Introduction

The implantation of the Lyceu Maranhense, in 1838, is the object of several speeches and actions of the presidents of the province and inspectors of public education, aiming to match the local education to that practiced in the other provinces of the Empire. Initiatives that took place due to external pressures from the education expansion movement in imperial Brazil, mainly in the 1820s and 1830s, when legal provisions emerged, such as the law of October 15, 1827 and the Additional Act to the 1834 constitution (^{Cabral, 1982}). Them, the school material culture was a necessary condition in the implementation process, since it would enable the institutionalization of teaching, but also as a representation that evoked a Lyceu in the capital of the province¹.

The Lyceu Maranhense, as the main secondary school in São Luís, was intended for boys over 11 years of age (^{Castellanos, 2017}), with between 150 and 200 enrolling annually, which were divided between those who attended separate subjects and those who took the full course. One place that operated as a day school and demanded a fee of 15,000 réis per chair from its students, to be paid before the start of classes (^{Castellanos, 2017}); which obeyed a specific schedule: “[…] one lesson daily [for two and a half hours] in Latin, French and Philosophical Grammar of the Language [;] in English and Greek […] two hours and, the of all other subjects, for […] an hour and a half” (^{Castro, 2009}, p. 304). Level of instruction dedicated exclusively to the free segment of society, the only one with the prerogative of instruction, in a province with more than “[…] 30,000 souls, [where] half [lived] in slave condition [and] the other half free and free” (People’s Almanack [Almanack do Povo], 1868, p. 169).

According to a report by the president of the province, Moura de Magalhães, 155 students enrolled in various subjects in 1843, most of them for Latin Language (19 students), Linear Drawing (28 students) and Philosophic Grammar (57 students) (^{Maranhão, 1844}). The preference for the latter can be explained because such a chair would give access to others in the course, as prescribed by the school’s 1838 statutes: no student would be enrolled “[…] in classes in Latin, French, English, Rational and Moral Philosophy, and first year of Mathematics, without an exam in Philosophical Grammar of the Language” (^{Castro, 2009}, p. 303). Average number of enrollments that remained until 1857: “148 students, 2 being excluded by rioters, for missing the year 80, and 37 will take exams” (^{Maranhão, 1857b}, p. 11), increasing to 291 in 1864, of which 108 succeeded take the exams (^{Maranhão, 1864}).

In this context, we seek to understand the dynamics of teaching practiced at Lyceu Maranhense via school material culture, cited, discussed, and negotiated in official records, in view of the model imposed by Colégio Dom Pedro II. We believe that the Lyceu Maranhense intended, with its training action, to constitute a literate elite youth that could exercise different occupations within society and also enter higher education institutions at court and abroad. This purpose was related to the school form of socialization instituted in this establishment, as “[...] unit of a particular historical configuration, which emerged in certain social formations, at a certain time [together with] other transformations” (^{Vicente; Lahire; Thin, 2001}, p. 10) that were imposed through reforms of different types and magnitudes.

Here we observe the theoretical-methodological assumptions of Cultural History and the three inseparable axes that define it: the history of the object in its materiality, when trying to capture it in its form, frequency, device and structure; the history of practices in their differences, trying to understand what the subjects in question did with the same object that was imposed on them – in this case, the school material culture in use; and, finally, to understand in a more general way, via speeches/actions, the established configurations or social formations, the changes in the psychic structures of the involved individuals and the conceptual frameworks that guided the temporality under analysis, evaluated in its historical variations. Dynamics that allow us to understand this establishment as a reality that was built and thought out and is given to us to read through the symbolic cues implicit in the records that were part of this reality (^{Chartier, 1989}; ^{Nunes; Carvalho, 1993}).

The study is structured in three parts. In the first talks about the discourses on School Material Culture at the Lyceu, and other, the actions and determinations about teaching produced by the province’s power instances are addressed, with an attempt to understand how the school material culture was conceived in the institution. In the second part, School Objects of Lyceu Maranhense: impositions and uses [Os Objetos Escolares do Lyceu Maranhense: Imposições e Usos], an attempt is made to unravel which imposition strategies this school was thought of and adapted by the subjects who composed it. Finally, in the last one, to perceive the signs that reveal the functioning and organization of A Gramática Escolar Instaurada por meio dos Objetos Escolares.

In these requests, we believe that this study can contribute to society in Maranhão, since not only is it the History of Maranhão, mediated by one of its main educational institutions, but it also adds to the studies already carried out on local secondary education and nationally in the 19^th century, certainly with the History of Education in Brazil. This happens when we place the material culture of the school as a guiding axis with a new look, which analyzes school objects as vectors of social relations, based on a specific school form, in which each subject plays a role that is more or less determined by devices control institutions that balance a game of tension between different forces: the imposition strategies arising from the administration that manages the school as an institution that guides, organizes, determines and the tactics of appropriation planned and invented by the social actors that are part of it.

The Discourses about School Material Culture of Lyceu

The Lyceu is a school that enjoys significant representation in education in nineteenth century Maranhão from the moment of its institutionalization, for its educational action and also for the influence exercised in the province in the various spheres of power with which it had a relationship. The responsibility for commanding the primary and secondary levels of public education had been placed in charge of the provinces through the Additional Act of 1834; since then, local authorities began to think of the school as an ideal instrument that should be of use to the province, exercising specific functions with certain models as references that would correspond “[...] to defined causes [and] to very particular social states” (^{Vicente; Lahire; Thin, 2001} p. 9).

The analysis of the documents produced, by the instances that command instruction, aims to understand how the school material culture appears in the sources, when Lyceu Maranhense was implemented in the province, in order to show a history of it in its materiality and capture it as a form, structure, device and frequency (^{Chartier, 1989}; ^{Nunes; Carvalho, 1996}). As a material support that enables the form, we list within the Reports of the President of the Province, specifically, the section entitled Public Instruction, in which the discussions regarding secondary education in the province of Maranhão appear; regarding the Offices of the Inspectorate of Public Instruction, they themselves constitute our device, as they portray the administrative daily life of Lyceu Maranhense.

School material culture appeared in four main forms, namely: lists of materials, reports on structural reforms at Lyceu Maranhense, requests for objects for specific disciplines and opinions on schoolbooks. Reports of reforms were generally taken from the offices of the inspectorate of public education created in 1843, with the purpose of regulating and inspecting, constituting the source of many actions, decisions, and opinions regarding all educational institutions under its tutelage (^{Coelho, 2017}). Regarding school material culture, the discussions were directed to the physical organization of spaces, exposing the adaptation processes carried out to house the school, the requests for materials and furniture made by Inspectors of Public Instruction to the Presidents of Provinces to equip the classes and information about other details, such as paintings in the building, changes in the facade, among others.

[…] the railing that lines the entrance staircase needs to be painted and the tile in the corridor leading from the main door of the establishment [to] the secretariat needs to be renovated in some parts. On the entrance door and on the facade of the building it is also necessary to place a sign, with the name of the establishment in gold letters. The benches, tables and few chairs that remain, now in the classrooms, now in the same secretariat, are in total deterioration and incapable of service, therefore, new furniture must be supplied to furnish the establishment

(^{Maranhão, 1856}).

Reports on requests for reforms are more frequent at the beginning of the establishment, justified by the need to put secondary education in full operation as soon as possible. These texts dealt with the best way to house the disciplines and their repairs, such as the “[...] mason work[s], renovating the plaster and whitewashing the entire exterior” (^{Maranhão, 1856}), without disregarding the facade of the building and the entrance bars, details that show the interest in presenting the Lyceu Maranhense as a symbol of quality, civility, and progress before society. These reports allow us to “[…] see the inside of the school, its organization, its rituals, its working gears; to perceive the relationships between its agents, its surroundings, its place” (^{Castro, 2013}, p. 7) and indicate a movement of accommodation of the Lyceu, in constant adaptation and negotiation with other institutions that were close to it, such as the Lyceu itself. Inspetoria da Instrução Pública and Escola Normal, which, at different times, were also housed in the Convento do Carmo², demonstrating that the implementation process did not happen in a linear and unhindered way.

This place would be responsible for establishing a social relationship of the pedagogical type, implemented in classrooms, laboratories, workshops, and other school spaces used by students, teachers, and employees (^{Oliveira, 2019}), in addition to constituting a place where administrators and public instruction managers would exercise power and control as the target of actions that managed the institutionalization of teaching. The school material culture also appears in the documentation in the form of opinions about books, having as main characteristics the conciseness and objectivity of the opinions, revealing a necessary legitimized and standardized process via legal devices, put into practice by the Congregation of the Lyceu Maranhense for the approval and use of a given work, whether in primary or secondary education. We identified information such as authorship, classes for which they were intended and technical conceptions regarding the contents of the works, their uses by other educational institutions in the temporality in focus, the adequacy or not of the language to the students’ understanding, as well as their degree of adjustment to the moral principles of the school/society, in addition to practical application in everyday school life; aspects taken into account and used in the administrators’ speeches as parameters for the evaluation of books and compendiums, such as the following letter from inspector José da Silva Maya.

By the office that V. Ex. addressed me on the 25th of last month in respect of mine on the 18th, communicating Your Ex. that it should be adopted in the geography class of this Lyceu Cartas morales e não Atlas for the demonstration of the lessons of the same class recommending me time, for the use of Dafour’s Atlas (globe) and Balbou’s other modern ones.

It is up to me to consider Your Ex. that the geographical atlas of Andrivean Goujan requested by me in the letter is the one that was adopted, as a compendium for its use, by the Lyceu congregation

(^{Maranhão, September 11, 1857a}, emphasis added).

This information, even if it does not provide further details about the structure and content of the works, gives us indications, for example, of the uses thought by the teachers, Director, and Inspector of Instruction, aligning them to one or more disciplines in the institution. The book can also be considered as an artifact of school material culture, being endowed with its own statute, when we try to understand, in its approval, adoption and veto procedures and in the educational reforms to which it was exposed, the pedagogical conceptions, the subjects to be which they were intended and the possible relationships they had with the teaching projects, as well as with the formation of specific groups of subjects to which they were directed (^{Castellanos, 2020}).

Its structure generally displayed an initial greeting to the president or inspector, the presentation of the topic to be addressed, the evaluation of the title itself and, later, the recommendation of its adoption or not for the institution. Apparently, the nature of this school object obeyed different production processes, in addition to the fact that the adoption procedures only occurred to the extent that Lyceu Maranhense deemed it necessary, either because of the creation of some discipline, or because of the obsolescence of a certain work that was wanted to replace. This school held control over the works that would be adopted for provincial public instruction, both for secondary education itself and for primary institutions. This prerogative gave this institution power, which is not common to any other. Such power was manifested through the congregation of teachers as an important social formation that influences various aspects of their teaching and constitutes an institutional device with a decisive role.

The third form identified is the requests for materials for the Lyceu Maranhense disciplines that presented a concise structure of one or two paragraphs, containing data on the places where the objects were sold, the subjects they would serve, as well as information on the participation of the subjects. in the processes of acquisition of artifacts. School materials and the dynamics that governed their requests constantly had to align with various reforms in secondary education that intended to modify the disciplinary character of the institution; projects that “[…] suggested the introduction of courses in natural and exact sciences [and] intended to […] give greater flexibility to Lyceu teaching, enabling commercial and industrial careers” (^{Cabral, 1982}, p. 42).

These subjects, when created, required adaptations not only in the Lyceu curriculum, but also in the school objects necessary for the viability of their realization, since each new initiative was accompanied by material reforms. This constant movement can justify the frequency of requests, which, contrary to structural reforms, are not concentrated only in the initial years of its operation, extending throughout the imperial period. There are requests for several disciplines that were created over time, such as Linear Drawing, Commerce, Geography and History, among others, which had as a common characteristic the research of these artifacts carried out by the institution’s professors, who acted in a crucial way for their acquisition. As can be seen, in the request of José da Silva Maya, inspector of public education, to the provincial president Paes Barreto:

Since there is an absolute lack of transfers of linear drawing for the works of the drawing class at this Lyceu, and three large-format booklets with transfers for the study of this class are exposed for sale at the home of Monteiro and Irmão three brother booklets, as stated by respective lens, all for eight thousand reis, I come to beseech Your Excellency. deign to authorize the purchase of the same by the competent department, which, as I am informed, there is still an amount available for this expense

(^{Maranhão, 1857b}).

Through norms that regulate the action of Lyceu Maranhense³, research or requisition of school objects for purchase is not included among the teachers’ obligations. This attribution belonged only to the director of the institution, who was responsible for “[...] requisitioning objects that the Congregation deemed necessary for use at the Lyceum” (^{Castro, 2009}, p. 309). However, we identified that generally the professors of the discipline in question did the research of materials. This detail revealed by the sources not only points to the constant appropriation of teaching regulatory norms by the subjects who used them, adapting and modifying them according to the needs that arose, but also seems to be one of the causes for the frequency of these requests for documentation, in addition to school objects, which required more constant actions, due to the nature of their use, and a greater variety of utensils compared to the demands on the school building.

The lists of materials requested for the Lyceu Maranhense equipment constitute the fourth identified way of referring to the school material culture in the sources. They are texts that appear less frequently and are structured in a simple way, indicating only the quantity of materials and the respective objects to be acquired, usually appearing in tables that do not contain information regarding the points of sale or the stipulated price of the artifacts.

These lists include “[…] inspector’s table of fine polished wood with two lockable drawers and a silver (metal) desk” (^{Maranhão, 1856}, s/p.), fine chairs “[…] with armrests; and of the others, two dozen for the secretariat and classroom at the Lyceu […]” (^{Maranhão, 1856}, s/p.), as well as a platform “[…] for the lecturers’ tables, a span high, length and width proportional [to] the size of the tables” (^{Maranhão, 1856}, s/p.). In addition to furniture, other artifacts were requested to ensure operability in the school dynamics, such as: “[…] compaços = 3 rulers = and 1 pound of sponge for service in the geometry class” (^{Maranhão, 1856}, s/p.); transfers “[…] colored and in smoke, of flowers, landscape and figures” (^{Maranhão, 1856}, s/p.). We believe that, due to the structure itself, the modes of presentation here are more particular and rarer in discourses on instruction. However, it is possible to perceive that the demand for school materials at Lyceu Maranhense was different compared to other public schools.

If, in the list of materials sent to the first letters classes in the parish of N. S. da Vitória, for example, he was content to ask for the basics, including varnished angico rulers, chanterelles and mug pots to draw water, as well as inkwells, aviators and signs for transfers (^{Maranhão, 1855}), the nature of the utensils requested for the Lyceum was different. In these orders, not only are noble materials recorded in their manufacture (cases of silver desks), but also technical specifications (precise measurements and requirement of proportionality between platforms and tables), transpiring the ideal of modernity to be achieved, since that space it needed to serve as a model for the public and private schools that would emerge in the province⁴.

The way in which the local authorities thought and acted with respect to the material artifacts of the Lyceu Maranhense is addressed in the speeches and in itself is capable of providing evidence of the plans thought out for this institution, of the paths taken by the instruction and of itself, “[…] as a device for appropriating and consuming the school’s material culture; understanding it, above all, at the core of the internal culture of each space” (^{Castellanos, 2020}, p. 5). Among the privileges that distinguished this educational institution from other schools in the province of Maranhão, we can list the prerogative that the congregation of Lyceu teachers had in relation to the choice of works adopted in their disciplines. These subjects, in many cases, were also authors of the books under evaluation. In that regard,

The works produced by teachers from the province, predominantly from the Lyceu, such as Sotero dos Reis, João Antonio Coqueiro, Estevão Rafael de Carvalho, Antonio Marques Rodrigues and Antonio Rêgo [...] were the most printed in the various typographies existing in Maranhão, with emphasis on the Belarmino de Mattos and Frias, competing with Portuguese didactic production and even with national production

(^{Castellanos, 2017}, p. 266).

What does it say about the representation of the school in society, the institution occupied a privileged position as a trainer of intellectuals who would play important roles at the head of political positions, public offices and as writers and journalists. However, from the material point of view, they did not escape the difficulties that were constantly imposed by the local reality and even by decisions taken right at the beginning of the school’s institutionalization. For example, in choosing the building to house the building, which, over time, began to require recurring renovations and adjustments. The school material culture, in turn, is the result of decisions, conceptions and impositions made to the subjects that compose the different spheres of the institution’s school culture (^{Escolano Benito, 2017}) and (^{Castro, 2013}); many times, due to external pressures, imported concepts and models that wanted to become hegemonic.

The School Objects of Lyceu Maranhense: impositions and uses

The institution model allowed for secondary education establishments, following Colégio D. Pedro II and the French Lyceus as archetypes, constitutes one of the several impositions that were placed when proposals for the creation and institutionalization of Lyceu Maranhense, beyond the ideals of modernity linked to the school and the disciplinary structure that should be operationalized. These, among other issues, required actions and decision-making from local administrators to make the implementation of a Lyceum feasible in the capital of Maranhão, directly implying the material aspect of the school, whether in the choice of the building for its operation, or in the consumption of books, or in the elaboration of institutional devices that would regulate the use of spaces, subsidies, and school objects. In this logic, it is necessary, therefore, that we ask ourselves what impositions on the objects of the school material culture at Lyceu Maranhense could be perceived and how they were adapted by the subjects in their daily use?

It seems that we are following the implementation process of a model imposed on the capital of the province of Maranhão, with Colégio Dom Pedro II as its core. In the 1820s and 1830s, there were decisive reforms in Brazilian education, which began a movement to create schools across the country, driven by the Law of October 15, 1827 and Law No. 16 of August 12, 1834, also known as the Additional Act, which served as a milestone; the latter, for the organization of secondary schools, as from its sanction “[…] the first efforts emerged, in the sense of printing[it] in Brazil. Around this time, Colégio Pedro II was created in the court (1837) and Lyceums in several provinces” (^{Cabral, 1982}, p. 39).

We can reflect, then, on the possibility that this institution was created through external pressures generated in this context of the expansion of education, considering that “[...] every appearance of a social form is linked to other transformations; that the school form is linked to other forms, notably political ones” (^{Vicente; Lahire; Thin, 2001} p. 12). The stage of creation and institutionalization of Lyceu Maranhense seemed to focus on two main aspects: the model of school that we wanted to follow and the higher education institutions we wanted to direct to via secondary education. With these two objectives in mind, the curriculum at Colégio Dom Pedro II was the ideal parameter, since they were

[…] taught Latin, Greek, French and English languages, Rhetorica; and the elementary principles of Geographia, History, Philosophia, Zoology, Mineralogy, Botanica, Chemistry, Physica, Arithmetica, Algebra, Geometry, and Astronomy

(The Official Publisher, 1838, ed. 601, p. 1).

The Lyceu Maranhense took this curriculum as a model, adapting it to the needs of the province and its possibilities, considering the resources available from the local government autarchies. As for the nature of the curricula and the existing dispute around this program, although the nature of the content taught was mostly humanistic and literary, disciplines that were linked to the natural sciences in various teaching reforms were inserted and materialized in a series of laws that intuited to adjust secondary education to the requirements of universities or careers linked to local commerce or industry.

These laws indicate a back and forth movement in a constant dispute between views on teaching, which marks the alternation between representations linked to humanist and literary disciplines, and those related to scientific and/or utilitarian disciplines, imposing to the school which disciplines should or not be part of its curriculum, changes created in the spaces of provincial legislative power and by political claims that had repercussions in the classrooms and in the school space of Lyceu Maranhense, as well as in the routines of the subjects that composed the school.

Law n° 346 regulates and re-establishes the subject of Calculation and Mercantile Bookkeeping suppressed in 1850, but which was part of the Lyceum in 1849. Such alterations place the curriculum as a competition field, a scenario of clashes where, at every moment, agents “[…] they put into play, as a weapon and bid, the capital that they had acquired in previous phases of the struggle and that can imply a power over the struggle itself and, consequently, over the capital held by others” (^{Bourdieu, 2007}, p. 230). Teachers were constantly affected by the exclusion of their subjects or the inclusion of subjects they were now supposed to teach, because of ideals imposed from outside the school, which required continuous adaptation to this volatile reality to which they were tied.

Provincial Law No. 1010 of July 5, 1872, by proposing the creation of the discipline of Stenography, demonstrates a clear interest in promoting the journalistic craft, meeting the representation of the Lyceum as an institution that needed to have practical utility in the life of the province. Nineteenth-century São Luís became famous as a center of intellectuals, gaining the nickname of Brazilian Athens⁵, with the printing industry⁶ being one of the main means by which this representation of intellectuality was maintained. On many occasions, the Lyceu Maranhense teachers themselves were at the head of the editorial office of various periodicals. This norm shows that intermittently the needs and desires of the legislators shape secondary public education in the province.

These changes had repercussions on the objects of the school material culture, since this ergological equipment⁷ is constituted not only of its uses and functionalities in the classroom, but also of the teaching conceptions planned and thought by the authorities, of the visions of the world and of shared instruction. between the subjects of that school and, also, of the concepts imposed by society as a condition to reach modernity and the ideal determined for teaching. Therefore, “[...] it is not possible to think about these [school] materials without relating them to the methods and degrees of teaching, the school subjects and the genre attended” (^{Castro, 2013}, p. 7), which are linked to the curricula and, in some cases, require their own instrumental and material apparatus, which even puts student learning at risk - when materials are placed as a condition for the absorption of contents - as we see below.

I communicated to the geography lens of this Lyceum, in a letter attached by copy, that a geocyclic machine is very necessary in your class, for teaching astronomical geography so that your students can better understand the emotions of this part of geography, and one of his instrument, new, manufactured by W. Harrisson of London, for the amount of 50//000, being found for sale at the house of Dr. Domingos Feliciano Marques Perdigão, if it serves to authorize its purchase on account of the competent rubric

(^{Maranhão, 1858}).

Domingos Feliciano Marques Perdigão’s trading house functioned as a distribution and sale center for imported items, which puts it in a privileged position in terms of negotiating items for teaching, since foreign products were considered superior to local utensils. . In this way, the geocyclic machine, being manufactured in England – by W. Harrisson in London – might be considered a fundamental innovation for teaching, which would justify its acquisition and use. Located in the square of the palace, which was an important center for local commerce, it housed typographies, bookstores, and public offices, making it a strategic point for the sale of various items, including school supplies. According to ^{Escolano Benito (2017)}, such imports occurred in the midst of a period marked by the ebullition of several phenomena, among them, the movement of several nations for mandatory schooling, imposed on practically all post-French Revolution countries, allied to a process of incipient industrialization, which, on several occasions, used universal exhibitions – which began in Paris in 1851 – as showcases, which began to dictate and influence the Brazilian reality in terms of instruction and education. Mainly from the 1862 exhibition⁸, in which instruction was made a reference item, with the aim of expressing the technological progress achieved by the various nations. In this logic, it is observed that not only the ideals of schooling, modernity and new teaching concepts should be adapted to Maranhão’s reality, but also some school materials were imposed as a condition of modernity.

In this perspective, the imposition strategies of European nations in the contexts of school materials were characterized by “[…] determining[r] the power to conquer for itself a place of its own […] a power [which] is the preliminary of this knowledge, and not just its effect or its attribute [since it] [permits and commands its characteristics” (^{Certeau, 2012}, p. 100). Thus, these nations placed themselves on the highest shelves of technological development for instruction and imposed, via exposure, the rules of the game, when it came to what the school should contain and how to organize the school space; that is, just like the pedagogical ideals, the school’s ergological equipment was of European origin and influence. Aspects that can be observed in another part of the same request for materials, when their use is recommended by the astronomical geography teacher, a decisive argument for the acquisition of material that would be essential for its progress and purpose:

[…] so that the students […] could better understand the explanations about the movement of the planets around the sun as their center, a geocyclic machine is very necessary, which is a proper instrument for the practical teaching of this part of geography manufactured by W Harrison of London

(^{Maranhão, 1858}).

The request presents an opinion regarding the effective use and pedagogical function of the geocyclic machine, requested by the geography lecturer Tiberio Cezar de Lemos, together with the public education inspector José da Silva Maya, referring to the equipment as fundamental for the students better understand what was taught and indicating that school materials constituted a significant part of the school form, as items directly linked to learning. On the other hand, the administrative discourse related to Liceist material culture consists of calculated actions in the enemy’s camp that, because they do not have a place of their own, must play with the imposed terrain (^{de Certeau, 1998}). These tactics can be perceived by the teachers’ speeches, which, on many occasions, reinforced requests for these materials, favoring them by claiming the real need in pedagogical practices. Recommendations such that, when resulting in the approval and acquisition of objects, point to the level of consideration given to the teachers’ opinions in the requests for materials.

The governing devices of the dynamics of schoolbooks and their acquisition processes were present in several norms that regulated the processing of works, for example, the Lyceum statutes of 1838, which determine as obligations of teachers “[…] Art. 2^nd. Make the explanations of the lessons by the compendiums and authors adapted by the Congregation for the use of the Lyceum” (^{Castro, 2009}). Lyceu Maranhense, in addition to the structuring of spaces and the centrality of secondary education subjects, also dispensed with the production of specific knowledge in school subjects, which materialized using textbooks at school; new organization that decisively changed public secondary education in the province of Maranhão, making the teaching of the past, practiced in isolation, in single chairs. This was another teaching typology, which occurred through the application of the simultaneous method that was institutionalized according to a specific school grammar constituted via the school form of socialization. We have contact with this new form of organization and with objectified knowledge through clues bequeathed by the documentation in the opinions about books, in which we find a little more of the intentions and actions of the subjects involved:

Agreeing with what Vmc. Represents in his letter no. 159 of last February 28th, I have to tell you that I do not think it appropriate that in the Geography and History class of the Lyceum in this city the Compendium of Abbot Gualtier be replaced by that of Luiz Paulino Cavalcanti Vellez de Guevara, and that I approve that the Class of Francez from the same Lyceum is added to the Compendiums and authors used in Tissot’s Compendium of Universal History

(^{Publicador Maranhense, 1848}, emphasis added).

We found in the Jornal Publicador Maranhense (1842-1886) a correspondence from the President of the Province Joaquim Franco de Sá sent to the Inspetoria da Instrução, in which opinions are expressed regarding certain disciplines that should enter the Lyceum Program and the works that needed to be adopted. This statement points to a discourse of improvements in the contents taught, not only aiming at the development of teaching and/or the formation of values, behaviors and conducts of students; but also pointing to the administration of provincial public education as a field of struggles, either due to the methodological affiliation of the subjects, or due to the disputes of interests for the acquisition of certain material and, even, due to the imposition of visions of the world, of school and of teaching. In this logic, as an educational practice, it is noticeable that the use of textbooks as manuals that would guide the pedagogical practice of the institution’s teachers, incorporated into the behaviors that were intended to be inculcated, would be part of disciplinary habits and school rituals as a body of encouraged practices not only by teachers, but by all agents of school life (^{Oliveira, 2019}).

The use of books and textbooks for language and grammar teaching, for the most part, demonstrates the instructional project thought of as an ideal imposed by society on Lyceu Maranhense students, pointing to the underlying social interests of the period. The simple fact that the congregation decided which, among several works with a humanist and propaedeutic content, would be approved, indicated and/or adopted in secondary education points to the educational practice carried out in the institution, considering that “[...] the educational practices […] relate to the disciplinary norms and moral values disseminated by the school” (^{Oliveira, 2019}, p. 30). The impositions on the instruction placed in charge of the institution appear within the spaces of power of the province, influencing not only the character of the teaching practiced, but also the precise structure for such teaching, which, in turn, was based on a specific school grammar and centered on controlling and disciplining students using school objects (^{Foucault, 1987}).

The School Grammar of Lyceu Maranhense using School Objects

The appropriation and application of the school model proposed by the Collégio D. Pedro II depended on the slow and progressive remodeling of times, spaces, knowledge, sensibilities, and values (^{Lopes; Faria Filho; Veiga, 2007}). As a proper school space for its installation, the Convento do Carmo was chosen seeking to “[...] distance the school from the domestic enclosure, [and] from the cultural and political traditions from which [this] space [...] was organized. if and [if] it could be seen” (^{Lopes; Faria Filho; Veiga, 2007}, p. 146), allowing the establishment of proper relationships between teacher and student, mediated by specific knowledge, in that place. Such a pedagogical relationship dispossesses social groups, which previously held the prerogative of teaching, establishing, as a school competence, the transmission of knowledge and values to produce lasting effects within society, which can only be achieved through the codification of knowledge school practices, combined with a specific form of distinct and autonomous pedagogical relationship (^{Vicent; Lahire; Thin, 2001}).

As for the redefinition of school times, material culture appears in the processes, helping to control time and students through tools manifest in the lists of objects requested for Lyceu Maranhense, such as: “[…] 2 Hourglasses of 15 minutes” and “1 bell to call students” (^{Maranhão, 1856}). The division of time provided in this environment made it possible to organize the ways of teaching the disciplines, both throughout the day, as well as during the months or the school year, depending on the periods. The Lyceum regulations of 1838 provided for the organization of subject time and the routine that should be followed by students and teachers:

[…] haver[iam]one lesson for day in each of them, those of Latin, French and Philosophical Grammar of the Language lasting two and a half hours, those of English and Greek lasting two hours and all other subjects lasting one hour and sock

(^{Castro, 2009}, p. 304).

Among these aspects would be the physical space itself, which would subject them to control by the school’s form of socialization, which could be done more effectively, and which appears explicitly in the following excerpts from the statutes: “[…] art. 19. Inside the Lyceum, students will behave with all decency and circumspection, treating the Lyceum with the greatest respect and civility” (^{Castro, 2009}, p. 305), with the doorman of the establishment being the responsible employee for compliance with these standards. According to this rule, he “[…] would be obliged to report to the Director any infraction of this article” (^{Castro, 2009}, p. 311), as well as of “[…] art. 23. [of the same norm, in which] it would not allow [would] allow students to walk around with a hat on their heads inside the Lyceum, nor would it [would] allow them to remain in the hall, after the end of its lessons, without recognized need” (^{Castro, 2009}, p. 311). Reinforcing the idea of ​​a space that would allow controlling, as well as inculcating, behaviors through rules, supervision, and segmentation of time, whether of students, teachers, and other employees.

One of the main components for putting Lyceum school grammar into practice and which became essential in this process was the figure of the doorman; function so necessary for the functioning of this school form and which, in the statutes, enjoyed its own chapter: “Do Porteiro XV”. The Article 55 determined the functions of this professional:

1^st. Keep the Lyceum’s classrooms, rooms and corridors clean;

2^nd. Open and close classes at specified times;

3^rd. Warn Lectures that you have given the time of entry or exit from classes; […]

5^th. Raffle the students for the sabbaticals

(^{Castro, 2009}, p. 311).

It can be verified that the functions of this professional were exclusively linked to the control and disciplining of students, a practice that reveals him as a necessary component of the educational practice carried out by Lyceu Maranhense, centered on inoculating, in students, in addition to knowledge, healthy postures, honesty, honesty and decency. The role of supervising the rules, in addition to controlling time and cleaning and tidiness of environments, points, in the figure of the doorman, to a certain power instituted by the school that is almost incomprehensible to us in the 21st century. In this logic, the remodeling of school times was of paramount importance for the inculcation of values, such as discipline and behavior regulation, with school materials exerting, in this sphere, great influence on the coordination, planning and course of activities. Such dynamics made it possible for the action, in that space, to be carried out adequately and efficiently.

Regarding the remodeling of knowledge that was necessary for the application of an imposed model (Lopes; Faria Filho; Veiga, 2007), we can list the participation of school objects in the countless requests for materials for specific disciplines that were always renewed, according to the conceptions of curricula that were emerging over the course of Lyceu Maranhense. Each demand for disciplines implied a need for materials, which should be acquired to meet them. Material culture provides us with several indications, which are present in requests for specific school objects for these subjects, participating in initiatives and playing an important role in school grammar, as evidenced in the following request:

The teacher of the drawing class at the Lyceu, Domingos Tribuzzy, has just requested the purchase of transfers for the study of drawing applied to arts and crafts, declaring that in said class there are none of these transfers, which become essentially necessary, since half of his disciples belong to the profession of artists

(^{Maranhão, 1864}).

The teaching of Linear Drawing was introduced into the curriculum by the Regulation of Public Instruction of 1854 and is included in art. 52, such as Linear and Typographic Design (^{Castro, 2009}), with a clear and manifest interest in promoting the profession of artists. Once again, we can evoke European influences that directly affect the teaching practiced at the Lyceum, more precisely, in a movement that began in England in the mid-nineteenth century, called Art’s and Crafts, which was inspired by ideals of anti-commodification and industrialization. This aesthetic movement ended up providing the foundations for what later became known as Design. Initiated by the art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) and the medievalist Augustus W. Northmore Pugin (1812-1852), it sought to revalue manual work and recover the aesthetic dimension of industrially produced objects.

We can see how objects of material culture are subject to different contexts, depending on the conceptual frameworks created in large centers and exported to the periphery as models to be followed. On the other hand, it is also clear that the school plays an important social role in the attempts to apply such models, when it acts as a manufacturer of school subjects taken as the main cultural products of its action, a dynamic that makes us see the curriculum, “[…] not only as the expression or representation or reflection of determined social interests, but also as a producer of] determined social identities and subjectivities” (^{Goodson, 2012}, p. 10).

Finally, the initiative to implement the Lyceu Maranhense in the province, as an adaptation of a specific school form, presupposed the remodeling of values and sensibilities (^{Lopes; Faria Filho; Veiga, 2007}). The transmission of these values would take place through the action of the school environment under construction, the result of the teaching grammar of the institution that would offer a controlling and disciplining space, in which students would be allegedly molded, with the intention of forming them as useful men for society. . The main examples of this transmission of values ​​were taken from the Lyceu Maranhense statutes of 1838, in which chapter IV entitled on the police of classes gives us indications of the environment of control/rigidity desired for the course of classes at the establishment, in which required postures of students and punishments for noncompliance are presented. This status can be taken as an expression of the educational thinking that was held, always valuing order and transmission, not only of the technical knowledge of the disciplines, but of the values and ways of acting via inculcation.

The 19^th century instruction attempts arise and change in a game of disputes and impositions, in relation to which the subjects are constantly having to adapt and, in this context, “[...] the school and schooling were developed until become essential in the production and reproduction of our social formations, the hierarchies [and] the classes [...] that constitute them” (^{Vicente; Lahire; Thin, 2001} p. 38). School objects participate in attempts to modernize the Lyceu as fundamental elements of this transformation. The inclusion of any discipline presupposed the space where it could be taught, the books that would subsidize the teachers’ work, the essential artifacts for the classes and the various material implications that would make any initiative viable. About cultural history, we can interpret these teaching modernization proposals as changes in psychic structures, which were based on new teaching concepts. These, in turn, were guided by conceptual frameworks – which proclaimed the insertion of scientific disciplines –, reflecting on the need for a social formation that needed to meet the demand of the various activities carried out in commerce, industry and the public sector., and which placed this task in charge of secondary public education.

Conclusion

Lyceu Maranhense is undoubtedly the educational institution with the greatest representation in actions and discourses on public education in the 19th century in that province; everything concerning its educational practice and the installation process was carried out taking inspiration from well-defined school models and teaching concepts. The school material culture is directly related to the school form of socialization, as it is only possible to think about it in view of the teaching methods and degrees, the school subjects and the contents that were intended to be transmitted, the school’s objectives and the models that one wanted to replicate, the school grammar, which allows the control and discipline of students, with spaces and artifacts as auxiliaries of this action. This organization is the result of actions and concepts engendered in spaces of power outside instruction, which directly influenced the daily lives of teachers, students, and employees.

The process of acquiring textbooks via the teachers’ congregation was the main way of selecting textbooks for Lyceum classes, which operated based on their curricular structure. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, the school dealt with several reforms, with the objective of modifying the character of the instruction practiced. In this sense, the main objective of the structural reforms in the Convento do Carmo building was to enable the full realization of the subjects that were intended to be taught. Such modifications brought the school discipline/school space relationship as a guiding axis and required a series of remodeling with the aim of moving the school away from the home environment.

In the processes of acquisition of materials for the Lyceum, the decisive action of the teachers in the research and in the aid for the purchase was noticed, by the allegation of the need in the classes, as a condition for the students’ learning, showing that the role of these subjects extended to beyond the classroom. The nature of specific objects for this teaching institution, which differed from other demands and school spaces, aimed, most of the time, at artifacts made of noble and imported materials, which contrasts with the discourse of precariousness and lack of resources by administrators, evidencing the privileged place that this institution occupies in terms of material structure.

Lyceu Maranhense introduced a new school form of socialization in the province of Maranhão. Its organization decisively modified the local secondary public education, as it reached not only children of the elites, but also students from humble origins, who became intellectuals and competed in training and professional function, like João Antonio Coqueiro, a former student of the Lyceu, who, thanks to the public purse and the public instruction commission in 1856, managed to enter higher education in Europe with the amount of 300$000 per year granted to him (^{Soares, 2017}). Teaching at the Lyceum, formerly practiced in isolation and in separate chairs, became centralized and institutionalized according to a specific school grammar that was based on several aspects: a) the objectification of the knowledge to be transmitted, which could be perceived in the norms and in the operation of the main decision-making device regarding books and textbooks – the teachers’ congregation; b) in the structuring of spaces, which would subject the students to control, discipline and inculcation of moral values through rules, supervision exercised by employees and time segmentation; c) in the production and centralization of school subjects, which always varied according to the school’s objectives, which, in turn, were almost always dictated by pressures external to the Lyceum; and finally d) in the materialization of objectified knowledge, in an intense and continuous production of textbooks that often had the teachers themselves as authors and evaluators, a dynamic that generated disputes in the competition between local works to be adopted, and the national and international ones already prescribed. This form of organization worked in a complex way and constituted the main institution of secondary education in Maranhão in the 19^th century.