Snapshots of the teaching profession in the city of Rio de Janeiro within the pages of the newsletter O Ensino Primário (1884-1885)

Abstract

This article aims to discuss relevant issues of the teaching profession in the city of Rio de Janeiro in the 1880s, when Rio was then a city that belonged to the Portuguese empire. Its main source of reference is a monthly newsletter published at that time, more specifically in the years of 1884 and 1885, about teaching and whose articles were written by primary teachers of the Imperial court: O Ensino Primário. The newsletter editors, who were assistant teachers with the state schooling system, were visibly threatened by the requirement of having to attend the recently established (1880) School of Teachers. They focused their efforts in “safeguarding the public teaching profession” by publishing articles that addresses the interests of their trade and which portraited their poor situation and the controlling hand of the state upon them.