Arranged sales: forms of supplying public elementary schools (in the late 19th and early 20th centuries)

ABSTRACT This article presents data and analyses that originate in studies of the material culture of schools. It focuses on the identification and examination of forms of providing educational materials that were organized in conjunction with the project for establishing public primary [elementary] schools. We work with the premise that the constitution of primary schools can be investigated and understood by different means: and their material composition is one of them. In the line of historiographic studies of education, we defend the perspective that the project for the implementation of mass education in Brazil required a deep articulation with commercial sectors that participated in the task of producing the material apparatus that would sustain the mounting of childhood education (in the late 19th and early 20th centuries). We also affirm that, concomitantly to the large commercial demand that was established, there were more simplified forms of supplying school materials involving direct relations with individuals from the community, such as those in which a teacher sent a request for certain school objects to a local artisan and would later negotiate payment with the state. The empiric base for the study used sources such as laws concerning schools, reports, government correspondence and newspapers in circulation at the time. As an analytical tool we adopt a theoretical-methodological perspective that considers the idea of material culture, representation and circulation in the relation between public elementary education and the provision of materials for its execution.