Presentation

The circulation of pedagogical ideas that help edify school projects for early childhood and accompany the consolidation of nation-states was supported in various manners. We can highlight legislation, including a group of measures to guide the design of administration, including mandatory schooling; World’s Fairs as spaces for promoting models, ideas, the circulation of goods for supplying schools - especially primary schools - and to help create a market niche; and the organization of Pedagogical Museums, which are the focus of this dossier.

In a broader characterization, the Pedagogical Museums² can be described “as a center of education for teachers, where new didactic methods, furniture and tools will be developed tested, presented and promoted” (^{Petry; Gaspar da Silva, 2013}, p. 82). Or, as Bartolomé Cossío (1886) proposed, they were institutions that introduced the advances in primary education found in countries considered to be references (in: García del Dujo, 1985). For Pedro Moreno Martínez,

the Museum was characterised as being a living and dynamic organism, a research and teaching centre, a gateway to the reception, study and spread of international educational innovations, which contributed to the renewal and modernisation of primary education and Spanish pedagogy. (^{Moreno Martínez, 2022}, p.7)

Although the author’s reflection is on the museum in Madrid, it expresses the configuration of many others. María Cristina Linares highlights that

Created at the boom of the nation States constitution, the idea of renewing the pedagogical aspects of education was linked to the objective of nationality construction and the development of science and technology to foster industrial development. (^{Linares, 2022}, p.3)

In dictionaries of pedagogy, such as the editions³ organized by Ferdinand Buisson (1878-1887 and 1911), we find elements that help understand in conceptual terms many of the aspects that compose the history of education; the entries include information about Pedagogical Museums. The entry for Pedagogical Museums in the 1911 edition of the dictionary includes information that the context in which these institutions⁴ were found in various countries. To do so, the author of the entry, Maurice Pellisson, had particular support from the work of Max Hübner, entitled Die Ausländischen Schulmuseen , which presents data about various Pedagogical Museums in different countries.

M. Max Hübner, directeur du Musée pédagogique de Breslau, en a fait très soigneusement le relevé, dans un ouvrage paru en 1906 (Die ausländischen Schulmuseen, Breslau). Ce relevé comprend 76 établissements ; nous ne saurions ici, faute de place, parler en détail de chacun d'eux; il en est, d'ailleurs, qui sont à l'état embryonnaire ou qui n'ont pris qu'un développement médiocre. Nous nous bornerons donc à reproduire d'abord la liste dressée par M. Max Hübner, et à donner ensuite des renseignements sommaires sur ceux de ces « musées » qui ont acquis une importance véritable⁵. (Pellisson In.: ^{Buisson, 1911}, p. 1373)

We know⁶ that Max Hübner treated the publication of the survey as a business. He charged the museums to be included in the edition and sold the printed product to the museums. This is an important aspect that warns us of the possibility for imprecision in the data presented; it is very possible that the author selected from among a group of museums those that would compose the book. The fact is that the data he presented, and those reproduced in the 1911 edition of the dictionary organized by Buisson, served as references for the composition of historic narratives about pedagogy museums⁷. In the chart below, based on the information found in the entry by Maurice Pellisson, we highlight the first museum of pedagogy created in each country included, to portray the occurrence of this type of institution “throughout the world”.

Even if the above chart may have imprecisions, as warned, it reveals the strength of this type of institution in the organization of the projects for schooling, particularly in the case of the state initiatives. This presence and strength inspired us to bring together studies that establish a dialog with initiatives from Ibero American countries¹¹, and that can help to understand the constitution, function, and influence both within the country, and in dialog with similar institutions. In this dialog we highlight some convergent aspects: the organization of the museums based on the archives inherited from the World’s Fairs or similar events¹²; the commercial function that they perform, whether by presenting products and catalogs, or often serving as a point of sales; and the mission to renew the pedagogical aspects by promoting forms of teaching, teacher education and presentation of pedagogical materials; and the preparation of printed pedagogical materials, particularly magazines for teachers; the realization of pedagogical conferences, etc.. They are institutions that, as announced by Martin ^{Lawn (2013}), help to establish schools, students, and teachers as social consumers and of industrialized products. These products are often conduits of modernity, even if symbolically, and manifest new educational technologies.

In the text dedicated to the Brazilian Museum of Pedagogy, Camila Marchi da Silva gives special attention to the commercial aspect. In her analysis,

According to Borges (2011, p.151, 154), the general commissioner of the International Exposition of Paris in 1867, Frédérci Le Play, proposed turning the objects of the exhibition into Commercial Museums. In practice that meant that all the goods would continue to be exhibited in specific museums. In this sense, commercial museums were associated to greater exhibitions aiming to attract the public through publicity activities. The idea was to stimulate the public’s interest to novelties, aiming to sell them, broadening the circulation of interests among the maker, the exhibitor- thought as an intermediate- and the buyer. (Marchi da Silva, 2022, p.3-4)

Aspects like those highlighted above corroborate the thesis of Kuhlmann Jr. (2013, p. 36) that it is not possible to attribute a reference to a single country, as if it had served as a type of model, for the creation of these institutions, but it is important to understand them as part of a broad process of diffusion of civilizing projects characteristic of the late nineteenth century. As can be read in the text by Pedro ^{Moreno Martínez (2022}, p.6), the Museu de Madrid, for example, “would establish relations with the governments of other countries to promote the exchange of publications and materials, know the state of the Spanish schools and those abroad through visits and trips by its staff”, an activity that would be present in many others.

This passage is revealing of the exchanges between the museums, which can also be seen in the correspondence, as presented by Gaspar da Silva and Scagliola (2019) based on letters found in the archives of the Museu Pedagógico José Pedro Varela. The work of Maria João Mogarro also highlights this aspect; for the author

The Museu Pedagógico Municipal de Lisboa was thus part of the international modern education trend, which regarded educational museums as fundamental institutions for the study of education and teaching -related issues and for the professional training of teachers. (^{Mogarro, 2022}, p.3)

Something else common to the museums in their early years is installation in provisory locations, as was the case in Spain: “Originally located in a corridor and two rooms at the Veterinary School of the Central University of Madrid, the Museum received an extra boost following its final move to the Central Normal School of Teachers in 1886” (^{Moreno Martínez, 2022}, p.8). Portugal experienced a similar situation, as Maria ^{Mogarro (2022}, p.6) reported: “‘The museum would be open to the public on the 1^st of the next month of July, in very modest conditions and in a provisory, not very suitable home, in municipal school n.º 6’ (Coelho, 1883, p. 74), in Santa Isabel.”

In addition, the museums were organized in sections, observing the recurrence of the following items: school furniture, school building plans, educational and teaching materials, etc. As a rule, the museums also had a journal and a library of pedagogy. There is also an emphasis on early childhood education and primary school, as well as functions and activities for educating the teachers that worked at these educational levels, and of physics and chemistry workshops. Another common point of the archives is to store copies of reports from the World’s Fairs.

The texts in this dossier also present information about the circulation of materials among the museums, as is the case examined by Maria Mogarro, who reports that Augusto dos Reis had sent a model of the façade and blueprint for the “kindergarten in Lisbon to the Pedagogium, the educational museum in Rio de Janeiro, as well as some of the children’s works given to him by the Director” (Mogarro, 2022, p.10). Mogarro also provides information about visits:

The Museum's Visitors' Book (which will also have been the school's) received the signature of Francisco Giner de Los Rios and Manuel Bartolomé Cossío on its first page, when they visited Adolfo Coelho in September 1883. From then on, they maintained close collaboration, also involving Bernardino Machado (Otero Urtaza, 2004, pp. 9-37). (^{Mogarro, 2022}, p.11)

These exchanges indicate comradery among the directors of these institutions, many of whom were quite involved with projects for pedagogical renovation in their countries and in the organization of what would later become the educational systems, in particular that focused on early childhood schooling. Their mentors were prestigious personalities in the educational field who had political influence. We register here the names of the first directors of the Pedagogical Museums examined in this dossier, by chronological order of the inauguration of the museum: Manuel Bartolomé Cossío (1857-1935¹³), Madrid, Spain; Francisco Adolfo Coelho (1847-1919), Lisbon, Portugal; Ricardo Torino¹⁴ (1883-???), Buenos Aires, Argentina; Alberto Gómez Ruano (1858-1923) Montevideo, Uruguay; and Joaquim José Menezes Vieira (1848-1897), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The data presented above serve as an invitation to read the articles that follow, whose order was defined by the year of creation of each museum. The articles are: El Museo Pedagógico Nacional y la renovación educativa en España (1882-1941), by Pedro Luis Moreno Martínez (Universidad de Murcia - Espanha); O Museu Pedagógico Municipal de Lisboa (Portugal, 1883-1933): Percurso e significado de uma instituição renovadora, by Maria João Mogarro (Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa - Portugal); El Museo Pedagógico en Argentina: nacimiento y avatares de una Institución renovadora (1883-1940), by María Cristina Linares (Universidad Nacional de Luján - Argentina); Museu e Biblioteca Pedagógicos: um grande gabinete experimental de ciência popular (Montevidéu / Uruguai, 1889...), by Vera Lucia Gaspar da Silva (Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina - Brasil) and Gabriel Scagliola (Museo Pedagógico José Pedro Varela e Institutos Normales de Montevideo - Uruguai); and Museu Pedagógico Nacional - Pedagogium, uma vitrine comercial (1890-1919), by Camila Marchi da Silva (Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação: História, Política e Sociedade - EHPS / Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo - PUC / SP - Brasil).