Education, Education of the People and the Building of the Brazilian Nation

Contrary to the information disclosed in the manuals of classical history and history of education, the construction of Brazil and Brazilian education was the object of struggles and clashes resulting from different political projects and tensions between dreams, possible ways and plural forms of the nation and Brazilian education.In this article, supported in more recent studies in the field of history of education, we explored a number of evidences pointing out the complexity of the process of nation building and the organization of educational forms in Brazil during the nineteenth century. When considering the diversity of forces and agents located in different social spaces, their initiatives and the principles that have guided the educational projects elaborated, we observed the various mediations established at international, national and local levels, a condition for understanding the models adopted and the inequality that the process of schooling has helped to consolidate throughout the history of Brazilian education.