History of teaching arithmetic in the end of the Nineteenth Century: analysis of the work of Antonio Bandeira Trajano

Abstract

This article describes the theme of the History of Brazilian Mathematics Education, aimed at defining the task of researching the production and circulation of textbook entitled Aritmética Elementar Ilustrada, of Antonio Bandeira Trajano, published in 1879, successive reprints of this work circulated around the country for more eight decades, reaching the 140th edition in 1964 by Livraria Francisco Alves. To accomplish this goal were also consulted educational programs, ministerial reports and other textbooks of the same period. These sources were analyzed from the articulated concepts of disciplines and school cultures, proposed by André Chervel, as well as the notion appropriation, proposed by Roger Chartier, aiming to articulate such textbook with the production of other authors from the same time. It was possible to observe the existence of a particular methodological way, produced by the author, inserted into the vacuum of a moment of initial expansion of Brazilian primary school education. The practices suggested by the author is characterized as one of the first attempts to apply in the context of mathematics in primary education in Brazil, the intuitive method of teaching, this time in the pedagogical debate topic. This methodological vision was inserted in a clear pragmatic position conducted with certain zeal in the treatment of mathematical concepts related to the contents of elementary arithmetic.