Charts of attendance to schools of first letters: sources for a history of schooling and teacher work in São Paulo in the first half of the 19th century

Abstract

The present article aims at an understanding of the statistical reasoning that dominates the governmental actions, and to perceive the development of the scribal practice at schools at the first half of the 19th century in São Paulo. It comprises two parts. In the first one, the text deals with the will to power of which the statistics give testimony in the 1800’s. It is also concerned with scrutinizing the technologies of the I constituted by the school maps conceived as government devices. In a second moment, the article approaches the theme via the analysis of documents produced by the State of São Paulo on the issue of official education. The proposal here is to outline the modes in which the progressive institutionalization of elementary school in São Paulo concurred to create an understanding of the schooling of knowledge and of the subject pupil, by the public teachers, in the State.