HISTORY  OF  PEDRO II SCHOOL

The origin of Pedro II School dates back to the first half of the XVIIIth  century, to the São Pedro Shelter For Orphans, a charity work of the ancient parish of the same name, dowtown Rio de Janeiro city. Bishop Antônio de Guadalupe founded  the São Pedro Scholl for Orphans in 1733, by Provision  of the Ecclesiastic Chamber and changed it in São Joaquim Seminary,  also by Ecclesiastic Provision, in 1739, established in old and big house on Larga [Wide] Street, nowadays Marechal [Marshal] Floriano avenue.

 King João VI, by decree in 1818, extinguished São Joaquim Seminary, its premises being used for the quartering of the soldiers  in the Corps of Artificers and Engineers of the Portuguese Division, wich had just arrived in Brazil.

Prince Regent Pedro, answering to the “appeals of various dwellers”, reestablished São Joaquim Seminary, in 1821, in its original building.

In the time of the Triple regency, Imperial Minister José Lino Coutinho changed, in 1831, the nature  of religious establishment with the implantation of work preparation in the jobs of lathe operator, wood carver, lithographer, as well as military instruction, “arms exercising” for keeping the public order.

During Pedro de Araújo Lima’s Regency,  Temporary Imperial Minister Bernardo Pereira de Vasconcellos, by decree on December, the 2nd 1837, founded the School of Pedro II, upon the Yong Emperor’s honor, on the day of his twelfth birthday. The Imperial School was installed in the premisses of the ancient seminary, renovated by the architect Grandjean de Montigny.

The School of Pedro II was the first school for official secondary instruction in Brazil, characterizing itself as an important element in the construction of the Empire’s project of civilization, of State strengthening and formation of the Brazilian nation. As an official agency of education and culture, co-creator of the conducting élites in the country, the Imperial School was created to be the model for secondary public instruction in the in the Court Conty e other provinces, for the loose classes and for the private teaching establishments.

The composition of teaching staff of renowned intellectuals, the selectivity the students marked by the entrance and promotional examinations, the teaching programs with a classic basis and humanistic tradition and the pay of annual tuition  gave the official secondary teaching a role of preparing the students for undergraduate studies, the School of Pedro II being the only school to grant the Degree of Bachelor of Science and Letters (Decree of  1843) to its graduates, a passport  for direct admission in the undergraduate courses without taking exams in preparatory subjects.

Pedro II School, as of 1889, survives alternate periods of institutional crises expressed by the loss of its patron (Emperor Pedro II), changes in name (National Institute of Secondary Instruction / National Gymnasium) and changes in educational policy (Teaching  Reforms). In spite of the loss of legal privileges (extinction of the degreee of Bachelor of Sciences and Letters) the school continued to be, in the Republic, a place of educational reference for secondary teaching, for the recognition and equation of gymnasiums in the federate states and of the private schools, and a center of cultural sociability. Pedro II School projected itself as a character in the History of Education in Brazil through its head teachers of public knowledge, the course books of national use and its eminent former students, who became in great part the historical  agents of established power, a considerable group of public men instructed by the European paradigms of civilization and progress:

             - Teachers: Joaquim Manoel de Macedo, Antônio Gonçalves Dias, Gonçalves de Magalhães, Capistrano de Abreu, Euclides da Cunha, Farias de Brito, Carlos de Laet, Silvio Romero, João Ribeiro, Eugênio de Raja Gabaglia, Escragnolle Dória, José Veríssimo, José Oiticica, Álvaro Lins, Waldemiro Postch, Delgado de Carvalho, Pedro Calmon and others; 

              -  Students:  Joaquim Nabuco, Barão de Ramiz Galvão, Barão do Rio Branco, Visconde de Taunay, Vieira Fazenda, Washington Luis, Rodrigues Alves, Nilo Peçanha, Hermes Fonseca,  Paulo de Frontin, Carlos de Laet, Raul Pederneiras, Jônathas Serrano, Antenor Nascentes, Manoel Bandeira, Vicente Licínio Cardoso, Hebert Moses, José Eduardo Prado Kelly, Filadelfo de Azevedo, Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco, Fernando Segismundo, Pedro Nava, Alceu Amoroso Lima (Tristão de Atayde), Mário Lago, Gilberto Braga among others.

The big house on Larga [Wide] Street of São Joaquim, later Pedro II Day School, nowdays Downtown Branch, was declared a protected site in 1983 by Historical Patrimony, being recognized as “a  datum of our nationality”  and  keeps a significant part of the institution’s historical memory.

The Old-New Pedro II School – “an instituition endowed with soul and historicity” – reveals itself nowadays as a place of memory, existing factually and legally in the border between past and present , between tradition and modernity.

Dr. Vera Lucia Cabana de Queiroz Andrade, Phd

Teacher of History in Pedro II School