Educação “compatível” para ingênuos e libertos: a comarca de Juiz de Fora (1869-1888)

Abstract

This study investigates, in the judicial district of Juiz de Fora (1869–1888), how guardians justified before the Orphans’ Court the guardianship of ingênuos (children born free after 1871) and freedpeople, taking the legal formula of “compatible education” as a problematizing axis to assess which educational experiences were actually offered. Based on twelve guardianship proceedings, articulated with legislation (the Ordenações Filipinas and the Law of the Free Womb) and complementary sources (local press and administrative series), the research adopts a Foucauldian framework to examine the production of juridical and pedagogical statements that define who may speak, under what conditions, and with what effects of subjection. Methodologically, it combines documentary analysis and discourse critique, mapping circuits of schooling—domestic instruction, public classes (including evening classes), and training for work—and their asymmetric access by legal status, gender, and age. The findings suggest that “compatible education” operated as an apparatus for governing children’s time, reconciling elementary literacy, moral discipline, and productive utility, in line with post-1871 rhetoric and the debates of 1878, while revealing the coexistence of regulated inclusion and exclusionary practices. The contribution lies in bringing family law and the history of education into closer conversation, illuminating the juridical-pedagogical grammar that framed ingênuos and freedpeople in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.