Introduction

Thinking about teacher training means to aim at educating, by the end of the formative cycle, at an ideal teacher, which in turn implies conceptions of the teaching profession, of education, and of the teaching process itself. We tend to believe that the teacher education course must express, in a more or less homogeneous way, those conceptions. However, when we examine more closely the institutional relations, and the individual practices of teachers, we observe nuances and shades, dissensions and divergences, that indicate that the processes of teacher education, as well as their theoretical underpinnings, are rather aggregates of conceptions, which in turn are appropriated by those involved in a hybrid and complex way. The experiences of Camillo Passalacqua and Silva Jardim, the former a Catholic, the latter a positivist, at the São Paulo Teacher Training School allow us to reflect on those issues, given that those two teachers not only disagreed on their conceptions of teaching and learning, but their attitudes towards the teacher training course followed from discordant social and ideological principles.

In the present work, we deal with pedagogical practices and ideas, emphasizing moral and civic education, as well as the appropriations of the intuitive method of teaching as realized by those two teachers during the time they worked at the São Paulo Teacher Training School in the 1880s. At that time, the institution still functioned in an adapted building, lacking adequate materials, furniture, and personnel. At any rate, it was an institution housing a standardizing training of the teaching profession meant for expansion throughout the São Paulo province, a situation that drew the attention of politicians and publicists towards it (^{MONARCHA, 1999}). The names of Camillo Passalacqua and Antonio Silva Jardim appeared in several pages of São Paulo newspapers, from the most sympathetic to the provincial government, such as the Correio Paulistano, to the more critical to it, such as A Província de S. Paulo. Their names can also be found in countless minutes of the School Council Meetings, official letters, and reports that reveal their teaching activities. Additionally, we attempted to understand their ideas from the analysis of the works they published: an abridged printed version of the pedagogical conference Silva Jardim gave at the Teacher Training School in April 1884, entitled Reforma do Ensino de Língua Materna (Reform of the Teaching of Mother Tongue), and the book Pedagogia e Metodologia (Pedagogy and Methodology), published in 1887 by Passalacqua.

The teachers, their profiles, and relationships

Antonio da Silva Jardim, the son of rural worker and schoolmaster Gabriel Silva Jardim, was born in August 1860 in the town of Capivari in the province of Rio de Janeiro². At the age of eighteen he moved to São Paulo and enrolled at the Law School. During the first year of his course he was engaged to Ana Margarida de Andrada, daughter of Martim Francisco Ribeiro de Andrada, Professor of Ecclesiastical Law at the Law School, marrying her in 1883, after obtaining his Law degree. His closeness to the Andrada family afforded him a connection to Herculano Inglês de Sousa, who hired him as staff writer and proofreader for the A Tribuna newspaper, and later furthered his indication as secretary and teacher for the male primary class annexed to the São Paulo Teacher Training School when it reopened in August 1880. Furthermore, when Inglês de Sousa became president of the province of Espírito Santo, he invited Silva Jardim to give a series of conferences in Vitória between 18 and 28 July 1882 on the Cartilha Maternal (Maternal Primer) by Portuguese poet João de Deus and his novel word-based literacy method (^{LEÃO, 1895}; ^{ALONSO, 2002}; ^{PASQUIM, 2021}). Following changes in the teaching staff of the Teacher Training School³, there was an opening for the First Chair in late 1882, to which Silva Jardim and Manuel da Lapa Trancoso applied (A PROVÍNCIA DE S. PAULO, 15 April 1883, p.3). Finishing first in the public examination, Silva Jardim was nominated tenured teacher of the First Chair of the Teacher Training School, whose title was “Portuguese Language and Grammar, Practical Studies in Style and Declamation” (REGULAMENTO, 1880). During Law School, Silva Jardim had become acquainted with the positivist society in São Paulo, which had as its members other teachers from the Teacher Training School, such as Arithmetic and Geometry teacher Godofredo José Furtado, and Physics and Chemistry teacher Cypriano José de Carvalho (^{MONARCHA, 1999}; ALONSO, 2002). While teaching at the Teacher Training School, Silva Jardim was also co-director of the Escola da Neutralidade (Neutrality School) alongside João Köpke (^{DIAS, 2013}).

In March 1884, Silva Jardim was invited by the acting principal Sá e Benevides to give a pedagogical conference specified in the School Bylaws (1880)⁴ (CAMPISTA, 1884). On 21 April 1884 he gave the conference entitled Reforma do Ensino da Língua Materna (Reform of the Teaching of the Mother Tongue), whose summary was printed and published a few months later (CORREIO PAULISTANO, 24 August 1884, p.1). At the time of the publishing, Silva Jardim was also temporarily replacing Bulhões Jardim on the Fourth Chair, as appears on the publication back cover “Tenured teacher of the First Chair (Portuguese Language), acting Substitute of the Fourth Chair (Pedagogy) and former teacher of the male primary class annexed to the Teacher Training School”.

In May of that year, after the passing of his wife, Bulhões Jardim took a six-month license, and Silva Jardim was designated to replace him (CORREIO PAULISTANO, 24 May and 4 June 1884). Weeks later, the Correio Paulistano newspaper published an anonymous letter arguing that Silva Jardim, as tenured teacher of the First Chair, could not replace another teacher at the same School for more than 15 days. Silva Jardim denied the allegations, arguing the opposite and mentioning that something similar had occurred in 1880, when Bulhões Jardim substituted for Sá e Benevides. The quarrel continued until Jardim’s final reply on 29 June⁵. Despite the polemic, Silva Jardim remained as substitute on the Fourth Chair until the following March, when Camillo Passalacqua was assigned temporarily to the Fourth Chair (CORREIO PAULISTANO, 10 March 1885, p.2).

Unlike other teachers of the First Chair at the Teacher Training School, Silva Jardim seldom indicated grammars for Portuguese language studies. In the minutes of the 1 March 1884 School Council Meeting⁶ he indicated only an anthology and a dictionary. In 1886 he preferred to use no reference at all, replacing them with the programme of the Chair, which had been published in 1884 (CAMPISTA, 27 February 1886). His attitude did not please School principal Sá e Benevides, since all teachers should indicate references each year to be evaluated in a Council Meeting. And since it was the principal’s responsibility to check that teacher’s actions were in accordance with bylaws, it was his duty to let the President of the Province know of any infringement. An excerpt of the letter sent by Sá and Benevides to the President of the Province in 1886 concerning the fact that Silva Jardim and Cypriano Carvalho⁷ refused to make use of references is shown below:

Dr Antonio da Silva Jardim, teacher of the First Chair, on a memorandum in which he communicated his justifiable absence, declared that he did not find references adequate to the teaching of his Chair in the manner such teaching is conducted by him, unless one wishes to consider such imperfect programs published with such end in the three years in which the Portuguese Language course has been divided, and classroom notes dictated to the first year of the Chair, which have fulfilled this role - and that this fact did not seem to him to preclude, in attendance of the bylaws, that a more enlightened teacher of the School should propose such references, if the Bylaws so permit. There are, therefore, no indicated references for the classes of the First and Fifth Chairs. (^{SÁ E BENEVIDES, 4 March 1886})

The letter by Sá e Benevides and the following Council Meeting (CAMPISTA, 30 April 1886), in which other teachers indicated references for the First Chair, reveal the attrition visited upon Silva Jardim’s proposals at the School due to their frequent discord with the limitations imposed by the bylaws or by teachers with different ideologies. That, in addition to personal issues⁸, would culminate in his resignation a few months later in June 1886 (^{MONARCHA, 1999}; ^{PASQUIM, 2021}).

Camillo Passalacqua was born in Italy in 1858, and at the age of six moved with his family to Brazil. He was ordained priest in 1881 after completing his secondary education at the São Paulo Episcopal Seminary, where he would later work as a teacher. He began working at the São Paulo Teacher Training School in 1885 as acting teacher of the Fourth Chair which, according to the 1880 Bylaws, corresponded to the subjects of “pedagogy, methodology, including exercises of intuition, and Christian doctrine” (REGULAMENTO, 1880, p.4). Months later, after being successful in examinations, he became a tenured teacher at the school, there remaining until 1890.

The 1880s were a period marked by ideological disputes that revealed divergences in values and ideas among teachers both with respect to School’s internal matters and to wider social issues, such as Brazil’s political-administrative organization. According to ^{Monarcha (1999}, p. 122):

Priests trained at the Episcopal Seminary, underprivileged urban intellectuals that share in the dogmas of the Religion of Humankind, lawyers from the Law School, sometimes bearing ancient family lines, vie for the ideological orientation of the São Paulo Teacher Training School. […] At this historic moment, among the myriad social conflicts, the life of the institute unfolds amidst signs of exhaustion and renovation brought by the successive reforms in didactic organization, by juridical-administrative matters, and by the dramatic eruption of ideologies.

Within such disputes, Passalacqua’s name represented the presence of the State religion and the view that teaching could not do without religious morals. Passalacqua came to the School’s teaching staff in its fifth year of operation after the school’s reopening in 1880. In March 1885, Passalacqua was assigned to the Fourth Chair, therefore succeeding Silva Jardim in the teaching of the subjects of pedagogy, methodology and Christian doctrine. The relationship between the two seems to have been less than amicable during the brief time they worked together at the Teacher Training School.

Four months after Passalacqua’s arrival, the two of them had their first clash at the Council Meeting. It was after the death of Laurindo de Brito, president of the province at the time of the School’s reopening, and the Council should choose a teacher to give a speech representing the institution. Passalacqua was elected under the protest of Silva Jardim, who requested that the minutes of the meeting should record his opinion that “tenured teachers have precedence over acting teachers” in situations like these. The issue unfolded into a new meeting of the Council three days after that, due to the statement by teacher Godofredo Furtado saying that there had been irregularities in the previous election. In this meeting, Silva Jardim placed a question about the preference of tenured teachers over acting teachers to represent the school in ceremonies. A voting was taken, and the claim was considered unfounded, but a new consultation to the Council members was made to choose the School’s representative at the ceremony. This time, Silva Jardim and Passalacqua had the same number of votes, and the casting vote fell on Sá e Benevides as the school’s principal. He chose Passalacqua, which might indicate either that the principal considered the result of the first voting, or his preference for the recently arrived clergyman, or, still, it might show his reservations towards Silva Jardim, an outspoken positivist contrary to the State religion (CAMPISTA, 9 July 1885, p.2)⁹.

Passalacqua’s tenure at the Fourth Chair came in early 1886, after examinations. In May 1885, there had been a first attempt to schedule examinations for a tenured teacher for the Fourth Chair. At the time there were two candidates, the acting teacher Passalacqua, and lawyer José Ezequiel Freire. There was some uncertainty surrounding the examination, in view of the fact that the Province House of Representatives was discussing a reform of public instruction in which the pertinence of a Chair of Pedagogy and Methodology for the Teacher Training course was being questioned. A few days after receiving the applications, the examination was cancelled under the claim that, with the approved reform, the Pedagogy Chair had been eliminated. There were, therefore, doubts about the legality and legitimacy of an examination for the Fourth Chair at that moment.

For months, however, the implementation of that reform was suspended, and in the meantime the government of the Province authorized the examinations¹⁰. The local press published the decision, and examinations were scheduled. The Correio Paulistano defended the examinations, whereas Rangel Pestana opposed them, publishing articles in A Província de S. Paulo expressing his disagreement. To Pestana,

The Chair of Pedagogy was being conducted interim, and there was no inconvenience in continuing to do so, particularly considering that the reform could not be applied to the Teacher Training School until the start of the next year. […]

Let us suppose, however, that the House of Representatives does approve the 2 May reform, that is, the elimination of the Chair of Pedagogy; what will the result be? A teacher without a Chair and receiving his salaries? (A Província de S. Paulo, 2 October 1885, p.1)

The examinations were scheduled for early October, but did not take place on the chosen day, according to A Província, because three out of the four examiners failed to show up. Finally, the exams occurred on the 9 October with the presence of only one of the candidates, Camillo Passalacqua. According to Pestana, “the reform that was expected to be sanctioned by the House of Representatives” explained the fact that only two candidates had applied; “and later, suspended the examinations, declared forfeited, only one being present at them” (A PROVÍNCIA DE S. PAULO, 11 October 1885, p.1).

Topics for the examinations were taken from the disciplines of pedagogy, methodology, Christian doctrine, and political constitution. Well in line with the ongoing debates within the reform of public instruction regarding the elimination of the Pedagogy Chair, the first topic of the theme “Pedagogy” asked “whether Pedagogy may constitute a discipline independent from the subjects taught at a Teacher Training School”. The second topic dealt with the co-education of the sexes, and the last one questioned whether all the disciplines of the Teacher Training Course should be taught at public schools. On the topic of methodology, there was a question regarding the existence of a mutual dependence between Pedagogy and Methodology; another one about the best teaching method and its justification; and one on the limits between the “method of intuition” and “method of reflection”. With respect to the Christian doctrine, there was a question on the influence of religion on society and on teaching, and one about the possibility of a society without God. On the topic of Political Constitution, candidates were asked about the 3^rd Article of the Constitution of the Empire, specifically about the relationship between law, government, and national sovereignty, and lastly, on the 45^th Article of the Constitution and the minimum age for candidacy to the Senate (CAMPISTA, 13 October 1885).

The theme drawn for the written examination was “Christian Doctrine” and the topic was the “influence of religion on societies and their destinies” (CAMPISTA, 13 October 1885, p. 3). What could be seen as a lucky strike for the candidate, since it was a topic he should be familiar with in view of his ecclesiastical formation, did not turn out to be so good for him. The examiners judged Passalacqua’s exam “sufferable in the little he said on the topic”. After the oral examination on the next day, Passalacqua received three votes in favor of his admittance and two votes against it.

In the first year as a tenured teacher of the Fourth Chair, Passalacqua chose Michel Charbonneau’s Curso Theórico e Prático de Pedagogia (Practical and Theoretical Course in Pedagogy) and Charles Saffray’s Lições de cousas (Object lessons) as references for the study of Pedagogy and Methodology¹¹. The book by Charbonneau, whose first edition appeared early in 1862 (^{RAPET, 1887}), was translated into Portuguese by José Nicolau Botelho in 1883 (^{SILVA, 2018}). Saffray’s book had been published in 1881, and translated to Portuguese by Bernardo Alves Carneiro in 1884. Both works in their French versions were part of the library of the Teacher Training School in 1884; however, the teacher chose to indicate the editions in the Brazilian language.

Passalacqua left the Teacher Training School in the early 1890s, after the first Republican reform of public instruction that removed from the curriculum the Chair of Pedagogy and Methodology (SÃO PAULO, 1890). According to ^{Tanuri (1979}, p. 88), the exclusion of Pedagogy and Methodology from the teacher training course could be explained by the fact that the reform aimed at giving to teacher education a more practical character, converting the annexed schools into model schools, in which the teachers-to-be would do practical exercises and learn the “models of schooling to be followed”. To Passalacqua, however, the question was a different one: there would have been the intention to remove him because he was a clergyman, a representative of Catholicism. According to him, “if the spirit of the reform is to propagate in the School doctrines contrary to the pupils’ beliefs and, in the future, of Catholic families, the reformers should know that they are wasting their time; pupils and their families will have the rectitude to reject the sectarian public schooling” (CORREIO PAULISTANO, 27 March 1890, p. 3). Passalacqua’s arguments were grounded in his belief in his professional and scientific knowledge, proved during the years he worked at the school, and by the support he received from students. Moreover, the reform had included in the curriculum the Chair of School Organization and Direction, which to Passalacqua meant only a renaming of his Chair. Notwithstanding protests, the priest was dismissed at a moment when the school entered a new phase marked by the reforming momentum of the first Republicans.

Positivism, Catholicism, and the defense of rational education

To Jardim:

positivism has a philosophical aspect that only its most earnest believers, or those that ignore it the most, fail to apply: and it is this philosophical aspect, and I want to say it out loud, for it is quite clear in my Programs, that I apply to the teaching of language that without a doubt, in competent hands, will bring about the reform of the teaching of our mother tongue and the true theory of language applied to the Portuguese language. It is this thing so desired, so much spoken of, the so-called intuitive, concrete, and whatnot, method. I apply the law of the three stages: the biological and social theory of human speech, of animal language, brain theory, the relativity of knowledges; I combined these philosophical notions with the results of modern philology… (JARDIM, 1882, p. 2 Apud MORTATTI, 2000)

The teacher of the First Chair thus claims to apply in his programs the philosophical part of positivism, which would bring about the reform of the teaching of the Portuguese language and, from the methodological point of view, he claims to apply the biological and social theory of human speech, of animal language, of brain theory, of the relativity of knowledges, and of modern philology, in other words, he claims to ground his programme firmly in the science that he saw as the most up-to-date. An important document to understand the conception of education and teaching expressed in Silva Jardim’s work as a teacher is the printed summary of the pedagogical conference he gave in April 1884. The publication is divided into three chapters, one conclusion and one appendix. In the first chapter, rather brief, he deals with general features of language. In the longer, second chapter, he expounds his conception of the teaching of the mother tongue, also presenting some criticism to the primary school of the time and of some of its teaching methods. Finally, in a short third chapter he resumes what was presented before, and describes guidelines as to what the teaching of the mother tongue at the Teacher Training School should look like. In the appendix there are three programs for the teaching of Portuguese language: 1) for the teaching of the mother tongue at primary schools annexed to the Teacher Training School; 2) the programmes adopted by the Council for the first, second, and third years of the course of Portuguese language at the São Paulo Teacher Training School; 3) a suggested program considering the proposal of reform in the Bylaws.

According to Silva Jardim, “teaching the means of improving one’s expression, either spoken or written, is a social service”, and it was urgent to teach those means to those who wish to be teachers (1884, p. 11-12). In his conference he announces that he intends to present those means which, “combined with other social forces”, seem to lead “to a more normal teaching of the mother tongue”. From positivism Jardim takes August Comte’s law of the three stages, with which the French philosopher studied humanity’s evolution. Comte states in his Course in Positive Philosophy (1830-1842) that “each of our leading conceptions, - each branch of our knowledge, - passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious; the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive.” (COMTE, 2000, p. 27). Silva Jardim considers that the fictitious stage corresponds to spelling, the transitory stage to syllabification, and the last stage to wording. We understand that by fictitious the speaker referred to the use of the names of letters instead of their values, typical of the spelling method. The idea that teaching reading using the names of the letters would confuse the child, the preferable method being to present her only with their sounds was advocated by João de Deus, the Portuguese poet who wrote the Maternal Primer, frequently cited in Silva Jardim’s publication. Syllabification, in its turn, as a transitory stage, would be merely a passage from the first stage to the next and final stage which, for being the most efficient, would not need to be further developed.

An important reference for Jardim is therefore the Maternal Primer by Portuguese poet João de Deus, which propounds a word-based literacy method, considering that one should start from the meaning, and not by sounds or spelling. For, in his own words (^{DEUS, 1878}), when one spells (the so-called ABC’s) one is introduced to the names of the letters, which may be confusing for a child when understanding reading. On the other hand, by reading the words one offers to the child only the values of letters, that is, the sounds they have within the context of the word, thereby facilitating the understanding, the apprehension and, therefore, the reading. According to ^{Boto (1997}, p. 141), for João de Deus “the spoken word is to the family as the written word is to the school”. Likewise, Jardim notes that if we learn to speak with words, we should learn to read in the same manner. Understanding that teaching should be progressive and rational, Jardim says that the method of wording should be applied in two directions: one of growing complexity and one of decreasing generality, that is to say, from the more general to the more particular and complex.

Whilst Jardim builds his teaching upon positivist premises, emphasizing the social aspect of language, ^{Passalacqua’s basis is to be found in his Christian faith. In early 1887}, Passalacqua published the pedagogical manual entitled Pedagogia e Methodologia (Theorica e Pratica) (Pedagogy and Methodology (Theoretical and Practical)) for the use of the students at the São Paulo Teacher Training School which, being approved by the Council, was adopted as a reference of the Fourth Chair until his departure from the institution. In that work, he recorded his conceptions of education, teaching activity and profession, indicating references and expressing the way in which he articulated and appropriated a wide repertoire of readings.

The publication and selling of the manual were divulged by the press. The Correio Paulistano published a letter by the General Inspector of Public Instruction Arthur Cesar Guimarães addressed to Passalacqua praising him for enriching “with an original work our destitute pedagogical literature”, thereby reducing “the difficulties students might face when learning such an important matter” (CORREIO PAULISTANO, 12 June 1887). Approximately one year later, the Correio published another commendatory letter addressed to the teacher, this time written by Appeals Court Judge Aureliano de Souza Oliveira Coutinho, who declared to share with him the idea that moral education should be founded in religion, although by defending such position they might be forced to bear the “stigma of utter fossil[s]”.

Indeed, the approximation between religion and education expressed in Passalacqua’s trajectory as teacher of the Fourth Chair places him at the center of the wide and polemical issue of the laicity of education, which was not restricted to the São Paulo Teacher Training School. Prompted by the publication of Passalacqua’s manual, the A Província de S. Paulo newspaper ran a front-page article in which “without denying the author’s illustration”, it expressed reservations regarding the fact that a priest occupied the Chair of Pedagogy at the Teacher Training School, mentioning “the Emperor’s surprise and near censure when learning that the Chair of Pedagogy was annexed to that of Religion in that School” (A PROVÍNCIA DE S. PAULO, 22 July 1887, p.1). The writer of the article was of the opinion that Passalacqua had tried to give to his work a scientific appearance, but blundered by mixing religious principles with “general and immutable laws that govern education”. According to the article, “what is now known as science of education cannot be subordinated to the religious guidance the illustrious teacher intends to give to the mentality of young students and, even less so, to that of their teachers”. The only purpose of the book, according to A Província de S. Paulo, was helping students from the Teacher Training School “to find themselves in accordance with their teacher’s opinion”.

In the preamble to his book, Passalacqua states his position saying that “the love of God and the constant practice of Christian virtues are indispensable for education”. To him, no education could succeed if it neglected religious morals, since its purpose was “to cultivate, fortify and polish Man’s faculties” considered under the physical, intellectual, moral, and religious perspectives (p. 3). He saw education as a science, a rational opus that entailed careful planning, and that could be divided into Pedagogy and Methodology, into theoretical and practical viewpoints. As his saw it, Pedagogy was the science of education, itself divided into physical education, intellectual education, and moral education, and having connections with Biology, Psychology, and Religion. Stressing the limitations of the natural sciences regarding issues of the family, man, and society, which he saw as “historical facts”, Passalacqua thought that “it is not the job of the natural sciences to formulate hypotheses about their origin, and even less so to create social, domestic, and individual tendencies ”, and he opposed the idea that experience was the only criterion of certainty in all branches of knowledge (1887, p. 126).

In that sense, reason would not be antinomic to religious feeling, but rather its foundation, that which allows it to make an explicit defense of education supported by revealed religion. In this conception, educating meant cultivating through physical care, intellectual teaching, moral discipline, and religious lessons. To legitimize such vision of education and its connections with Christianity, seen by him as the religion of the “civilized peoples”, Passalacqua refers, for example, to L’espèce Humaine (1883), a book by French naturalist Armand de Quatrefages, one of the chief supporters of Charles Darwin. Based on the observation by the French naturalist that manifestations of religiosity are present in every people, the Teacher Training School teacher reaffirms the need to educate in the human beings what he considers as the “religious tendency”, pointing out that some peoples, having decayed into barbarism and moral anarchy, had lost “the exact notions of God and his tributes, of revealed religion and its characters”. And he concludes by saying that: “it is therefore from the Church that we must receive religious guidance. To educate a child is to make it an obedient offspring of the church, is to make it Christian” (1887, p. 135).

Moral and Civic Education

Moral and civic education were among Silva Jardim’s and Passalacqua’s concerns during their work as teachers. Connected with their respective principles, their conceptions of moral and civic education revealed essential aspects of the way in which they saw teaching and the teaching activity, and of how they developed their work at the Teacher Training School. In his book, Passalacqua develops at length the theme of moral education, repeating arguments in an effort to show the reader its rational foundations, whereas Silva Jardim is assertive, indicating the social aspects that shape his ideas regarding these issues. Their trajectories come close to each other, however, when they defend that both moral and civic education are indispensable at school.

Passalacqua understands that “to moralize the child is to habituate it in fulfilling its obligations under the viewpoint of its individual and social destiny”, where the morals are rational, eternal, and immutable, having God as their sole basis. He understands that the recognition of God is the ground of morals and that, apart from being a question of faith, “it is a demand of human reason”, whose enlightened conscience could not exist independently of it (p. 95). He says: “moral education must contribute to make out of the child: a good son, a good husband, and a good father; with respect to civil society and the State, a good citizen (subject or sovereign); finally, in relation to God, a good Christian (a priest or a simple believer)” (^{PASSALACQUA, 1887}, p. 94). Passalacqua sees morals under two complementary perspectives: the natural morals, which comprise God, the conscience, and the duty; and the revealed ones, which comprise the morals of the Gospel, that prescribe what is good and what is not. Disagreeing from both Rousseau and Hegel, since the former would say that the human being is all good, whereas the latter would say he is all bad, he introduces the idea that the mesological conditions, the character, and the temperament, are factors that interfere in education, even if the child had in itself the germ of good individual, social, and religious tendencies.

Silva Jardim, when writing about morals, recognizes that a child’s parents may have different beliefs, mentioning that some statesmen have seen lay education as a solution to this problem. However, he rejects both what he called the “anarchic school” and the “theological school”. The latter because it would inspire morals in detriment of scientific development; the former, because it would present children with principles of difficult comprehension. He considered that an entirely lay education would be excessive to children, who benefit from the imagination engendered by the various beliefs. Furthermore, the knowledge of religions would give children a notion of social stages, such as those described in the Comtian law of three stages. Seeking to balance the antagonistic principles he mentioned, Silva Jardim attributes to the teacher, in a clearly positivist tone, the function of

developing systematically in children the love for Mothers, Fathers, and brothers, for relatives in general, for friends; the respect for Women, for the great servants of the Nation and of society, whatever their creed; the attachment to their peers, the veneration of their superiors, and the kindness towards those below them, the love for their homeland, for the Nation’s flag, and finally, for the space they inhabit! principles of eternal truth, so propitious to the betterment of our heart!

Silva Jardim understands that aesthetic education, alongside the moral one, is an essential part of early education. He suggests that through poetic texts, either prose or verse, the idea of inner improvement should be instilled in children. He defends that reading, for being able to change ideas and feelings, is of the utmost importance in the formation of the citizen. One must, however, make a careful choice of texts. Readings of an excessive abstract or critical content would be problematic, because, apart from being poorly understood by children, they would be tiresome. The declamation of poetic texts is fundamental because, according to Jardim, “it will improve emotions and awaken the enthusiasm of solidarity in one single effort” (^{JARDIM, 1884}, p. 15).

In Passalacqua’s conception, educating the individual meant educating a family and the people, therefore the improvement of human faculties should occur under the social and individual points of view. Thus, the school should form the good Christian and a good citizen, instilling in the child the love for country and for national institutions, and teaching her about the political and administrative organization of the State, which should occur within a course of Civic Education. Citing Arthur Loth’s Manuel d’instruction civique, Passalacqua writes that:

‘After leaving school, the son of the peasant and the son of the worker learn nothing else. However, within a few years they are called upon to influence public affairs. As a voter or as a soldier he has in his hands the fate of his country […]’. If that author speaks so about the children that attend French schools, why should we not say the same about the children that study in Brazilian schools? (^{PASSALACQUA, 1887}, p. 128).

Passalacqua has reservations about the kind of schooling offered by the press, since it is produced by individuals with varied political opinions. He thinks that it is not in journalism that “the citizen must form his patriotic heart”, but rather in school. “Our newspapers, with some exceptions, have served of late only to deviate men from the more serious and in-depth studies, fostering lamentably too cursory and superficial a reading” (^{PASSALACQUA, 1887}, p. 128-129). Silva Jardim, on the other hand, apart from having written often for newspapers, employed them in his classes as material for reading and commentary (^{DIAS, 2013}). Like Jardim, Passalacqua defends patriotism as a value to be taught in schools, but from a pedagogical point of view they ground their positions in different ideological bases.

The Intuitive Method

Ever since the Teacher Training School reopened, the debates about teaching methods were on the agenda (SCHELBAUER, 2003). It is worth recalling that two of the topics in the examination for the Fourth Chair dealt with this issue: what would the best teaching method be, and why; and what are the limits between the “intuition method” and the “reflection method”. The Chair’s title itself, in the methodology part, included intuition exercises. Therefore, it is not surprising that the teachers, aware of the contemporary pedagogical debate, had developed their own appropriations of that method. According to ^{Valdemarin (2000}; 2001), the diffusion of the intuitive teaching method reflects an opposition to the abstract and little utilitarian character of school education. Within its proposal, says the author, “the teaching process must progress from the simple to the complex, from what is known to what is ignored, from the facts to their causes, from things to their names, from ideas to words, from principles to the rules, in short, from what can be observed to the abstraction” (^{VALDEMARIN, 2000}, p. 76). Possibly, the closest approximation between Jardim’s and Passalacqua’s pedagogies is to be found in the appropriations of the intuitive method, since for both of them rational and progressive education must start from observation and from the concrete, routine aspects of the child’s life.

As already mentioned, Silva Jardim defends the method of wording as the most adequate to the teaching of reading and writing. Such position, which the Teacher Training School teacher advocates based on João de Deus’s Cartilha Maternal (Maternal Primer), is also explored by Norman A. Calkins in his manual Primeira Lições de Coisas (Primary Object Lessons) (1861), one of the most important works about intuitive teaching, translated to Portuguese by Rui Barbosa in 1881. Calkins argues that the teaching of reading and writing should start with words, in so far as they represent an idea, unlike sounds and letters. Following the intuitive method, Calkins also considers that it is necessary in teaching to employ words that are known by the children (^{VALDEMARIN, 2001}). Silva Jardim has a similar opinion. The examples he uses in his texts concerning didactic materials and exercises indicate that his attention was turned to the children’s experiences, by the use of known vocabulary, as well as by the principle of avoiding abstractions in the initial stages of schooling, which brings him closer to the central aspects of the ideas gathered under the label of “intuitive method” in the last decades of the 19^th century.

According to Jardim, the words used in teaching activities should be part of the childhood universe, and of the child’s surroundings, that being the reason he prescribed the occasional need to change the words employed according with the locale where the teaching activity was being conducted. He recommended that the teacher should allow spontaneous dialogues between children concerning their families, colleagues, children’s events, thereby creating in them the habit of conversation. The same care should be exercised when choosing texts, always avoiding what would be difficult for the child to understand. The most difficult words and expressions should be introduced, as much as possible, through charts or pictures in the classroom, for a better understanding of the object and, consequently, for greater ease of expression. The use of such didactic materials was characteristic of the intuitive method.

Jardim was opposed to the teaching of logic, rhetoric, and grammar to children. He believed that the acquisition of writing abilities would not occur through the knowledge of grammatical concept and rules, but rather by living in an educated milieu, by reading books, and by the writing itself in gradual composition exercises, which should begin by short sentences formulated by the child, and evolve to short narratives of childhood facts or descriptions of objects, until reaching the creation of discourses about moral and artistic themes, and finally the composition of poetry in verse. He adds that within this process there should be curiosity towards vocabulary, searching of the meaning of unknown words in dictionaries, and exercises of replacing words or expressions with similar ones.

He also sees as relevant the exercises of reading out loud and dictation for a better understanding of punctuation and spelling, syllabification and orthography. According to ^{Dias (2013}, p. 130), this methodology had already been used by him in his classes annexed to the Teacher Training School:

Silva Jardim implemented at the Teacher Training School the same teaching method of Portuguese Language he used in his classes in the male section of the Annex Course, introducing the reading of news, followed by the respective commentaries, apart from exercises of locution and expressive reading, and interpretation of the text read, in substitution to the usual logical and grammatical analysis of the texts found in the references. His objective was to help students to set aside grammatical preoccupations, and concentrate their better efforts in the learning of literary production.

Given that at that time the bylaws required from teachers the teaching of grammar, Jardim suggests that such teaching should occur in the gentlest possible way, conforming it to children’s understanding through the observation of rules as used in the texts, written or spoken, that were being used in the classroom. He positions himself against any form of memorizing or rigorous application of formulae, suggesting instead the reduction of grammatical analysis to a bare minimum, such as practical phonetic rules, to improve pronunciation, and verbal inflection and conjugation, to improve their use.

Passalacqua dedicates a brief part of his book to explaining “intuitive teaching”. For him, pedagogy had understood “the reach of this method, and for that reason has taken intuition as the basis of primary instruction”. In his view, intuitive teaching, created by Pestalozzi and Froebel, is that which “addresses the spirit and the heart through the senses”, particularly of sight, and consists in training children to cultivate their faculties by themselves under the guidance of the master, and in conformity with their good instincts (1887, p. 176). From Horace Mann, the pedagogy teacher brings the idea that with such teaching method it is possible to produce results ten times greater. Referring to Calkins, he signals to the possibility of a quicker learning of the writing. When dealing with processes of exposition, Passalacqua mentions that “the intuitive process is an extremely fruitful auxiliary in the kind of primary education that should be given to the popular classes” (1887, p. 155). By associating intuitive teaching and popular education, he comes closer to Buisson’s definition as seen in his famous dictionary:

if the intuitive method in general, that is, the habit of appealing always to this mental outlook, to this native potency that the thinking has of learning the truth because it is the truth; if, let us say, this manner of proceeding is inherent to the human spirit and constitutes, at the same time, the most legitimate and accessible mode of affirmation to everyone, this will be the proper method of popular education (BUISSON, 1887, p.1375).

Passalacqua seemed to be convinced of the advantages of this method, but he remarks that some essential means should be available, without which the method could not be applied. Those means were instruments such as globes, maps, botanical and mineralogical collections etc., that should be organized in school museums. Quoting Rendu, he says that there was no branch of teaching in which collections could not be organized. Therefore, like Jardim, he saw the need for a set of materials adequate to teaching. And also as his positivist colleague, Passalacqua regarded as unfruitful for primary education the mechanical methods or those focused only on memorizing. “The initial state of our instruction, the character of our students, and the inherent complexity of these exercises lead us to think so” (1887, p. 153).

To understand Passalacqua’s view, it is important to recall his intellectual education. He resorts to Alexander Bain and to Baldwin, which he possibly gathered from the work of ^{Compayré (1897}), since the quotes made by this French author are the same that appear in the work of the São Paulo teacher. From Bain, who in this regard reaffirms the Pestalozzian basic principles (BONTEMPI Jr., 2019), Passalacqua retains the idea that intelligence is based on discerning, which in its turn is based on impressions. Next, intellectual education goes through a period of elaborations, and reaches the stage of combination - perception, conception, and reasoning. To explain the progressive feature of intellectual education, he brings to the task the French educator Henri Marion, and splits the stages of the student into infancy, puberty, and adolescence. With Pape-Carpentier, Passalacqua affirms that the educator should not require from the child more than she can give, because such action “often kills the fruit still in flower”.

In Passalacqua’s opinion, the teacher is a “conscientious supervisor of his pupil’s mentality”, and should show him the utility of the study he does (1887, p. 82). For that, he recalls in his own manner a classical Rousseauian principle, saying that the educator should study carefully the nature of the child, observing in her three fundamental drives: curiosity, emulation, and need. The teacher must have principles and rules, because teaching “is the methodical transmission of any knowledge”, from which follows the importance he attributes to the preparation of lessons (1887, p. 146). A good primary teaching, according to Passalacqua, should communicate theoretical and practical knowledges, necessary for the kind of life that the pupil, upon leaving school, has to embrace (1887, p. 161). As to its form, teaching must be intuitive, elementary, analytical-synthetical, slow and recapitulative. This is how Passalacqua, teacher of the São Paulo Teacher Training School, appropriates the fundamental principles of the modern pedagogy, to articulate them to the theological-religious elements that comprise his philosophical basis and his worldview. He selects and, mostly, summarizes and combines a series of fragments from the work of other authors, even those that diverge from his religious orientation, which does not seem to present him with any problem, since his creed is considered the basis upon which Pedagogy and Methodology can and should develop.

Final considerations

Defending the teaching of the Portuguese language without a focus on grammar, Silva Jardim introduced novel methods, such as literacy through wording, based on the ideas of the Portuguese João de Deus, and on speech and writing exercises using daily life texts and dialogues. Apart from that, he combined the Comtian law of the three stages with elements of intuitive teaching. Passalacqua, in his turn, collected in his book pedagogical aspects considered innovative, dealing with physical, moral, and intellectual education, not forgetting to discuss the importance of hygiene and school furniture. Faced with the growing support for a lay education, he considered that there could be no education without God, and that the practice of Christian virtues was essential in the act of education. The fundamental references for these educators come from two rather diverse origins: the Catholic Church and positivism. Nevertheless, both moved among the same references of modern pedagogy, particularly with regard to a rational and progressive education that considered the gradual development of the child and, consequently, adopted the intuitive method.

In the 1880s, the São Paulo Teacher Training School was home to a series of political, religious, and intellectual disputes, quite well known in the historiography of Brazilian education, at least since the publication of ^{Monarcha’s dissertation in 1999}. Besides divergences of that order, teachers gave their courses troubled by doubts and disagreements while the school was being consolidated as an institution, both with respect to aspects established by the schools Bylaws, and regarding the kind of teacher they wished to educate. In the present article, we attempted to show how those disputes permeated the pedagogical ideas and practices conducted at that institution, through the work of Silva Jardim and Camillo Passalacqua. We have shown that, despite their different values and worldviews, both appropriated in their own terms the elements of contemporary pedagogical discourses, such as the precepts of rational education, of gradual and intuitive teaching, among others, to formulate educational conceptions they saw as adequate to teacher education. It is also possible to see how each teacher, in their respective Chairs, and with some pedagogical or didactic autonomy, articulated this repertoire with their political-philosophical and religious perspectives, even when they might mean disobeying the institution’s bylaws, as was the case, for example, of Silva Jardim’s rebellion against the rule regarding the of indication of references.