Populate the hinterland rural education as a border line between statistics ans education in Teixeira Freitas’s trajectory

Abstract

This article presents the dual rise of Mário Augusto Teixeira de Freitas (1890-1956) in charge of national statistics and the debate on education, by the time of Vargas Regime (1930-1945). Investigating Freitas’s trajectory, this work interprets his investment in educational field as a strategy to convert the social capital he accumulated in the Ministry of Education (bureaucratic field) and the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (science field). By doing so, we sought to express the consistency and reception of the distinguished statistical’s ideas for rural education, his gateway in educational debates. This case study may be helpful for further analysis on the relations between the statistical and education institutional activities over the period in focus.