"Contra as ruínas do mau estudo": a construção do conhecimento de civilidade nos pressupostos educacionais do iluminismo português (1759-1800)

Abstract

The 18th century in Portugal was marked by the development of an intellectual thought that tried to modernize not only the Portuguese administrative machinery, but also the education and knowledge production in the Metropolis and its Colonies. The present work aims, in light of History of Education, to understand the Sociability of Educational Knowledge as an enlightenment pedagogical proposal according to five axes: the Knowledge Matrix, the Knowledge Ordination, the Knowledge Institutionalization, the Knowledge Regulation and the Knowledge Agents or Civilizing Agents. Theoretically, we are based on the German sociologist Norbert Elias, thinking of education as a conditioning that is capable of making men civilized. This thought takes place in a historical teaching-learning process that is both, essential to the so-called development of ways and behaviors and directly responsible for the formation of a model of civilization and knowledge. The English historian Peter Burke also appears in the theoretical basis of the research, more specifically, to deal with the Social History of Knowledge and how this element is conceptualized in historiography. The methodological proposal is based on the “Sociability of Educational Knowledge”, because, when studying some Portuguese enlightenment authors, such as Luiz Antônio Verney and Antônio Ribeiro Sanches, in addition to the University of Coimbra Statutes, the Historical Compendium of the University of Coimbra, journals that used to circulate in Lisbon, Manuscripts from the Overseas Historical Archive, Tumble Tower and the Council Terms of the Rio Grande do Norte Captaincy, we examined the stages, conditions and divergences that educational and civility knowledge went through to get consolidated in the Pombaline Period. Chronologically, we are situated between 1759, the beginning of the pombaline reforms in public education, and 1800, the maximum limit for the analyzing sources. In this research, we found convergences and divergences between the assumptions of Portuguese enlightenment and the pombaline reforms in public education as well as several factors that hampered the achievement of this new educational paradigm in Portugal and Overseas.