Anísio Teixeira’s Experiences at Teachers College and the Quest to Foster Democracy Through Education in Brazil

The Brazilian Context in the Late 1890s and Early 1900s

To fully understand Teixeira’s educational perspectives and trajectory, we must first acknowledge that he was born when both education in Brazil and the country itself were going through relevant transformations. In 1900, the sociopolitical context in his homeland was uncertain; 11 years before, a military coup d’état overthrew the monarchy and put an end to the empire led by Dom Pedro II. The beginning of the 20th century became a time to redefine the new republic’s objectives and what building a democratic society would mean. The country’s novel political regime also signified a shift in the strategies adopted by the elites to insert Brazil among the modern nations. Amid the distinct strategies adopted, approaching the United States as a privileged partner was central in the new plans and policies developed by Brazilian public officials and intellectuals. This need to adopt alternative perspectives inspired by the United States impacted education policy making and how political actors conceived public schooling. The discussions that emerged at the end of the 19th century and extended until the beginning of the 20th century influenced Anísio Teixeira’s views on how schools could shape Brazil’s republican and democratic future.

For the republic’s architects, approaching the United States was twofold: pragmatic and ideological. On the more practical side, Washington emerged as one of Brazil’s main commercial partners even before the empire ended. The commercial and economic axis in Brazilian external affairs had begun to move from Europe to the United States in 1870. At the beginning of the 20th century, the U.S. market had already absorbed more than half of its coffee, its main export, 60% of rubber, and most of its exported cocoa (Ricupero, 2013). It was natural that the desire to maintain a good relationship would continue even with the change in political regime. Still, these rubrics are surprising when one considers that Brazil’s interests have conflicted with those of the United States since the mid-19th century. Analyzing the Brazil–United States relations in the last century, Bandeira (2006) emphasized that the country did not always passively accept the U.S. predominance despite the dependence on coffee exports and the North American market. However, when the republic replaced the monarchy, the country redefined its position. The need to please Brazil’s leading commercial partner partially explained a leniency toward Washington’s proposals. When one looks at the ideological part of this relationship, the change in Brazil’s position becomes even more evident.

While European nations had been the model of society to be followed during the empire, the republic diverted its attention to the United States. The “Americanization” of Brazil seemed the obvious path to follow, mainly after the abolition of slavery, the proclamation of the republic, and the adoption of the presidential system (Cervo & Bueno, 2002). The similarities between the two countries rendered an approximation and a bilateral relationship characterized by friendship and understanding. The United States identified an opportunity to extend its influence over South America and keep European interests away from the countries in the region; Washington promptly recognized the Brazilian republic after its establishment (Cervo & Bueno, 2002). In one of the most important works about the interactions between Brazil and the United States in the years after the monarchy’s downfall, Bandeira (1978) emphasized that the Americanization of Brazilian society represented the end of colonial heritage, industrialization, and the progress of democracy.

The republic synthesized the ideal of modernity, and republicanism in the United States emerged as the ideal that the Brazilian elites wanted to reproduce. Aiming to break away from everything that harkened to the past, republicans suggested adopting radical measures, including the expulsion of European capitals from Brazil. Further, the provisional government elaborated a new constitution, heavily inspired by its U.S. counterpart, embraced federalism, and elected a new flag, very similar to the U.S. standard: 13 horizontal stripes of yellow alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the canton, bearing 21 white stars (Bandeira, 1978). The national flag soon gave way to the one used today, but the name elected by the new government—United States of Brazil—reflected the “Americanization” that characterized the country until the 1960s. The inspiration from U.S. society also marked the education debates in the empire’s last years and the first decades of the new republic.

Anisío Teixeira’s First Experiences in Education

Anísio Spínola Teixeira was born in Caetité, in the Northeastern state of Bahia, on July 12, 1900. He was the son of Anna Spínola Teixeira and Deocleciano Pires Teixeira, who formed a traditional and wealthy family in the Bahian countryside. Mr. Teixeira, his father, was a prominent local political leader and intended to prepare the young Anísio to follow his steps into politics. Yet, the boy’s solid training in two Jesuit Catholic schools, Instituto São Luiz Gonzaga in Caetité, and Colégio Antônio Vieira in Salvador, made him believe that the best option was to join the clergy. Before entering the Society of Jesus, Anísio Teixeira migrated to Brazil’s capital, Rio de Janeiro, to initiate his undergraduate studies. After earning a law degree from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Teixeira returned to Bahia. Using his father’s political connections, the young man approached and asked the governor, Francisco Calmon, to give him the position of public attorney in his hometown (Abreu, 1960). Instead, the governor offered Teixeira the position of General Director of Public Instruction of Bahia, with the primary duty to direct and restructure public instruction in the state (Abreu, 1960; Nunes, 2010).

Teixeira received the nomination with surprise: he did not feel prepared to work in an area strange to his academic training. ² Nevertheless, this unexpected assignment would be crucial to who he would become and how the opinions supported during his life as an education reformist would develop. In addition, the appointment made a personal conflict arise: Should he follow the example of European nations, which had been central in his own educational and cultural experiences, or should he look forward and learn from the rising pedagogical theories of North America? Because of some events in his life, Teixeira became closer to U.S. perspectives on education, despite having Europe as the first reference in his intellectual and academic trajectory. In addition to some of his mentors, influenced by the pedagogical ideas developed in the United States, one specific event marked his trajectory: being a student in the International Institute of Teachers College.

Upon taking the chair of general inspector of education in 1924, Anísio Teixeira was an inexperienced young man, unaware of the challenges faced by Brazilian education. Aiming to develop his skills in and knowledge on schooling, he decided to approach intellectuals interested in the subject and the functioning of educational systems in other parts of the world. Given a background of academic excellence and an aristocratic upbringing, which rendered him the right connections, it was easy for Teixeira to approach Governor Calmon and Antônio Carneiro Leão, a prominent Brazilian educator. Analyzing his first years as the head of education in Salvador, Nunes (2010) argued that Carneiro Leão and Calmon soon became Teixeira’s primary interlocutors and guided him in his first conversations with education theory. Also drawing on this relationship, Abreu (1960) highlighted that Carneiro Leão introduced the book American Methods of Education by Belgian writer Omer Buyse to Calmon, who later advised Teixeira to read it. The book significantly impacted Teixeira ³ ; it opened a new world to the novice educator, who could expand his knowledge of different ways of seeing public schooling. Through Buyse’s work, he became acquainted with the ideas of John Dewey and the educational strategies adopted in the United States. From the economic and social perspective, the book showed him how the association of schools, engaged families, and entrepreneurial spirit could contribute to a prosperous society, which could threaten European supremacy (Warde, 2005). The North American schooling model realized the ideals pursued by Brazilian intellectuals at the beginning of the 20th century, during the transition from an old to a new order, based on the democratic republic.

To understand the functioning of educational systems in other parts of the world, Anísio Teixeira did not resort only to theory. He also traveled to Europe and the United States to see how schools worldwide operated and how Brazil could benefit from the lessons learned abroad. ⁴ Teixeira’s travel journals reveal that his experience with Brazilian education and his knowledge about schools in Bahia influenced how he appraised information on foreign education systems. In 1925, Teixeira obtained permission from Governor Calmon to accompany the archbishop of Bahia in the celebrations of the Holy Year in Rome. He also took the trip to tour some European cities and visit educational institutions in Belgium and France. Although this was his first study and observation trip to schools abroad, the travel diaries show that Teixeira was more interested in describing natural and urban landscapes, everyday scenes, and people. The reports also reveal his sympathy for the monarchy and how he felt at home in the Old Continent. The remarks said little about the schools he visited; his impressions of European educational theory are absent (Teixeira, 1925). Analyzing the notes about Europe, Pedrosa and Silva (2020) also called attention to the style chosen by Teixeira. His writing is personal, informal, and fragmented in those entries, at times poetic or philosophical (Pedrosa & Silva, 2020). Given that he spent less than a year working with public instruction, his inexperience in education could explain the lack of focus. However, given Teixeira’s traditional education and Catholic upbringing, the visit to Europe was an opportunity to expand his faith, erudition, and already existing knowledge. As Cardoso (2013) noted, in this trip, Teixeira “dived into his inner world” (p. 17).

Upon returning from Europe, Teixeira focused on his work and learned about schools and educational statistics in Bahia. While having more time to experience the main issues faced by his home state, he developed a sense that public schools needed to become modern. And this modernity, as Warde (2005) noted, was closely linked to what the North American standards offered, especially in comparison with the obsolete European model. Inspired by this idea, the Brazilian educator embarked on an exploratory visit to the United States and toured schools and institutions for four months. If traveling to Europe meant being in touch with what was comfortable and familiar, the same cannot be said about Teixeira’s first visit to the United States three years later. Unlike the previous experience, the time the educator spent in North America would change how he assessed his personal beliefs and faced education. Aboard the Pan America ship in April 1927, Teixeira (2006) noted in his travel diary,

I go to America in the spirit of a student. I renew my curiosity, enthusiasm for the new and the unknown. I don’t foresee my testimony about the people that today are the object of so much curiosity and the source of so many lessons. I have so much to learn. The sense of traveling for tourism, for pleasure, is what I lack. (p. 201)

More experienced in educational topics, Teixeira visited the United States with a more critical perception and a renewed focus. He was aware that this visit would help expand his knowledge of education in a significant way. Traveling as the Director of Bahia’s Public Instruction, he hoped that his experiences in the United States would contribute to the reform he planned to put forth in his home state. In the travel journal, he argued,

If my trip is a specialized study trip, through which I look for positive information elements, it will not fail; it must also be a personality builder, educational, in the sense that new knowledge and contacts educate us. Nor am I so developed that I don’t lend myself to the influences of an excursion like this. (Teixeira, 2006, p. 205)

In the seven months he spent in the United States, Teixeira was a student in the summer session at TC. He visited schools and research institutions, becoming more familiar with the U.S. theories of education, first introduced to him through the work of Omer Buyse. These experiences in the country also influenced Anísio Teixeira personally. Like his motherland, the new republican Brazil, which was trying to find its way forward through having two models of society—Europe and the United States—as an inspiration to develop its own identity, Teixeira found himself trapped between two worlds. In an interview with Odorico Tavares in 1952, Teixeira recalled that in the 1920s, he experienced a clash between the two philosophies that inspired him personally and academically. However, this “struggle in his spirit” dissipated after his time in the United States. He recalled, “Around 1927, I felt that I had overcome these deadly contradictions, reconciling myself with the philosophy that first influenced me, the naturalistic and scientific spirit from which the Jesuits tried to keep me away from” (Tavares, 2002, p. 199).

Analyzing Teixeira’s experiences in the United States, Fernando de Azevedo (1960) argued that he moved in another direction after overcoming the crisis he suffered in his youth. He left Brazil as a believer and returned as an agnostic (Azevedo, 1960). Education and the formation of children, however, became his religion. During the visit to the United States, the educator also took the opportunity to be a student in the summer courses offered by Teachers College, Columbia University, where he would receive a master’s degree one year later. He recollected the moment as one that granted him “not only this spiritual peace but a program of struggle for education in Brazil” (Tavares, 2002, p. 199). Teixeira was born and raised in Catholicism, but in the United States, he converted to Deweyism. The following section discusses how the educational philosophies at the Teachers College’s International Institute aligned with Anisío Teixeira’s conceptions of democracy and how the work of scholars in the Institute influenced the ways Teixeira interpreted education as an essential tool in constructing a democratic Brazil.

The International Institute of Teachers College and Democratic Education

Before reflecting on Anísio Teixeira’s education at TC, it is helpful to understand the establishment and the goals of the International Institute, where he would be a master’s student in the last years of the 1920s. Writing on the history of TC, Lawrence A. Cremin and his colleagues explained that the creation of the Institute reflected some concerns of the College’s administration in the aftermath of World War I. In a speech to alumni in 1918, Dean James E. Russell (1897–1927) pointed out that the postwar order demanded a new philosophy of education that could build democratic citizenship. Columbia University’s president Nicholas M. Butler (1902–1945) shared this view but expanded it, emphasizing the necessity of advancing harmonious international relations to contribute to world citizenship through schooling (Cremin et al., 1954). With the help of a US$1 million grant from the General Education Board, recently founded by John D. Rockefeller, the establishment of the International Institute in 1923 was a direct response to the pleadings of Dean Russell and President Butler and the idea that the College needed to look to education for internationalism (Cremin et al., 1954).

Since its creation, TC has been welcoming to international students. Following the trust in peace and cooperation among nations, which marked the 1920s and was fostered by prominent figures, including the former president of the United States Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921), the College’s decision to create the International Institute reinforced this feature. The Institute had the fundamental objective of promoting international understanding through its foreign student body (Bu, 2020; Cremin et al., 1954). After its establishment, the number of pupils from abroad rose exponentially. However, these were no ordinary students. Considering the student body in the 1920s and the 1930s, Liping Bu (1997) noticed that hundreds of international graduate students had considerable prior professional accomplishments. They were commonly specialists eager to learn about the democratic experience in the United States and tried to identify ideas and practices applicable to their countries, having education as the solution to social problems at home (Bu, 1997). In this sense, a publication from the Institute (n.d.) argued,

The function of the foreign student in the dissemination and unification of culture has not been clearly recognized. . . . Those interested in the progress of culture and of learning or of the development of an international understanding and the elimination of international conflicts, too little recognize the significant opportunity offered by the large number of foreign students within our gates. . . . The modern world is a world of democracy: cultures are stable in proportion as they are shared in by the masses of the people. . . . Hence the foreign student of education is far more significant in the interchange of cultural achievements than the foreign student of the past. (p. 2)

Conscious of those students’ importance for the College’s objectives, the International Institute made special efforts to accommodate their needs, including designing special courses and offering scholarships for international candidates. The Institute facilitated the integration of students from different parts of the world through classes that presented them with a panorama of education in the United States and included visits to public schools. According to a publication from the Institute (n.d.), considerable financial support was available “to give some 75 to 100 students annually familiarity with various types of schools in New England, the Middle States, and the adjacent South” (p. 4). Some international students also had subsidies at their disposal. One of the most common forms of funding, the Macy Grant, was offered by V. Everit Macy, chairman of the College’s board of trustees, and covered living expenses, travel, and tuition. Many of the students who received those grants had held important positions in their home governments and were appointed by their education ministries to receive financial assistance (Bu, 1997). As Bu (1997) noted, the selection of candidates for scholarships and grants was not entirely based on merit or need but on the potential influence of the recipient on their home educational system.

The College’s faculty members were also eager to promote understanding and democratic ideals through their teaching. Considering the importance of professors to the students’ formation, Cortina (2019) highlighted that, from 1923 to 1938, leading scholars such as John Dewey, William Russell, Isaac Kandel, and Paul Monroe occupied relevant roles within the Institute and emerged as pioneers in exploring educational systems around the world. Critically assessing the role of the Institute in the founding of the field of comparative education, Bu (2020) argued that faculty at Teachers College believed that the U.S. democracy and its educational system could influence international relations and the world with their values and practices. Monroe, who had contemplated an education center for international students even before the war, envisioned the center as a means of spreading and interpreting democracy and developing international understanding (Bu, 2020). The International Institute’s publications reflected the conception that international students—named “foreign” in the reports—would be central in the endeavor:

The foreign student of education in the United States at the present time is definitely and consciously only interested in studying the entire technique of a democratic education, of inquiry into the effects in the American democracy and in acquiring or adapting such of the procedures as may be applicable with modifications to other social groups. . . . From no other single land has the attendance been as large or the influence as formative. But from wherever the democratic ferment is working, students of education will find their way to America. (International Institute of Teachers College, n.d., p. 3)

Between 1920 and 1938, when the Institute ended its activities, 25 Brazilian educators studied at TC—more than from any other nation in Latin America. The International Institute’s attempt to spread American educational methods and ideas overseas could not have been more effective than its relationship with Anísio Teixeira (Dávila, 2003). The Institute influenced the formation of Teixeira as an educator and offered him the answers he was already trying to find. It presented Teixeira with the tools to be the expert he would become and, more than that, to choose the path he wanted to take in his personal journey.

Teixeira’s Brief Experience at Teachers College (1927)

Anísio Teixeira first visited TC in 1927. This initial experience was part of a seven-month trip commissioned by the government of Bahia, which included other activities, such as visits to schools in different parts of the United States. According to Governor Calmon, this was Teixeira’s chance to study and observe the American methods and the educational institutions that could serve as a model for schooling in Bahia (Nunes, 2000a). Before going on field trips to visit the schools, Teixeira spent some weeks as a student in the International Institute’s summer session. There, Teixeira had the opportunity to learn more about educational theories and how schooling could influence the creation of a liberal and democratic society. This section discusses Anísio Teixeira’s experiences at TC and how he developed his thinking on the relationship between democracy and schooling while studying at the International Institute of TC.

Although those abbreviated classes could not offer him a degree in education, he was eager to learn as much as possible in a short-term period. The correspondence between Heloise Brainerd, the chief in the Division of Education in the Pan American Union, and the U.S. Bureau of Education exemplifies his enthusiasm. As preparation for Teixeira’s visit, she wrote a letter asking if they could send some of their publications to a foreigner interested in the “various phases of American education, particularly primary, vocational, and health education and the organization of normal schools” (Brainerd, 1927). Brainerd also mediated the communication between Teixeira and Isaac L. Kandel, one of the International Institute’s most prominent scholars. In their correspondence, Kandel argued that Teixeira’s planning was too ambitious—“as it usually is with foreign students”—and advised that he register for a minimal number of classes. ⁵ If needed, the student could share his problems with him or seek advice from professors Lester Wilson and Milton del Manzo (Kandel, 1927). A letter written by Teixeira to Archimedes Guimarães, his substitute as Bahia’s director of education, shows that he decided to enroll in three classes only. The message also gives us an idea of how he perceived his condition as a student at TC right after getting to New York:

As for my current courses—a general education course, a course in philosophy of education and one in current teaching methods—I must tell you that I am making the best of them. The summer courses here are particularly intensive and frankly for those who have three months of English they are really difficult to follow. (Teixeira, 1927a)

Despite not having English as his predominant language, Teixeira took very detailed notes of his classes in the summer of 1927. For the Introduction to Education class, taught by William C. Bagley, G. F. Williams, and Dean Russell, he addressed topics such as “What Is Health?,” “Outstanding Problems in the Professional Education of Teachers,” and “Education and International Understanding.” The examinations at TC also helped him understand how he could use the new knowledge. Among the questions in the Philosophy of Education class taught by Robert Raup, Teixeira had to delve into the viewpoints advanced in the course and discuss those that would have furthest reaching effect on his thinking and occupation (ArqATeixeira,1927). Although the notes show that Teixeira had a deep understanding of the topics addressed by his instructors, he highlighted his difficulties to his Bahian colleague regarding the methods of teaching at the university:

I have always been late in my readings and you know how one of the peculiarities of American education is that the text-book or the source-book precedes the lesson and the class, while between us the book illustrates, expands, completes the teacher’s lesson. Between us, the book follows the class. So that it is not always possible for me to prepare my classwork perfectly, I suffer a reduction in my performance. In any case, I have no reason to complain and every day I am more delighted to have come to this country for studies. (Teixeira, 1927a)

In a letter to Guimarães some weeks later, Teixeira revealed that he had doubts about the fall because he could continue studying at TC, and he wanted to visit schools across America. Moreover, in the regular winter session, he would have the opportunity to have an “admirable course” on Education in America, “specially organized for foreign students.” He finished the letter asking if it would be prejudicial for the Bahian government if he stayed a little longer until January (Teixeira, 1927a). Probably, the answer was yes. Anísio Teixeira followed his original schedule and toured some schools in the United States after finishing the summer classes at TC.

Although the visits to schools had been in his initial plans, the Brazilian educator had the help of professors Mabel Carney ⁶ and Milton del Manzo ⁷ to plan the trips and connect with principals and educational leaders in different parts of the country. The faculty’s assistance to this project shows that, despite his brief time at the International Institute, Anísio Teixeira left a mark on his instructors. In one of the messages directed at Dr. James E. Gregg, the principal of Hampton Institute in Virginia, Carney referred to Teixeira as “one of the most alert and interesting visitors you have had for some time” (Carney, 1927). In the letters, Carney and del Manzo describe him as a “foreign student” interested in rural, urban, and industrial education, highlighting that the institutions would benefit from his presence.

The visit to schools and educational institutions in six U.S. states fascinated Teixeira. It made him realize that John Dewey’s educational philosophy was at the center of schooling practices in various districts across the United States. This experience inspired him to write American Aspects of Education (Aspectos Americanos de Educação), published in 1927. In this book, he summarized visits to schools in New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, and New York, analyzing and describing how educational establishments operated in those states. He dedicated the publication’s first portion to discussing the education fundamentals in the United States, highlighting the ideas developed by Dewey and the need to reinterpret Bahian education considering Dewey’s concepts. In the book’s first words, Teixeira (2006) argued,

In the United States, John Dewey is the philosopher who most sharply traced the fundamental theories of American education. No other thinker is given such a salient place there in the systematization of modern educational theory. To present, therefore, in Bahia, in summary, as faithful as possible, the ideas with which Dewey fixes the current meaning of education seemed to me relatively favorable to arouse a substantial interest in the revision of our own conceptions (p. 30)

As the excerpt evinces, the central idea in the report ⁸ was to present Dewey’s ideas to an audience unfamiliar with his work and to promote a revision of the notions that had inspired educational theories and practices in Bahian public schools. Likewise, the book served as an embryonic attempt for Teixeira to connect education to a concept that would be fundamental in his life’s work: democracy. And the inspiration for Teixeira comes, unmistakably, from the United States and the educational theories that stem from the country’s ideals and society. In his perspective, “If America has any lesson to teach the world if some great ideal sustains its civilization and gives strength and meaning to its work—that lesson and this ideal are embodied in democracy” (Teixeira, 2006, p. 49). The link between education and the construction of a democratic society becomes more evident in the second chapter of American Aspects of Education. According to Teixeira (2006),

Education, understood as the supreme social function, tends to be the conservative agency of society and the agency of its constant development and progress. Since its specific function consists of a permanent and progressive adaptation of man to social life, its problem will be restricted, in our days, to overcoming the economic barriers that still divide men and to reconciling a nationalist purpose of education with a social purpose vaster and more universal. (pp. 50–51)

Anísio Teixeira (2006) argued that because democracy embraces moral and social meaning, it must demand a social function from everyone and offer all individuals the opportunity to develop their distinctive capabilities. He concluded that “democratic education, according to Dewey, is the education of humanity, in its proper sense, not for a privileged class but all men” (Teixeira, 2006, p. 54). The educator dedicated the last part of the account to what he observed in the schools he had visited, and how their organization, finances, methods, and administration could serve as a model to public schools in Brazil.

The trip to the United States transformed how Teixeira saw education and planned to reform schooling in his home state. More than this, it also meant a change in how he wanted to conduct his life. Before this experience, Teixeira was unsure whether to pursue a political career that would satisfy his father, or follow his religious vocation and join the clergy. After the months spent in the United States, he realized that his true calling was education. In a letter to his father, Teixeira (1927b) confessed,

During that time [in the United States], I studied, visited schools, made good friends, and I believe I learned a little. The appointment with which Dr. Calmon surprised me at the beginning of his government marked my career. And today, out of taste and the orientation that my studies have taken, I intend not to stray further from the field of education where I started my life. These are the dispositions that I bring from America, and I want to believe that Brazil and Bahia, despite all the annoyances of the newspapers and all the fluctuations in politics, will help me, or at least not impede my desire. No job broader or more necessary than this could make me fall in love [like this]. And above all, irreducibly idealistic as I seem to be, no one else will be so dear to my heart and intelligence.

Anísio Teixeira’s experiences also opened doors for him in the United States. The excellent impression left on his professors rendered him an invitation from Professor Monroe, the International Institute’s director, to extend his studies towards a master’s certification. Teixeira would return in 1928 as a recipient of a Macy Grant to continue his studies as a graduate student at TC.

Teixeira Returns to TC as a Graduate Student (1928–1929)

Anísio Teixeira’s return to TC was not as simple as he probably wanted it to be. Analyzing Teixeira’s arrival in Bahia, after the months spent in the United States, Viana Filho (1990) argued that he decided to remain silent about the possibility of getting back to New York, despite having already received the invitation to hold a full scholarship. This silence would be the strategy he adopted to ease his religious mentors, who expected Teixeira to join the clergy, and his father, who expected him to enter politics (Viana Filho, 1990). However, the archives reveal that a more practical order delayed his return: his boss, Governor Calmon, was not convinced that it would be a good fit to send him back so soon. In December 1927, Teixeira wrote to Monroe suggesting that Ignacio Tosta Filho, the head of the Secondary Education Department, receive the scholarship. ⁹ However, as the correspondence with Archimedes Guimarães showed, he wanted to be in the United States for a little longer. Two months before classes started at TC, Teixeira wrote to Paul Monroe informing him that Tosta Filho could not go to the United States for personal reasons. He then inquired as to whether the original offer made to him was still available. ¹⁰ In this letter, we can also confirm that the governor of Bahia did not want Anísio Teixeira to return to the United States so soon. Still, because the government was so interested in the offer, ¹¹ the governor reconsidered and decided to give him another leave of absence to spend an entire school year at TC (ArqATeixeira,1927). In 1928, Teixeira left Brazil for a second time to become a graduate student at TC.

If Anísio Teixeira’s first visit was full of discoveries and bewilderment, his subsequent experience at TC focused on more specific objectives. He wanted to become an education specialist and improve Bahian education, inspired by what he would learn during his academic training. Considering his 1928–1929 academic year classes, A. Rocha (2020) noticed that Anísio Teixeira attended courses with more general subjects, ¹² such as “The Curriculum. A comprehensive view of basic considerations: historical, comparative, philosophical, sociological, psychological, and experimental.” These courses were offered by several professors within TC, such as George Counts ¹³ and William Kilpatrick, who would become significant inspirations for Teixeira in the absence of John Dewey, his paragon. As Warde (2005) highlighted, Dewey was on a long international trip that kept him away from TC when the Brazilian educator was a student at the College. Teixeira also attended Philosophy of Education, taught by Kilpatrick, and The Economic Effect of Education, led by Counts; he refrained from enrolling in disciplines offered by Edward Thorndike. The latter represented ideas misaligned with Teixeira’s belief in education (Warde, 2005). ¹⁴

Although heavily inspired by the U.S. educational model and having the lessons learned at TC as guidelines for the reforms he wanted to introduce in Brazil, Teixeira was aware that adjustments were needed. Like what José Veríssimo proposed decades before, Teixeira acknowledged that his compatriots were Brazilians and not Yankees. As Viana Filho (1990) noted, the educational models learned at TC were not absolute and definitive; instead, they needed to be enhanced and perfected. This reasoning was evident in the two reforms he started to work on while studying at the College: primary education and normal schools. Writing to Archimedes Guimarães, Teixeira explained that he would send him “a multitude of little things,” teaching material that could serve as an inspiration for schools in Bahia. He warned, however, that not everything was adaptable, so they had to make sure that there was a “Bahian replica of all the materials that can facilitate teaching” (Teixeira, 1929). In correspondence some months later, he delved into the problem of teacher professional development, highlighting that the lack of funding could “kill normal schools by inanition,” especially those in the countryside. Here, Teixeira shows that his experiences at TC also expanded his knowledge of how other educational systems could contribute to schooling in Brazil. Perhaps inspired by a course taught by Mabel Carney and Fannie Dunn, Rural Education and Country Life, Mexico appears as an example of what the Brazilian normal schools could be. Reflecting on the plans to foster teachers’ professional development, Teixeira (1929) pondered,

Mexico has created a rural school rigorously adapted to the primitive social study of the people. The school is a social center for studies, recreation, and all sorts of activities. The teacher is a “social worker.” The houses are simple. Schoolwork is the life of the locality. Books only appear as supplements, as aids to the progress of the different exercises in which teacher and child are engaged. This [project] is carried out through special rural normal schools that prepare teachers for this distinctive Mexican school.

The time Anísio Teixeira spent in TC also offered him the first contact with a more scientific perspective on the world, especially connected to the experimental method. In Lima’s (1960) conception, this new viewpoint opened opportunities for Teixeira to think of education as the tool through which social change could happen. Conceiving humanity from an optimistic standpoint, the educational philosophy at TC led him to believe that individuals would have transformative power over nature and, through experience, change reality for the better (Lima, 1960). He shared this perception in a letter to his friend Guimarães, sometime before coming back to Brazil:

From America I will take, above all, the independence and freedom of intelligence that my past studies gave me. More than education, it was this virile and human modern philosophy that I occupied myself with during these months, so fast and so intense, that I am spending here. The definitive acceptance of a scientific attitude in explaining all the phenomena of life gave me not only a rare intellectual tranquility, but also a program of action.

Inspired by this spirit and after receiving a master of arts in education at TC, Anísio Teixeira returned to Brazil to implement this program of action and promote change in his home state’s schools. Upon returning to Bahia, he presented a report entitled “Suggestions for the Gradual Reorganization of the Bahian Education System,” inspired by his studies at the College. Analyzing the document’s content, Lima (1978) summarized its main proposals, including the expansion of the school system, pedagogical modernization of the primary school, increasing compulsory public schooling up to secondary level, improvement of teaching methods, reorganization of rural schools emphasizing adult education, and the restructuring of normal schools. The plan also demanded financial and technical resources for professional development courses, including opportunities for training abroad (Lima, 1978). Although Teixeira presented evidence and different tools to finance the reforms, the governor Vital Henrique Batista Soares, who replaced Goés Calmon in 1928, deemed his proposals not feasible. Because Vital Soares’s reception and support for the reform were insufficient compared with the educational challenges in Bahia, Anísio Teixeira stepped down from the education command in November 1929 (Carbello & Ribeiro, 2015).

After his dismissal as general inspector of education, Teixeira decided to dedicate his time to academia and teaching. Before coming to TC, he wanted to reform schooling in his home state. After the experiences and lessons learned at the College, he expanded his ambitions and directed them to improve education in his home country. In the 1930s, Anísio Teixeira would occupy a prominent place in the movement that aimed to rethink his country’s education and become one of the most prestigious Brazilian educators.

The Anísio Shaped by Teachers College

The time Anísio Teixeira spent at TC and his experiences in the United States would be a turning point in his life and how he would elaborate his philosophy of education. Teixeira’s trajectory reveals that his development as an educator happened amid a favorable historical context in Brazil and the United States. While the social and educational debates in his home country put the United States at the center as the model to be followed, one of the most prestigious schools of education in North America wanted to attract international students and teach them American values. Both ends had one specific objective: to expand and strengthen democracy. The young Anísio Teixeira, favored by his upbringing and personal connections, took the opportunity to be a student at the International Institute at Teachers College, learn theory, and develop a plan that he could put in practice in Brazil. After his return to his home country, Teixeira assumed the directorship of the Rio de Janeiro school system and enacted reforms inspired by his experiences at TC. He aimed to restructure the Rio normal school as an Institute of Education modeled after the College and created an experimental elementary school at the Institute inspired by TC’s Horace Mann School (Dávila, 2003). In the years after he graduated, the Brazilian political context seemed to be favorable to change.

In the book Education and the Brazilian Crisis, Teixeira (1956) recalled, “In the late 1920s and 1930s, it seemed that we were prepared to rebuild our schools. The awareness of mistakes was becoming more and more palpitating, and the atmosphere of revolutionary preparation was propitious for reorganization” (p. xiii). During those years, Teixeira began working as a teacher at the Salvador Normal School, where he taught philosophy and history of education. In 1930, he published the first translation of two essays by John Dewey, which were printed together under the title Life and Education (Vida e Educação). Moreover, the “Anísio shaped by America,” as Monteiro Lobato dubbed him, devoted himself to articulating with other prominent education thinkers and spearheaded a movement for reforms in Brazilian public schools through the Manifesto of the Pioneers of New Education (Manifesto dos Pioneiros da Educação Nova). Launched in 1932, the Manifesto advocated for the scientific organization of Brazilian public schools, which should be secular, gratuitous, mandatory, and based on coeducation. According to Teixeira (1956), a constructive impetus and a special effort to restore the school characterized the first phase of the reformist movement, which strived to improve the quality of schools. The campaign was for the reform of methods and the implementation of new types of education. But, as Teixeira (1956) reminded us, we know how revolutions begin, but not how they end. The reformist incentives soon dissipated, and Teixeira left his educational projects on standby until 1946, when he was invited to assume a position at UNESCO (Nunes, 2000b).

Translating ideas into action was one of the main concerns in Anísio Teixeira’s educational philosophy. He manifested this aim in the projects he participated in, but especially in one of the most relevant initiatives he led when a policy maker in Bahia’s Education and Health Secretary: the Carneiro Ribeiro Popular Education Center (Centro Educacional Carneiro Ribeiro). Popularly known as Escola-Parque, the school was established in 1950 and sought to provide children in low-income families with what Teixeira called “integral education.” The schooling system implemented was integral because children would spend the whole day in the school, studying and engaged in sports, cultural, and artistic activities. The school would also consider the students integrally as human beings and, based on this notion, take care of their nutrition, hygiene, socialization, and preparation for work and citizenship (Cavaliere, 2002, 2010). The creation of Escola-Parque realized Teixeira’s conception of a truly democratic education, which he described in an article published in 1962:

In all democratic countries, school systems tend to constitute a single education system, for all classes, or better, for a truly democratic society, that is, without fixed classes, in which all citizens have equal opportunities to be educated and, directed, afterward, at occupations and professions, according to the demonstrated and confirmed individual capacity and aptitudes. In the new educational system, the student’s subsequent social classification results from the redistribution brought about by the educational process and not something that automatically follows from having attended certain schools destined for privileged groups of wealthy students. The student will have the opportunities that his ability and preparation actually obtained determine. (Teixeira, 1962, p. 67)

Besides being engaged with education in his home state, Anísio Teixeira occupied relevant positions within the public administration system, working as a reformist on policies that ranged from primary to higher education. He created the University of the Federal District in Rio de Janeiro in 1935 and the University of Brasília in 1960 alongside his most notable pupil, anthropologist and educator Darcy Ribeiro. He also spearheaded the reform of different educational institutions, such as the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Coordenadoria de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES), a central research funding agency in Brazil, and the National Institute for Educational Studies (Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais - INEP), which received his name in the 1990s.

Anísio Teixeira’s national and international projection, however, was a double-sided coin. While being recognized by his peers as one of the most influential and brilliant Brazilians of all time, he was persecuted by those who opposed his modern ideas and support of a public quality education system. As one of his closest friends, Hermes Lima (1960), declared, “The scientific orientation of his educational thought and the democratic fervor of his work as an educator has cost him dearly” (p. 136). Perhaps Teixeira (1977) himself knew the end reserved for him:

The act of thinking—the matrix, without a doubt, of all inventions—has been, among men, the most-watched of all acts. The great violators of conventional thinking, all the great innovators, were sacrificed by the “guardians” of the herd. And above all, those who thought that a new religious, moral or political thought was possible were killed. Socrates died because he gave way to the doubt, the problem, the issue, the question. Jesus died because he wanted to replace the conventional “answer” with a more generous one. (p. 117)

On March 11, 1971, Anísio Teixeira was found dead in an elevator shaft. His death was reported as a tragic incident, but recent evidence notes that he was killed by the civil-military dictatorship that governed Brazil from 1964 to 1985 (J. Rocha, 2019). Despite this unfortunate event, Teixeira’s legacy continues to inspire a myriad of Brazilian educators, policy makers, and practitioners. His philosophy is central for those who believe that the public schools must convert into machines that prepare democracy, giving each individual a place in society without any social, economic, or cultural constraint, as dreamed decades ago by the Anísio shaped by Teachers College.