The school objects transnationalization at the end of the 19th century

Abstract

This article aims at reflecting about the school objects transnationalization3 at the end of the nineteenth century, focusing on the chairs. During this structure period of the modern, public and mandatory school, in many western countries, it was seen an international circulation of speeches and knowledgmentes about the children's body, the school citizen body, in the Public Hygiene and School field. Besides the pedagogical, medical and hygienic issues, the industrialization, the technological inventions and the globalization, propitiate the manufacturation and the difusion of a new object that would be much more necessary to the functioning of the teaching institutions, the school desk. Through the school furniture industries' catalogues, I argue about the desk more hegemonic patterns, exposed at the twentieth century Universal Expositions. I highlight the American and French factories which disputed the leadership of the school furniture market, inside a context in which the school emerges as an important consumer market. Through the Jury Report of the Pedagogical Exposition in 1883, in Rio de Janeiro, it is possible to notice the technical and hygienic features that, in Brazil, were taken into account when the desks were made. As a result, it is evident the two way street relation among school, industry and the Universal Expositions. On the one hand, the school rotates the market. On the other hand, the State depends on the market for production, in a high quantity and in a short period of time, of a standard furniture which improves the teaching expansion.