The reports of the Regional Offices of Education of the State of São Paulo as a source of research for history of education – decades of 1930 and 1940

Abstract

From 1933 to 1944, the 21 Regional Offices of Education of the State of São Paulo worked out reports of inventory of the schools of São Paulo inspected in that period of time. At least 68 of those reports have been preserved in the Public Archive of the State of São Paulo. The current paper presents part of that patrimony as an important source of research for the history of education. By dividing that documentation between visual and written sources, the text will focus on the visual sources, and will discuss the methodological difficulties of using this kind of source. Following, will be illustrated part of the visual information that those documents offer to the researchers. The article concludes with a brief sampling of textual information that the reports provide to the historians.