Joaquim Pintassilgo

Etiquette school manuals in Portugal in the 19th century

Etiquette (Civilidade) was included in the school curriculum, at the level of the first arts, as part of the pombalina reforms which, at the end of the 18th century and still within an absolutist context, led to the creation of a public school system. The generalisation of the school model ‐ a task which Portuguese liberalism sought to put into practice, especially following its consolidation in 1834 ‐ reinforced the role of the school as a privileged space for the socialisation of children and young people and their integration into the values of the new society. At the primary level the subjects chosen for this end were diverse. In some cases they were aimed more towards the instruction of the voting citizen, free and aware of the rights and duties which a liberal society requires in theory. In other cases, their purpose was to conform to the moral and religious principles of Catholicism or the normalisation of behaviour in accordance with the patterns considered to be socially legitimate, as was provided for in the etiquette manuals. The tension between the desire for liberation and the integration vocation is one of the constants of liberal education and one of its greatest paradoxes. In this article, we will concentrate on the latter case. Our main source will be the etiquette school manuals published in Portugal between 1820, the year that the first liberal experiment began, and 1910, when the constitutional monarchy was deposed by a victorious republican revolution. Based on these manuals, we will endeavour to reflect on the finalities, content and sense of the socialising component of the curriculum in the liberal education system, its continuity and changes. Although Civilidade ‐ as this subject is commonly known ‐ only appears on occasion as autonomous education material in study plans, the profusion of compendiums, especially in the second half of the 19 th century, makes us raise the hypothesis that, at an everyday school level and in association with Catholic religious and moral teachings, these were one of the main instruments for social and cultural integration that were necessary to legitimise the embryonic nation‐state. By defining appropriate behaviour and by forbidding that which was considered improper in “civilised” man, etiquette introduced a policy of “control and distinction” in social and cultural practices. Ideas such as order, hierarchy, respect, decency and moderation, among others, would be considered essential for the integration of all in a “civilisation of customs” which, in terms of social relations, attempted to be the counterpoint of a liberal society in which the facts of a courtly way of life and the fascination for the aristocratic tradition harmonised, without apparent contradiction, with the utilitarian values and attitudes typical in the burgeoning bourgeois societies.

The First Portuguese Republic and the Secularisation of the Primary School

The cultural revolution subjacent to citizens conversion to the republican ideology undertaken by the 1st Portuguese Republic (1910–1926) proposed, from its promoters point of view, to fight the institution that seemed at that time to hold the hegemony—the Catholic church. It is supposed that Catholicism carried a decisive influence in the peoples culture and mentality as well as being part of a social control. As it was attempted to establish a new social agreement in the line of positive instruction, different from the one represented until then by Catholicism, it became necessary to promote the interiorization of secular values. The primary school is given the responsibility to promote the moral and spiritual unity of the nation, a unity set on new grounds independent from any religious reference and considered anachronistic and incompatible with progress. And that is the role of the moral and civic education.This will not be, much to the contrary, a peaceful matter in the heart of the Republic. Besi...