Da colônia à república: o panorama histórico e dualismo na educação básica brasileira

Abstract

This paper examines the historical trajectory of Basic Education in Brazil, from the colonial period to the Republic, with the aim of identifying the presence of Educational Dualism throughout this process. It shows how the historical trajectory of Brazilian Basic Education reveals the persistence of Educational Dualism, understood in this study as the offer of unequal education to different social groups, according to the position they occupy in society. The research was developed through the analysis of books, scientific articles and legislation related to the history of Brazilian education, based mainly on the studies of Ferreira Jr. (2010), Aranha (2006), Cicone and Moraes (2016), Libâneo (2016) and Saviani (2019). The paper covers the Colonial and Imperial Period, the First Republic and the Military Regime, and the New Republic, with emphasis on the 1988 Constitution and the 1996 Law of Directives and Bases of Education. The analysis shows that Educational Dualism did not emerge at a specific moment, but was built and reconfigured over time, taking different forms: at times through the exclusion of access to school, at times through the separation between education aimed at the elites and education aimed at the lower classes, and, more recently, through differences in quality and teaching conditions within the system itself. It is concluded that the expansion of access, although important, did not eliminate the inequalities historically constructed, which tend to reorganize themselves even amid legal and institutional changes.