Colégios (Brazil)

Colégios (Brazil), literally "schools," a term that refers to a range of secondary educational institutions in Brazil, from the earliest times to the present. During the first two centuries of colonization, the Jesuits, who held almost a monopoly over education, established eleven colégios, stretching from Pará to São Paulo. The teaching comprised classes on the humanities (but with the native Indian language in place of Greek), philosophy, mathematics, and, in Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, theology. In the eighteenth century, the Oratorians also held classes in Bahia and Pernambuco, but the episcopal seminaries in Rio de Janeiro (1739) and Minas Gerais (1750) were the only new institutions that could properly be called colégios. All the Jesuits' activities, however, collapsed in 1759, when the Marquês de Pombal expelled the order from the realm and began a far-reaching educational reform. The buildings of the colégios were neglected, and they were replaced by a small number of aulas régias (royal classes) throughout the territory. Ecclesiastics retained a strong influence on education, however, and in 1800 a new episcopal seminary was founded at Olinda. Conceived after the reform of Coimbra University by Pombal, it was intended to train a skilled colonial elite to share in the administration of the overseas dominions. Aulas avulsas (loose classes, each conducted by a different teacher at a different address) and private tuition continued to flourish. But the Olinda Seminary represented a return to a systematic educational policy and became an important model for the colégios of the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1821 Lazarist priests created the Colégio do Caraça in Minas Gerais. A few years later Pernambuco became the first province to have its public colégio, the Liceu Pernambucano (1826).

With the Additional Act (1834), the provinces were granted authority over local educational matters, but it was an enterprise from the central government that looms largest in this period. The imperial Colégio Pedro II (1837) was designed to be the exemplar for Brazilian secondary education and to provide the nation with bureaucrats. Moreover, it proclaimed to the local elites the primacy of Rio de Janeiro as the intellectual capital of an empire beset by regional strife. The intent of secondary education, however, remained above all to prepare students for matriculation in the law, medical, and engineering schools that had been created since 1827. In this objective, private institutions, which enjoyed their golden age between 1860 and 1890, were much more successful than the public, provincial colégios and normal schools. Among the former, some established prominent reputations, such as the Colégio do Dr. Kopke, Colégio Briggs, Colégio Abilio, and the Externato (half-day school) Aquino, all in the Rio de Janeiro area. Besides the Colégio do Caraça, which was then in full bloom, the Benedictines founded a colégio in Rio de Janeiro (1858), and the Jesuits regained a role in the educational field, although they were not as prominent as before. Even a few Methodist and Presbyterian colégios were created.

Colégios for women were rare, and only in the last quarter of the century did coeducational institutions emerge. With the republic (1889), a large-scale educational reform was undertaken, but it was unable to change the narrow scope of secondary education in Brazil.

See alsoEducation: Overview; Jesuits.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fernando De Azevedo, A cultura brasileira, 4th ed. (1964).

Laerte Ramos De Carvalho, "A educação e seus métodos," and Maria José Garcia Werebe, "A educação," in História geral da civilização brasileira, edited by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda and Pedro Moacyr Campos, vol. 2, 3d ed. (1973), pp. 78-87, and vol. 6, 2d ed. (1974), pp. 366-383.

Manoel Da Silveira Cardozo, "The Modernization of Portugal and the Independence of Brazil," in From Colony to Nation (1975), by A. J. R. Russell-Wood, pp. 185-210.

José Ricardo Pires De Almeida, História da instrução pública no Brasil, 1500–1889, translated by Antonio Chizzotti (1989).

Additional Bibliography

Lopes, Eliane Marta Santos Teixeira, Luciano Mendes de Faria Filho and Cynthia Greive Veiga. 500 anos de educação no Brasil. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2000.

Niskier, Arnaldo. Educação brasileira: 500 anos de história. São Paulo: FUNARTE: Ministerio de Culutra, 2001.

                                LÚcia M. Bastos P. Neves

                           Guilherme Pereira das Neves