Tachymetry as Resource for Teaching Mathematics in Brazil at the end of the Nineteenth Century

Resumo

This article deals with the history of educational materials for the teaching of mathematics in Brazilian education in the last years of the 19th century. The assumption is that the production and use of these resources are related to the methods and other elements of school practices and cultures. The objective is to describe historical elements of the diffusion of the tachymetric method in Brazil, indicated for the teaching of mathematics, from the French influence. It was observed that, faced with the challenge of the expansion of popular primary education, there was a tendency to value material resources created in the diffusion of the intuitive method, strongly prioritising the sense of vision and admitting the possibility to obtain almost immediate results, without presupposing the axiomatic formalisation and deductive. Among the educational materials of the time were those of the tachymetric method that wanted to facilitate the study of mathematics in primary elementary schools.