From Samba to Jazz: Cultural Similarities Between Brazil and the USA

 Brazil's aristocratic educational policies, as stated above, lasted more than a century and contributed to some of the issues that concerned liberal thinkers in the second part of the nineteenth century. 

The virtually complete absence of scientific research, the non-applicable orientation of education at all levels, and the lack of a national university system were among the most serious issues. In São Paulo in 1875, it was argued that agricultural production would not meet modern standards unless farm workers learned scientific and technical skills. The commencement of the Centennial Exhibition of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1876 mobilized Brazil's elites, who organized a pavilion to showcase the country's primary exports. In addition to displaying crops and raw materials, São Paulo's economic elites promoted agro-industrial development as a key driver of the country's prosperity. In 1875, Senator Joaquim Floriano de Godoy, who was both conservative and liberal, published a book titled A Província de São Paulo: Trabalho Estatístico, Histórico e Notícioso, Destinado an Exposição de Filadélfia (The Province of São Paulo. Statistical, Historical and Informative Work Destined for the Philadelphia Exhibition).

Ex-Confederate émigrés in São Paulo were introducing new agricultural practices, particularly for cotton farming. The plough, which progressively replaced the slave's hoe, was the most iconic of all; however, they also imported key technological advancements such as manure fertilizer and pruning. Agricultural advancements arose as a paradigmatic embodiment of technological gains associated with the 'Anglo-Saxon' stock that arrived in Brazil from the United States.479 Our sources reveal here and elsewhere that such identifications encouraged easy linkages, which were not uncommon at the period, between contingent cultural attainments such as the level of technical innovation attained and a specific racial kinship viewed as distinct. Nonetheless, despite the technical influence that the US colonists might impart on local landowners, the transition to free labor, the training of farm laborers in technical skills, and the introduction of new agricultural technology and apparatus remained distant goals.

However, the group of ex-Confederates had another form of cultural hegemony among liberal intellectuals, notably their education system and the direction of its contents as introduced in the schools they built wherever they settled.

 Since the leaders of the ex-Confederate exile parties arrived in Brazil, they have recruited Protestant missionaries and schoolteachers to assist construct their colonies. Chapter 2 demonstrates that republican authorities and elites in São Paulo province actively supported the establishment of churches and schools to learn from their innovative agricultural and educational approaches. These institutions turned out to be great sites of cultural and ideological transmission. Young liberal republicans from São Paulo, republican and abolitionist groups in the same province, and U.S. colonists, schoolteachers, and Protestant clergymen formed a strong alliance to share ideas.
Locals in Brazil viewed ex-Confederate refugees' schools as the most prestigious in the country, with the exception of the reputable Imperial Colégio Dom Pedro II of Rio, which was founded in 1837. The second provided Brazil's conventional syllabi based on the study of the classical humanities and progressively introduced the study of the sciences, albeit with a disinterested and erudite perspective.481 In contrast, liberal philosophers viewed Protestant institutions as symbols of educational regeneration. Protestant schools were highly regarded by São Paulo's republican and abolitionist elites. 

Overwhelmingly Masonic lodge members, these elites were drawn to these schools not for the religious dogma they preached, but for the applied and scientific approach to knowledge presented in their curricula. 

They represented the pedagogical vision of progress and modernity.Rui Barbosa complimented Protestant schools in Brazil for its practical and scientific approach to teaching for both sexes, including the 'intuitive technique' (482). If Brazilian policymakers had adopted the 'Lancasterian technique' in the early twentieth century, they inclined to accept the new pedagogical development, the 'intuitive method', in the second half of the century. Unlike the earlier, British-born teaching style, which prioritized repetition and memorisation, the 'intuitive method' was viewed as a step forward because it reduced the study of abstract theories and increased observation and experimentation.483 This latter style was regarded as the most recent trend in popular education; it, like the former, had been developed in Europe, but it was in the United States that it was currently gaining traction, according to Brazilians.
As with other parts of knowledge about advancements in American society, Brazilians' primary source of information on the application of the new 'intuitive' teaching approach in the United States came through French mediation. In 1871, the imperial National Printers (Typographia Nacional) translated and published Célestine Hippeau's research, Instruction Publique aux États-Unis. Écoles Publiques, Colléges, Universités, Écoles Spéciales. Rapport Adressé au Ministre de L'Instruction Publique was first published in Paris in 1870.