Organizations Matter: German Schools and Educational Performance Amid Brazilian Coffee Plantations (1840–1940)

Current literature on human capital accumulation has significantly advanced our understanding of the historical origins of current educational outcomes. Historical dependence, however, is not deterministic and shocks can change the levels and trends of educational performance in the short and long run. A particularly important shock refers to immigration, as flows of foreign-born carry stocks of human capital, potential demands for schooling and specific cultural traits. Albeit increasingly convincing in their identification strategies, studies of the historical relationship between immigration and education still present some gaps in terms of transmission channels. After arguing that, on average, immigrants positively affected educational path dependence in Latin America, we are still left with the question of how this happened. This chapter contributes to this question by studying the history of educational organizations founded by a specific group of immigrants in a delimited geographic area, namely German-speaking immigrants in São Paulo, Brazil. Despite being a minority group, German-speakers strongly influenced schooling in the region. By the mid-nineteenth century, these immigrants were mainly laborers in the coffee plantations of São Paulo. Consequently, I first analyze the existence of schools in some of these plantations. I then study the foundation and administration of German schools, which showed a large array of strategies in dealing with the supply of education. These schools varied in size, location, curricula, ideological orientation, financial stability and social interconnections with the local population. Studying these historical components contributes to our understanding of how organizations mattered in molding the institutional path dependence of education.