A gênese da Geografia escolar no Brasil: autonomia, currículo e a tensão entre tradição e renovação

Abstract

this article examines the historical formation of school geography in Brazil, tracing its trajectory from the colonial era to republican consolidation. It asks how political, social, and educational factors shaped its development, highlighting the subject’s specificity vis-à-vis academic geography and its role in national schooling. Methodologically, it draws on a literature review focused on the evolution of the school subject and the place of textbooks in configuring it. The analysis shows that Brazilian school geography was not a mere simplification of university knowledge; it emerged as an autonomous field within school culture and, in Brazil, even preceded the academic institutionalization of geography. Geographical knowledge circulated in formal education during the colonial period — especially through Jesuit courses in cosmology and cosmography. Formal institutionalization as an autonomous subject began at the Royal Military Academy (1810) and was consolidated at Colégio Pedro II (1837), from which it spread through the imperial system. In the republican period, the subject underwent significant change under positivism and the Escola Nova movement, resulting in a “conservative modernization”: methodological innovations coexisted with the persistence of classical content. Textbooks were pivotal, with authors such as Aroldo de Azevedo and Mário da Veiga Cabral setting editorial and methodological standards. The study concludes that school geography has been essential to Brazilian education and remains indispensable for interpreting contemporary realities, offering grounds to defend the subject amid current challenges to the humanities. This historical trajectory also evidences the subject’s adaptability, reaffirming its role in forming critical, spatially aware citizens.