Introduction

Studies associated with transnationality of pedagogical artifacts and practices, as well as their potential transnational dimension, have appeared for a couple of years in periodicals of History of Education in some Western countries. Hence, examining the subject has considerably advanced but it is far from being exhausted; there is a lot to study about schoolbooks and their circulation all over the world. That is why this dossier invests in further developing a topic associated with the subject: the transnational circulation of printed pedagogical materials, either if they were intended for school use or if only later they came to be used in schools. Modernity has almost become a synonym of circulation of printed materials given access by different forms which include from borrowing to overpriced sale; from print in loose sheets to luxury bound books; from vernacular versions to translation little or not friendly at all, including the many “appropriations” fed by peculiar views of the “local tastes”.

Reading books, textbooks, compendiums or manual for primary teacher training are documents especially covered in this dossier, for the purpose of analyzing the transnational circulation of these fragments of culture through which knowledge and values are communicated. The dossier combines researches focusing on books, drawing from different time cutouts, but which prioritize from the 19^th century to the early decades of the 20^th century, in order to compose a certain analytical corpus with sources. Thus, this proposal aims to discuss the production and circulation of books produced in Portugal, in Italy, and in Brazil to think history of education based the different educational projects printed in these cultural artifacts. The analyses are supported by theoretical approaches from Cultural History and History of Education as they mobilize not only books but also legislations, reports, newspapers, correspondences, among other materials.

Justino P. De Magalhães opens the dossier with the article Livro escolar - adaptação e tradução no Portugal de Oitocentos: do ‘aprender pelo livro’ ao ‘mestre-livro’ (Schoolbook - adaptation and translation in 1800´s Portugal: from “learning from the book” to “master-book”, making incursions in European lands, especially in France, inasmuch as he gathers elements that allow him to explain the creation of the modern schoolbook not only in Portuguese but also in Brazilian land. Entering the 19th century, his article follows several moments in which the book is then becoming book for school use with a distinction between the book for the student and the book for the teacher. By the late 1800´s, the author has in hand a diversity of formats of schoolbooks, which allows him to day that the spread of the schoolbook, of the booklet and the periodical lie in the origin of mass acculturation. The changes the schoolbook goes through in relation to other books, which provide it with specificity, allows to conclude that such change results from the regulation and control of the production and access as well as from the fact it is the conveyor of guidance for reading.

The article by Samuel Castellanos, Livros de leituras ou manuais de civilidade como cultura material da escola maranhense para o ensino do ler e do vir-a-ser (reading books or civility manulas as material culture of Maranhão´s schools to teach reading and becoming), as the very title indicates, works on books/manuals circulating in 1800´s Maranhão; they are materials that allow him to inquiry the points of contact between “reading books from Maranhão´s authors and non-national civility manuals”, namely: Spanish, Portuguese, and French. It is though-provoking how this become the opportunity of a dialogue with Justino Magalhães´ article. Castellanos seeks in R. Chartier and N. Elias conceptual references to think about the books/manuals as mediums of rules that are put in circulation to create the civilized subject. Placed face to face, Maranhão´s and European materials enable the author to conclude that the variations perceived in them are indications of the novelties in the educational programs, in the methods, and in the uses prescribed for those materials “as a pretext for the formation of the trainee reader regardless of their reading level, of the restriction for approval, and indication of works that did not comply with the reforms of instruction, forcing them to be reformulated and adjusted according to the prescriptions provided in the legal devices”.

The third article in this dossier is by Mirian J. Warde, Adaptações e traduções: cartilhas e livros de leitura “de americanos para filipinos” (início do século XX) [Adaptations and translations: primers and reading books “from Americans to the Philippines (early 20th century)], implements a displacement in relation to the previous articles by examining schoolbooks from USA - primers and reading books - utilized in the Philippines by the United States during the first years of the occupation, in early 20^th century, involving operations, of displacement and imposition as well of a culture onto another. The article, originally brought about by the news that American The Arnold Primer, by Sarah Louise Arnold, indicated to be adopted in São Paulo in the version translated and adapted for Brazilian learners (1907), would also have been adapted to Philippine schools (1904), but not translated though. What would be “adaptation” in a circumstance that could not even be called transnational? Does a condition in the confrontation between the cultures obliterate entirely the meanings of civilization and barbarism, dissipate any illusion that there are frontiers between these two ways of representing the culture? This article explores, especially, documental series consisting of reports annually prepared by the government of the United States in the Philippines, added with a quite diversified range of other sources.

A new displacement is implemented by including the three following articles which spotlight two countries, Brazil and Italy, both keeping their distances and differences and highlighting their interconnections.

Terciane Luchese with the article ‘Quando il mondo era Roma’: livros escolares para fascistizar os italianos no exterior, o caso brasileiro (1922-1938) [´When Rome was the world´: schoolbooks to turn Italians into fascists abroad, the Brazilian case (1922-1938)] contributes to keep the exercise of abandoning any romantic trace that perhaps one still had regarding the schoolbooks. In this article, Luchese examines a book - which lies in the title of the article - in the context where fascist Italy, by means of its consuls, sent books to Italian schools in Brazil, with the purpose of captivating the emigrated for the principles and practices of that regimen that rose to power in 1922, with Mussolini, and it was ended due to the defeat of the Axis in World War II. Roger Chartier is also the author´s conceptual vector for the analyses constructed upon an extensive documental and bibliographical basis. Luchese put a challenge to herself: “understand the educational and cultural policies in Italy and its connections with teh Brazilian context, especially in the Southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, along the 1920´s and 1930´s, looking especially at policies, production, circulation, and distribution of schoolbooks manufactured during fascism for the ‘Italian schools abroad”. She tackles the challenge in two ways: on the one hand, by examining the Italian policies and “their relations/resonances in Brazil” and, on the other hand, by examining a specific book destined to the “youth abroad”.

In turn, the article by Claudia Panizzolo, Livros escolares para a escola elementar italiana nos dois lados do Atlântico: o estudo do Libro d’appunti de Giovanni Soli (entre o final do século XIX e início do século XX) [School books for the Italian elementary school on both sides of the Atlantic: the study of the Book of notes by Giovanni Soli (between the late 19th century and the early 20^th century)] implements a displacement in time, from the end of a century to the beginning of the next, and in geography. The objective presented is to comprehend the educational policies, the production, the circulation, and the distribution of schoolbooks to the peninsula and to the Italian schools abroad, specifically in São Paulo - Brazil. Panizzolo examines a rich selection of documental sources such as consul reports, official correspondence, orders, ministerial circular letters, and yearbooks of the Italian schools, in addition to the ‘book of notes’, the central object of her analysis. She mobilized the conceptual corpus especially from Chartier and Choppin to define the procedures and the directions of the analysis, and upon detailed study of the books in circulation in Italy and in Brazil, differing from less in-depth analyses, she concludes that the books that were distributed by the Italian consulate were newly published, had expressive circulation in Italy, and were a great contribution to invent the Italian in the Peninsula and outside of it.

The last article in the dossier, written by Michelina D’Alessio, whose title is Manuais e livros de texto para os professores italianos da emigração no início do novecentos (Manuals and textbooks for Italian teachers in early 1900´s emigration), throws lights on to a phenomenon that is important for the history of education, both in Brazil and in Italy, which is the training of emigration teachers, that is, those professionals who intended to emigrate to several countries overseas, including Brazil. The author makes use of a diversified documental corpus which contains manuals and textbooks intended for this public made up of emigrating teachers. The analysis conducted by D’Alessio bring to the spotlight a perspective still little explored within the themes of schooling and/or education of Italian immigrants concerning the formative itinerary taken by teachers who emigrated. All over the text, when analyzing the manuals and textbooks, the author also observes the role played by the Italian State in the matters associated with emigration abroad. Also, the article allows to comprehend Italian emigration from a transnational viewpoint placing it within an international and interconnected landscape.