This research was carried out in 2019 at the Brian Simon Archive/ Institute of Education, University College London, where we found unpublished documents that link the history of education in Brazil with the history of education in England. These are a set of letters between Paschoal Lemme, one of the most important signatories of the 1932 Manifesto in Brazil, and Brian Simon, the British education whose name was immortalized in the fight for common secondary schools in his country. The correspondence between them took place from 1957 to 1961; it was motivated by Paschoal Lemme's interest in the fight that Brian Simon was developing in England for comprehensive secondary education. The correspondence began in 1957 with a letter from Paschoal Lemme to Brian Simon expressing interest in translating and publishing, in Brazil, his works against intelligence tests. In his first letter, Lemme states that in Brazil there was no such remarkable selectivity for children's entry into secondary education. “Here, the objective tests appraises pupils achievements in each grade of the elementary school and therefore determine the promotion of them”. For Paschoal Lemme, “the fight against objective tests is also a form of struggle against the influence of American imperialism in our education, which, as you know, is our greater problem in Latin America”. (Lemme to Simon, December 1957). In the same letter, he states that he had sent a letter from Lawrence and Wishart Editors, responsible for publishing Brian Simon's works in England, to Editora Vitória, in Rio de Janeiro. At the time, Editora Vitória was linked to the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) which, although illegal, disseminated works that were of interest to the Party. Paschoal Lemme, although not a member of the Party, was one of those responsible for Editora Vitória. Lemme's proposal began negotiations in Brazil and England. In one of the subsequent letters he states: “It is not so easy to publish a book in Brazil, specially if it is out of the cannons of the official pedagogy” (Lemme to Simon, 1959). Finally, Simon informs his publisher: “The book was published in Brazil under the title Escola Secundária Para Todos” (Brian Simon to Lawrence and Whishart, July 1961). This set of letters that today constitute documents for the history of education record a rare initiative carried out by two educators who had in common Marxism and an interest in Soviet pedagogy of which Brian Simon was an expert in the Western world. Therefore, this research shows that, in addition to the colonialisms practiced by the capitalist powers, it was possible to establish symmetrical relationships between intellectuals whose interest was a common school for all. The letters housed in the Brian Simon’s Archive record the affinity between a British intellectual from a country that established one of the largest Empires in the world and a Brazilian one, from a country colonized under the same logic of British colonialism. This discovery in the Archives of the Institute of Education shows that, in this case, the cause of education was above colonialisms.

John Dewey's educational theory has a profound and lasting influence in China. However, his philosophy of education was heavily criticized by the Chinese Communist Party in the 1950s, which led many to believe that Dewey's education was in complete opposition to that of the CCP. While, history is much more complex. An interesting fact is that, from his arrival in China on April 30, 1919, to his departure on August 2, 1921, Dewey's visit to China closely coincided highly with the time of the introduction of Marxism into China and the eventual establishment of the CCP on July 23, 1921.

This study intends to prove that Dewey had a tremendous influence on the early CCP members of the 1920s.

Both founders of the CCP, Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu, had close personal relationships with Dewey, and Chen even tried to practice Dewey’s educational ideas in Southern China. Chen was the first to conduct an educational reform on a provincial scale, incorporating Dewey's educational philosophy.

As a graduate of a normal school, Mao Zedong also read and practiced Dewey’s educational philosophy. Mao always claimed “I am one of those who do educational studies” when he was young. Mao opened a bookstore with his friends in Changsha, and five copies of Dewey’s Chinese Lectures were sold through Mao’s hands according to the account book of this bookstore. It is worth noting that in September 1920, Mao was appointed headmaster of the primary school attached to the First Normal School of Hunan. He held this position for a year. Students there were encouraged by Mao to analyze social problems and express their own opinions. Mao himself had a keen interest in social affairs and considered reading newspapers as a way to learn about society. Therefore, Mao reformed the method of teaching Mandarin, using newspapers as students’ reading materials, instead of textbooks. What is more interesting is that Mao set up vocational classes in horticulture, animal husbandry, printing, etc. Students grew vegetables, farmed, and printed letterheads, envelopes, and workbooks themselves during their rest. Mao wanted not only to improve those students’ ability to live but also their understanding of social production. Mao himself participated in labor, during which teachers and students were very close. This is very similar to the Laboratory School founded by the Deweys in Chicago.

Many other CCP members read Dewey in the 1920s and then became left-wing revolutionaries.

Dewey himself did not stand with Marxism, but he paved the way for Marxism in China in theoretical and practical aspects. For his Chinese audiences, Dewey’s idea that education is an agent of social reform and a school can never be separated from its society was an epochal new idea about the aim of education. They felt liberated by Dewey. This is the point where Dewey's theory and Marxism merged with each other.

When an educational theory is spread abroad, it is often not accepted in a fundamentalist way, but rather in a process of collision and integration with the local tradition.

The purpose of this contribution is to analyse Mario Alighiero Manacorda’s contribution to educational historiography regarding the category of “diversity”, particularly the educational diversity between social classes. Franco Cambi (2003, pp. 3-6) argued that in Italy, the dominant historiographical model from the 19th century until the first decades after the Second World War was the “history of pedagogy”, which was characterised by a philosophical perspective that overlooked the differences that existed in educational reality. In the 1970s and 1980s, various Italian scholars used different methodologies, including the Marxist and Annalist school approaches, to introduce a new historiographical perspective known as the “social history of education”, which had the merit of focusing on the real history of education, characterised by the many class, gender and ethnic differences. Manacorda is a key figure in this historiographical turn, and his work is based on Marxist methodology, according to which every superstructural phenomenon should always be considered in relation to the socio-economic structure, that is the productive forces and relations of production (Marx 1987/1859). Exploring the relations of production, which are based on the division of labour, Manacorda finds that this division creates not only social classes, but also different types of education for each social class (Manacorda 1977, p. 148). In this way, Manacorda’s Marxist perspective shifts the focus of the history of education from the generic or abstract human being, typical of the history of pedagogy, to individuals differentiated by social class. However, the education of these individuals is not easily reconstructed in the same way. For example, the traditional written sources have always discussed the ruling classes, but they have said too little about the education of the subordinate classes. For this reason, the reconstruction of the history of education based on class distinctions requires the expansion of historical sources. Therefore, this contribution aims to illustrate the various sources used by Manacorda to reconstruct the different histories of education according to different social classes, focusing in particular on iconographic sources (Manacorda 1992).