a “cultural repertoire” mediated by the interpersonal and interinstitutional networks that facilitated the international circulation of pedagogical knowledge. The translations of the works read by Balthazar Góes are considered “cultural translations”: “a dual process of decontextualization and recontextualization that first seeks to appropriate something foreign and then domesticates it” (Burke; Hsia, 2009, p. 14).

Balthazar Góes had access to this and other works translated into Portuguese through his training in Humanities, at Atheneu Sergipense⁴, in Aracaju/SE. This institution served as a catalyst for foreign educational productions and new pedagogical practices, consisting of a “center for unifying and disseminating cultural ethos” (Alves, 2005, p. 1). Balthazar Góes, in his work Apostillas de Pedagogia (1905), undertook an intellectual effort to compile, adapt and comment on foreign pedagogical ideas. Besides Primeiras lições de coisas, by Norman Calkins, other references made up his “cultural repertoire”, highlighting: Emílio, ou Da Educação, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau⁵; Carta XXXI, by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi; O cuidado das creanças, by Monsenhor Sebastião Kneipp⁶; Arte de formar homens de bem, by Dr. J. N. Jaguaribe Filho⁷; A instrucção publica, by João Ribeiro; Grammatica elementar, by Hilário Ribeiro; Elementos de pedagogia, by Graça Affreixo and Henrique Freire, among others. Here a new question arises: How does Balthazar Góes’ performative action, in the classroom and in the production of Apostillas de Pedagogia (1905), manifests itself as a cultural repertoire?

The use of quotations from this set of authors is understood here as “cultural repertoire”, in terms of Tilly (2010), Alonso (2012) and Faria Filho (2012), that helped in the understanding of the “cultural repertoire”, as a set of intellectual resources, ideas and practices, available in a given society and in a certain period of time, which are learned, shared and put into practice through a relatively deliberate process of choice. For Alonso (2012, p. 40):

Repertoires function as a ‘toolbox’ from which agents draw, selecting resources according to their needs to understand certain situations and position themselves in them. They are a complex of worldviews, ways of thinking, and ways of acting employed by people in different settings to define and construct courses of action.

Thus, the concept of “cultural repertoire” assumes special importance in this study, because it draws attention to the way in which Professor Balthazar Góes developed his understanding of the intuitive method performed in his Apostillas de pedagogia, based on foreign references in circulation in Brazil. It is believed that Balthazar Góes’ cultural repertoire, in his performative action as a teacher/author, in the training of teachers at the “Ruy Barbosa” Normal School, shows the efforts of this subject in the production, legitimization and use of the work. As Faria Filho (2012, p. 15) states, “[...] the cultural repertoires constituted by [...] subjects present a complex of habits, skills and styles, of worldviews, ways of thinking and ways of acting employed by people in different configurations to define and construct lines of action”.

Valdemarin (2022) also stated the presence of a “cultural repertoire” forged from the transnational circulation of pedagogical knowledge - especially in North American books, manuals and collections - originating from the library of the Escola Normal da Capital/Escola Normal Caetano de Campos, in 1880. The inventory of works allowed the identification of predominant trends:

[...] in the practical sphere, intuitive teaching processes acquired legitimacy through different circulation routes; in the scientific sphere, pedagogy was supported by principles formulated by Psychology to describe the functioning of the intellect in the production of ideas and convictions and elevated the purposes of the pedagogical field beyond the instruction of content (Valdemarin, 2022, p. 1).

The connection between the production/use of the “cultural repertoire” and the performative action is summarized in the opinion prepared by the Superior Council of Public Education, composed of the members Dr. José Moreira de Magalhães, Severiano Cardoso and Francisco Monteiro de Carvalho Filho⁸. With this opinion, the council unanimously approved, on May 16, 1902, the work, which, launched three years later, was dedicated to the students of the Normal and private School and to their colleagues in public and private teaching. According to the opinion:

After a careful reading of the work of Professor Balthazar Góes, APOSTILLAS DE PEDAGOGIA, the only judgment we can make is this: It is a most useful work; and its adoption is imperative. Rich in synthetic propositions, adorned with modern concepts that greatly reveal the author’s erudition, it is, above all, what could be called a practical book. It arose from the experience of long years of teaching; this is perhaps the reason why the author, rightly, we think, does not make many references to similar works that saw the light of day long ago. Because Pedagogy, strictly speaking, is not a science; it is still research, a study. The teacher, the pedagogue, is like the clinician; and happy are the teachers who know how to draw on the experiences accumulated in their noble training. “The most... the teacher,” the author says concisely throughout the preface; the most... the teacher, we repeat, trying to abound in the author’s spirit, for we are always convinced that Pedagogy has no defined limits; and often the best teaching is born from the moment. We have nothing more to add regarding the book we have examined. In conclusion, we are therefore of the opinion that it be approved and that the Government be requested to adopt and print it for use in public education (Góes, 1905, p. 5).

The excerpt highlights the recommendation for the book’s adoption by the public education system, as well as the effort, in the early 20th century, to create systematized teaching materials based on foreign and national experiences, fundamental to the consolidation of a republican and modern public school in Brazil. The authors of the opinion, in qualifying Apostillas de Pedagogia (1905) as “adorned with modern concepts,” highlight Balthazar Góes’s “cultural repertoire.” In the wake of this investigation, the category “cultural repertoire” serves as an interpretative key to examining the circulation of foreign references present in the work analyzed here.

Production conditions, materiality and structure of the work

The copy that was obtained from Apostillas de Pedagogia for reading was that of an existing copy in Biblioteca Epifânio Dórea⁹. The cover of this manual, in black and white, with a variety of fonts and sizes, measures 12cm x 21cm. The serif style was chosen, highlighting the title of the work in bold and varying sizes. It then provides the name and address of the printing house that printed the manual, as well as the year of publication. Published by M. Orosco & Cia, located at Rua da Quitanda, number 38, Rio de Janeiro, 1905. Figure 2 shows the cover of Apostillas de Pedagogia, by Balthazar Góes (1905):

Figure 2:
Cover of Apostillas de Pedagogia by Balthazar Góes (1905)

Defending education as the “study that seeks the proper means to develop and perfect man’s faculties and inclinations, to make life easier,” Balthazar Góes composes his 96-page work, dividing it into three parts: Physical Education; Moral Education; Intellectual Education - a sequence used to identify and categorize foreign references. This division followed a tripartite trend in manuals of the time, subdivided into sections and chapters, preceded by the “Prolegomena - Pedagogy, Notions of Psychology”, and supplemented with annexes of eight models of registration forms, grade books and awards.

Methodology - “the part of intellectual education that studies teaching methods” - proposed by Balthazar focused on various aspects of schooling, dividing it into General and Special. The former, “which establishes the rules for teaching any subject,” addressed the syllabus, the ordered enumeration of disciplines, the form and manner of explaining lessons, the processes, the means employed by the teacher to facilitate understanding of what is explained, and the methods and manner of organizing the school and grouping students. For each subject in the school curriculum, he proposed a Special Methodology, a unique approach.

The legislation in force at the time was Decree 501 of August 5, 1901. It established that education in Sergipe, both private and public, should be divided into primary, normal, and secondary. Lasting three years and aiming to provide aspiring primary school teachers with the qualifications essential for their profession, “normal education [should be] more practical than theoretical and based on experimentation so that students can consider the subject from all its facets” (art. 117). The Normal Course Study Plan consisted of the following subjects: National Grammar and Calligraphy; Arithmetic; French Language; General Geography and History of Brazil, especially of Sergipe; Pedagogy and Methodology; Elements of Physical and Natural Sciences, Notions of Agronomy and Domestic Hygiene; Moral and Civic Instruction and explanation of the Federal and State Constitutions (cf. art. 113).

The investigation of Pedagogia de Balthazar Góes allowed us to understand the educational practices of preparing teachers at the Escola Normal de Sergipe, as well as the principles defended by the author in the first decade of the 20th century. It also reveals his knowledge of educational issues not only stemming from his long teaching experience, but also from the contact, revealed by the aforementioned authors, that he maintained with the movement of pedagogical ideas.

These ideas were influenced by Pestalozzi’s doctrine, reflected in his proposals for organizing classrooms and using time for lessons, teaching aspiring primary school teachers - students in the Normal Course - that they should always proceed from the concrete to the abstract, from the particular to the general, in a practical, utilitarian way, emphasizing observation and experimentation. He thus demonstrated the elements necessary at the time for a natural teaching process, which, for an “intelligent teacher, is enough - Teach with love, and you will learn to teach.”

“Physical Education; Moral Education; Intellectual Education”: foreign references in Balthazar Góes’ triad

Intuitive teaching condemns nomenclature. It eschews all that is arbitrarily conventional and formalistic. It repudiates a priori notions. Its aim is not to provide the child’s mind with a more or less abundant supply of information about real things, but to educate its faculties in the habit of safely unraveling them, from the heart of reality to the expression of its nature and its laws. It circumscribes the categorical, didactic, and expository part of the teacher’s mission. It restores to the facts, directly consulted by the student, the preponderant role that belongs to them in the education of man (Calkins, 1886, p. XI).

“From the heart of reality to the expression of its nature and its laws”, phrase taken from the work Lições de Coisas, by Calkins (1886), points to the intuitive method that began to be defended in the 1990s. From that moment on, the simultaneous method¹⁰ was harshly criticized for its disciplinary rather than instructive nature and for the current state of education in Sergipe. According to the readjustment proposal, the school adopted the intuitive method as a solution to the problems of primary public education in Sergipe.

The basis of the intuitive method brings references from Pestalozzi (1746-1827), demonstrating a teaching methodological proposal accompanied by language exercises to arrive at clear ideas, characterized by offering data sensitive to observation, ranging from the particular to the general, from the concretely experienced to the rational, and thus arriving at abstract concepts. Hence Pestalozzi’s emphasis on direct contact with nature and observation of the landscape, through the promotion of school excursions and fieldwork. The conception of this method advocated a non-repressive education, dedicating its attention to teaching as a means of developing human capacities, such as the cultivation of feeling, mind, and character, obtained through the human-nature relationship. This well-known relationship had already been referenced by Rousseau (1712-1778), in his work Emílio, ou Da Educação.

In Sergipe, there is evidence that this method began to circulate in an essential way among teachers at the “Ruy Barbosa” Normal School¹¹ from the publication of the Decree of March 14, 1890, signed by the President of the State Felisbelo Freire (1858 - 1916), from which it can be understood that:

In 1890, structured primary education included lessons on things, the national language, arithmetic and the metric system, practical geometry, physical and natural sciences, Brazilian geography and history, linear drawing, singing, general hygiene principles, and physical exercises. In girls’ schools, domestic work and pattern cutting were still taught (Nunes, 2008, p. 189).

As director of the Model School Group (attached to the “Rui Barbosa” Normal School), Balthazar Góes wrote a report on the capital’s school groups to the director of Public Education, Canon Francisco Gonçalves Lima, on July 31, 1913, in which he reported:

In fact, the abundance of materials for intuitive teaching not only contributes to facilitating it; it also flatters children’s senses, helping them better endure time, with their attention constantly awakened by the surrounding objects. And it’s all about having this process, which involves intelligence and will, always accessible. Maps, solids, globes, materials for crafts - all of these are incentives for the child and tools for the teacher (Góes, 1905, p. 13).

The prospects for these changes were numerous, especially when considering the political, social, and economic motivations that allowed a movement of ideas toward the appropriation of a modern Pedagogy. According to Valdemarin (2006) and Carvalho (2003), the discourses of that time synthesized the diffusion of pedagogical concepts that were at the forefront of modern Pedagogy, which was positioned as an art of thinking, as a good imitation of models.

In the introductory part, Góes (1905, p. 13) wrote about Pedagogy and Notions of Psychology¹², explaining concepts such as: “Pedagogy is the art of educating children, and education is the study that seeks the proper means to develop and perfect man’s faculties and inclinations to make his life easier.” Psychology was positioned as a science of observation, using consciousness as its instrument, which is why schools should recognize three faculties in man, namely: “[...] sensitivity, will, and intelligence” (Góes, 1905, p. 14). As can be inferred from this work, the scientific character of education would arise from the consideration of Psychology as its foundation.

Góes’ (1905, p. 15) interest in this study aimed to understand the senses: “[...] sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, so that the teacher could train his students to control these spontaneities.” Similar to what Calkins’s (1886) work proposes, Balthazar Góes also prioritized the early teachings for the exercise of educating the senses. “It is exclusively through the senses that the child has access to the material world. Through these doors and windows of his mind he must provide himself with all the notions relating to the world” (Calkins, 1886, p. 13).

In the first part, he wrote about Physical Education, considered a segment of Pedagogy that focuses on the necessary conditions to form strong, healthy, and work-ready individuals. In this context, primary school was conceived as a modernizing agency for humankind and its work. Thus, Physical Education served this purpose of forming healthy, disciplined, and productive bodies. In this context, he cited the work Emílio, ou Da Educação, de Rousseau. Based on the studies of Doctor Manoel de Passos de Oliveira Teles¹³, Góes (1905, p. 26) clarified that:

As parents do not know how to educate, whether due to negligence, incompetence, or occupation of life as happens in the working class, the school, the public or private educator has the duty to make up for this lack, including in their programs the care with hygiene, from sanitation with the physical space, their clothes, food, rest, sleep and cleanliness and physical activities.

Children’s senses - sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell - were given prominence in the work. For him, touch was considered one of the easiest faculties to develop, “[...] because all of this resides throughout our body, he could present objects of different natures, shapes, and sizes, whether inside an urn or a small bag, as well as a blindfolded child with his hands touching people’s faces” (Góes, 1905, p. 29). He cited as examples working with grains, seeds, pits, rough, smooth, hard, soft, hot, and cold, and finally, the size of objects. To work with the “organs of work and locomotion” (the author’s terms), he suggested as an activity:

With your arms, try to suspend or carry objects, tie simple knots and double knots, make bows, braids, perfectly wrap small objects, make packages, cut and fold paper and cards, shoot at targets, play tackle, garden, and swim, walk barefoot, walk on stilts, climb and march (Góes, 1905, p. 31-32).

It is pertinent to emphasize the classification he brings to the activities of the “[...] working organs of locomotion” (term used by the author), differentiating the activities based on the child’s gender, making the differentiation explicit in the school curriculum. The examples that Balthazar Góes presented on how to educate the senses are similar to what is presented in the work of Calkins (1886), when he evoked exercises to work in the following teaching order: sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch.

The first part of his book is based on the work O cuidado das crianças, by Monsenhor Kneipp, in Emílio, ou Da Educação, by Rousseau. According to the author, to strengthen the body and mind, it is necessary to practice games and activities such as “boca de forno” or “bate-pandê”, “pilãozinho do carmo”, “anel de salto”, “melancia”, “veadinho ou bode”, “cabra-cega”, “grilo”, that allowed children to develop their intellectual abilities. The author introduced the first notions of how military marches, stilt walking, the trapeze, the swing, and the seesaw should be taught. Borrowing from the author Monsignor Sebastião Kneipp, he emphasizes that Pestalozzi understood that a child’s natural development should have a method.

According to his method, education is the natural, progressive, and harmonious development of all powers and faculties, planted by nature in every human being. For him, the child is an organism that develops according to defined, ordered laws, as if it were a plant rooted in the soil. He asserted that the organism has three basic aspects: intellectual, physical, and moral. Popularly, these aspects are called: head, hand, and heart (Soëtard, 2010, p. 38-39).

In the second part of this manual, when dealing with Moral Education, he appropriated the educational thought of Jaguaribe Filho in A arte de formar homens de bem. Balthazar Góes asserted that man possesses certain predicates that are characteristic of him, which he calls moral (rationality, articulate language, religiosity, and freedom). Through these predicates, the ideas of truth, beauty, and God could be developed. In his words, moral procedures

[...] Man’s nature and natural fragility, greater than that of all other living beings, make him essentially sociable. Because he needs to live in society, he must conform to its customs; that is, he must educate himself to live in its midst. Moral education occurs in three stages of life: from the cradle to middle childhood; from there, to youth; and from there until the end of life. But it can only be regularly administered in two places: in the family and in school. It is therefore divided into moral education in the family and moral education in school (Góes, 1905, p. 37).

Góes’s (1905) educational thinking took place at a time in history when moral education was seen as the foundation for establishing the social order, especially with the educational project of the first decades of the Republic. There was an effort to form a “republican citizen,” which implied a systematic moral and civic education. During this period, public schools and the social role of the teacher began to gain traction as a space for social and moral discipline. The teacher should be attentive to all child behavior, as presented in an excerpt from Calkins’s work (1886, p. 592):

Only in this way will you be able to call your students’ senses into action. “In calling them to activity,” says Calkins, “lies the great method of educating the moral senses. A feeling without action is nothing more than a feeling; it accomplishes nothing. If we want to cultivate kindness in children, we must be kind in our actions; we must set an example of respect for them, if we want them to be respectful; and if we intend to develop ideas of justice in them, instill in them honesty, and make them loyal and voracious men, there is no other way than to provide as many opportunities as possible to exemplify these virtues in our daily dealings.” (Góes, 1905, p. 51).

By stating that “a feeling without action is nothing more than a feeling,” Góes proposes a pedagogy embodied in daily practice, in which morality is taught through experience. In this sense, educating children’s moral senses is not achieved solely through the transmission of abstract feelings or values, but through the concrete action and exemplary behavior of the educator.

In the section on teaching Moral and Civic Instruction, Góes (1905) also sought to explain that civic instruction would be a way of experiencing feelings of patriotism and, even if it was taught in school under the guidance of a teacher, it would only be complete in practice in society, through the individual’s own impulse. He relied on the ideas of Pestalozzi and the manual A Instrução da República (1890), by João Ribeiro, to clarify that civic instruction should not be taught in primary schools, as:

Civic instruction, like the ancient rhetoric in preparatory courses, is a scarecrow that will be created in modern legislation to hinder the future. Indeed, as Pestalozzi says, human education should be done with humanity in mind, not the State. Furthermore, civic instruction will form as many citizens as orators have formed Rhetoric (Góes, 1905, p. 52).

The author refers to the manual Elementos da educação física e moral, by Hilário Ribeiro (fourth educational grade), and Coração (1891), by the Italian writer, novelist and travel author, Edmondo de Amicis (1846-1908), translated by João Ribeiro. These principles can be seen as a moral education guided by the subjects of hygiene, physiology, natural history, and economics, as knowledge necessary for humankind. In this sense, morality is founded on the existence of God and the social virtues that led to humankind’s love of work, honor, family, freedom, and country.

In the third section, which emphasizes intellectual education, Góes (1905) focused on explaining the material, physical, and pedagogical organization of the primary school. He addressed the physical structure of the school building: light access, bathrooms, recreation space, local conditions, and hygiene. When reflecting on school furniture, the educator stated that “[...] it must be adequate and of utmost importance for the operation of teaching” (Góes, 1905, p. 59-60), classifying the necessary furniture: benches, desks, hangers, tables, cabinets, chairs, blackboard, geometric solids, geographic and metric system map, planetary globe and mechanical counter, with a view to implementing the intuitive method. However, it is known that these were the desires of an educator who aimed to build a new “cultural repertoire”, in Tilly’s (2010) terms, in the practice of the primary school teacher, considering that these materials were imported and had inaccessible values.

Regarding primary school subjects, appropriating João Ribeiro’s program, naming the following set: Reading, Writing and Calligraphy; Civic, Moral and Religious Instruction, the latter being optional; Lessons on Things; Portuguese Grammar; Arithmetic; Line Drawing; Notions of General Geography and Cosmography; Chorography of Brazil, especially of Sergipe; in boys’ schools, Reading of the Agricultural Catechism; in girls’ schools there will be needlework and explanation of domestic economy (Góes, 1905).

In the chapter on methodology, the method in logic was “[...] the path that minds follow in indicating and demonstrating truth in any order of knowledge” (Góes, 1905, p. 77). It was based on Felisberto de Carvalho when he stated that methodology is the way of coordinating and transmitting the knowledge that should constitute the object of teaching. Therefore, the logical method was presented as analysis (division and classification) and synthesis (laws, demonstration and definition).

These definitions bring similarities with the thinking of Pestalozzi (1996), according to whom the method is, without a doubt, a necessary instrument, therefore it is important to observe children’s nature to extract the laws of their development. In Carta XXXI, Pestalozzi (1996) argues that instruction should follow a teaching technique, always from the easiest to the most complex. Góes (1905, p. 82) also emphasized this assumption in his Apostillas de Pedagogia:

The natural process of teaching moves from the simple to the complex; from what is known to what is unknown; from facts to things; from things to names; from ideas to words; from principles to rules. There are as many specific methods as there are subjects that make up the curriculum of schools in a given region. For schools in Sergipe, they are stated in the Primary Education Regulations.

When analyzing this excerpt, it can be inferred that the understanding of Balthazar Góes’ ideas was aligned with Lições de Coisas (1886), clearly expressing a pedagogy influenced by the intuitive method, which proposed a logical and natural sequence for teaching “from the simple to the complex,” “from the known to the unknown.” This vision represents an advance over traditional teaching, considering children’s cognitive development and the active role of observation and experience.

An observable fact in Balthazar Góes’ manual was the recommendation that Lições de Coisas should be a process present in all disciplines. It also defined that teaching processes would be the means employed by the teacher to facilitate understanding of what is being explained, which could be: analogical or intuitive.

Analogy is the process by which the mind discovers the relationship between things by observing and comparing their qualities, and intuition is the process by which the mind has clear and established knowledge of the object, independent of reasoning in the primary sense. Intuition is the sight of the object, but by extension, it also means intuitively studying things through the senses. Intuition can be direct or immediate (it is the knowledge of the object itself through the senses) and indirect or mediate (it is the knowledge that the senses give us of an object in the presence of its figures, drawings, or symbols) (Góes, 1905, p. 80).

By distinguishing the processes of analogy and intuition as forms of knowledge, Góes (1905) reinforced the importance of sensory and concrete experience in the teaching process, a central characteristic of the transition from traditional education to modern practices. The distinction between direct and indirect intuition, by highlighting the importance of observing the real object or its representation, legitimizes pedagogical practices focused on experimentation and the use of concrete materials, such as figures, drawings, and objects.

In the teaching of the national language, there were explanations about reading, based on the principles of the Portuguese lyrical poet, pedagogue and philologist João de Deus (1830-1896), author of Cartilha maternal ou arte de leitura. Finally, he presented his thoughts on Hilário Ribeiro (1847-1886), Brazilian educator and writer who, through Cartilha nacional (1885), dealt with the improvement of the simultaneous teaching of reading and writing, presenting the handwritten type alongside the printed one in each lesson. In the case of teaching Calligraphy, Goés (1905, p. 88) proposed that it should be practical, since its aim was to make the usual, unique writing, truly useful for most men, be executed with ease:

From the very first reading lessons, the young students will begin to write. Gathered in class, each with their own slate, they will imitate the characters from the day’s lesson, drawn by the teacher on the blackboard before which the class is seated. When the students can read more or less correctly, it’s time to pick up the pen. Whether the system adopted is that of letters sketched in pencil to cover, or calligraphic notebooks, or models to imitate, the students will begin writing with the medium, or bastard, size, because their fingers are rather short for the bastard and less dexterous for the fine.

In relation to the teaching of Arithmetic, Góes (1905, p. 90) suggested that, for the teacher to be successful with the teaching results, he should develop a good distribution of time, and it is advisable to start the teaching of Arithmetic with the objective process of counting: “It is with concrete numbers that this part of elementary instruction should begin”. These precepts were taken from the manual of Lições de Coisas by Calkins. For him, the student should start counting as soon as he begins his study of reading,

[...] sitting at the head of the table surrounded by his young disciples, the teacher has a world of things to count and compare. On one side is the counter; on the other, the stone. He arranges them on the table and counts like this: one; one, two; one, two, three, up to 10, or only up to 5 in the first lesson. Knowing how to count to one hundred, he could already begin counting millions. (Góes, 1905, p. 90-91).

After that, I would practice the four operations objectively and then reproduce them abstractly by numbers, in order to gradually acquire the notions of unit, quantity, and numbers. Thus,

Teaching ordinary fractions doesn’t seem more difficult through things. We have several pieces of paper of the same size and shape; we take one and divide it into two halves, another into thirds, another into fourths [...]. As for the metric system, teaching it is, by nature, objective; since it is only useful to do so with a collection of commonly used weights and measures, scales, etc. Here, the study of decimal fractions will have greater scope (Góes, 1905, p. 92).

Using instruments such as counters, cubes, spheres, pebbles, seeds, and tablets, students practiced the “admirable mechanism of the science of calculation,” the author suggested, because by gradually acquiring the notions of units, quantity, and number, students would be equipped for abstraction. Even when the time for theorizing arrives, the teaching of arithmetic should remain practical, concrete, and objective, “proceeding from cases to rules, demonstrations, and definitions” (Goés, 1905, p. 92).

Always defending the practical way of teaching, Góes (1905, p. 92), based on Graça Affreixo and Henrique Freire, established that the elementary principles of Geometry should start from the study of the shapes of plane figures, since

[...] The circle, the square, the triangle, the rectangle, are so common in nature and in the arts that everywhere, at school, on the street, at home, and for all intents and purposes, young people have them before their eyes. The same applies to volume, or capacity. The cube, the cylinder, the parallelopiped, prisms, and pyramids are easy to teach intuitively, and their measurement and evaluation in cubic units are quite straightforward. The main thing to keep in mind is that the aim is not to teach how to demonstrate theorems that depend on certain calculations; but rather to teach these calculations in a practical, rational, and convenient way due to their effectiveness.

Thus, the methodology, the particular way of teaching each subject to students of the Normal Course, aspiring to primary school teaching, should be “more practical than theoretical and based on experimentation” (Sergipe, art. 117, 1901). The main objective was to aim for practical, rational, and convenient teaching due to its effectiveness.

In the study of linear drawing, the essential element of all teaching processes would be practice. First, students should learn the shapes of figures - circles, squares, triangles, and rectangles - by observing them everywhere, whether at school, on the street, or at home. Then, they would move on to teaching volume or capacity, analyzing cubes, cylinders, parallelepipeds, prisms, and pyramids. This lesson would be designed not to teach students how to demonstrate the theorems on which certain calculations depend, but rather to demonstrate these calculations in a practical, rational, and efficient manner.

He concluded this content with references from Graça Affreixo and Henrique Freire, professors at the Normal School of Évora, about the manual Elementos de Pedagogia. Henrique Augusto da Cunha Soares Freire was born in Almada, Portugal, in 1842, and published with José Maria da Graça Affreixo, born in Ovar, on August 24, 1842, the book Elementos de Pedagogia, manual widely used in Brazilian Normal Schools, especially by the Normal School of the Court, in the city of Rio de Janeiro and in Niterói and Campos.

Final considerations

Like their theatrical counterparts, collective action repertoires designate not individual performances but rather means of interaction between pairs of large ensembles of actors. A company, not an individual, maintains a repertoire (Tilly, 1995, p. 27).

Operating with the cultural repertoire category, as a set of forms of action, was fundamental to analyzing the circulation of foreign references present in Apostillas de Pedagogia (1905), by Balthazar Góes. These references consist of a common repertoire shared by educators, politicians, and intellectuals, from a given time and place, who circulated, managed, and transformed repertoires. At the end of this article, we saw that Tilly’s (1995) words were correct when he offered the understanding that the repertoire is sedimented social knowledge, “shared understandings, memories, and agreements,” “social relations, meanings, and actions amalgamated into known and recurring patterns,” emerging “as a cluster of instruments for the realization of interests” (Tilly, 1995, p. 30 e 27).

It can be said that Góes (1095) read, cited and synthesized foreign references put into circulation in the form of books, manuals, handouts, periodicals and school materials, motivated by the demand for modernization of education. To achieve such legitimacy, Apostillas de Pedagogia went through the evaluation reading of an intellectual community authorized for its use and dissemination, especially at the “Ruy Barbosa” Normal School, as a privileged place for the use, production and reception of a cultural repertoire produced from foreign references present in Apostillas de Pedagogia (1905).

In this article, it also became possible to access some interpretative matrices on the circulation of foreign references, especially linked to the work Lições de Coisas, by Norman Calkins (1886), considered the best teaching process because it considered children’s senses central to the teaching process. Other notable references include: Emílio, ou Da Educação, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Carta XXXI, by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi; O cuidado das creanças, by Monsenhor Sebastião Kneipp; Arte de formar homens de bem, by Dr. J. N. Jaguaribe Filho; A instrucção publica, by João Ribeiro; Grammatica elementar, by Hilário Ribeiro; Elementos de pedagogia, by Graça Affreixoa and Henrique Freire, among others, present in the dissemination of the intuitive method in Brazil and Sergipe.

Thus, Professor Balthazar Góes mobilized his “cultural repertoire” to disseminate the intuitive method in Sergipe, with the publication of the work Apostillas de Pedagogia built from a cultural repertoire that leveraged his political, cultural, educational, and personal interests. Therefore, there is a need for studies of other works written by the author/teacher, considering the circulation of foreign educational references.

References

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• Support or funding:
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• Availability of research data:
  Not applicable.
• How to cite this article:
  SILVA, Rony Rei do Nascimento; MESQUITA, Ilka Migliori de; LOBO, Mariângela Dias Santos. “Adorned with modern concepts”: circulation of foreign references in the pedagogy notes of Balthazar Góes (1905), Educar em Revista, Curitiba, v. 42, e98964, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1590/1984-0411.98964-T
• 1
  This project was funded by CNPq and Fapemig. As the title suggests, this research sought to advance the development of a theory on the place of Brazilian intellectuals in the construction of the public sphere and to develop understandings of the notions of modernity, modernity, and modernization present in these projects. By monitoring these notions over a long period of time, we also endeavored to produce knowledge on the articulations and developments of the relationship between intellectuals and education.
• 2
  Balthazar de Araújo Góes was born in Itaporanga, Sergipe, in 1853 and died in 1914. He studied Humanities at the Atheneu Sergipense, taught Portuguese at the Escola Normal (Northeastern State School) and taught General Geography and Astronomy at the Atheneu Sergipense. He built his teaching career in the municipality of Laranjeiras (1882), where he ran a boarding and day school. His teaching experience allowed him to rise to positions in the capital of Sergipe, holding teaching positions at the Escola Normal “Ruy Barbosa” (Ruy Barbosa Normal School) (1898), Directorate of Public Education (1905), and the Grupo Modelo and Grupo Central (Model and Central Groups) (1911), attached to the Escola Normal (Northeastern State School), where he completed his teaching career. Balthazar Góes is the patron of chair number 40 at the Academia Sergipana de Letras (Sergipe Academy of Letters).
• 3
  Norman Allison Calkins’ most widely circulated work in Brazil was Primary Object Lessons, translated by Rui Barbosa, published in 1886 under the title Lições de coisas (Barbosa, 1950) and provided methodological guidelines for intuitive teaching in primary school. How to teach: a graded course of instruction and manual of methods for the use of teachers, by H. Kiddle, T. F. Harrison and N. A. Calkins Calkins had the first edition in 1872 and reprints until at least 1877 and was adapted to the curriculum of New York schools. Based on the doctrines of Pestalozzi, lições de coisas applied to all primary school subjects and, in the words of Rui Barbosa himself, in his preamble, intended to teach “through appearance, through reality, through intuition, through the reflective exercise of the senses, through the complex cultivation of the faculties of observation”.
• 4
  Atheneu Sergipense, a public institution established on October 24, 1870, with two courses — one in Humanities and the other in Normal Studies — was intended to provide young people with the secondary education necessary for access to higher education, as well as for the performance of various functions in society, in addition to professionally qualifying them for primary school teaching. In this regard, see: Alves (2005).
• 5
  In 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau released Emílio ou Da Educação. This treatise, extremely innovative for its time, gained widespread acceptance and transformed pedagogy, serving as the basis for the theories of several renowned educators of the 19th and 20th centuries. The work is a pedagogical novel that narrates the educational journey of Emilio, an orphan of noble and wealthy origin, from his birth to his marriage.
• 6
  Sebastian Kneipp (1821 - 1897) was a Catholic priest and defender of naturism who dedicated himself to the study and promotion of hydrotherapy.
• 7
  Domingos José Nogueira Jaguaribe (1820 - 1890) was a Brazilian magistrate, journalist and politician.
• 8
  These are three intellectuals, politicians and educators from Sergipe, who worked in public and private schools in Sergipe during the late 19th century and early 19th century.
• 9
  Biblioteca Pública Estadual Epiphanio Dória (BPED) is a cultural entity of the community, administered and managed by the State Secretariat of Education, Sports and Culture (Seduc/SE), created by Law No. 233, of June 16, 1848. By means of the Decree No. 2020, of December 30, 1970, became known as Biblioteca Pública Epiphanio Dória (located at Street Vila Cristina, Neighborhood Treze de Julho, Aracaju, Sergipe, ZIP Code 49.020-150).
• 10
  The simultaneous method superseded the individual teaching method, in which a teacher works with a student individually for a few minutes. However, it resulted in classroom chaos, which hindered the student’s ability to learn. La Salle adopted the simultaneous method of teaching when most educators of his time still used the individual method. See Siqueira’s work (2006).
• 11
  In the late 19th century, the Escola Normal served the functions of providing professional training, increasing literacy, and developing good mothers and housewives, functions that persist, without major changes, to this day. At the Escola Normal Rui Barbosa, established in 1870, the subjects studied by the teachers until the 1920s mostly related to general education, not teacher training per se. Regarding the subjects studied, it can be seen that from 1920 to 1950, three core curricula were taught. The course length varied between three and five years. See Freitas’s work (1995).
• 12
  The establishment of Psychology as an academic discipline developed in the United States through the training of researchers at German universities was examined in detail by Warde (2018). The beginnings of study exchanges between the two countries are also analyzed and contribute to the understanding of the conception of Psychology that emerges in the works cited here.
• 13
  Born in 1859, in Nossa Senhora do Socorro/SE, he was a speaker, poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer, novelist, translator, lawyer, professor and journalist who stood out in Sergipe during the 19th century.

• Responsible publisher - Editor-in-chief:
  Angela Scalabrin Coutinho

Data availability

Not applicable.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  23 Feb 2026
• Date of issue
  2026

History

• Received
  19 Mar 2025
• Accepted
  27 May 2025