Under the auspices of social emancipation, Brazil's progress and inclusion as a modern nation after the installation of Republican Regime, the school was pointed out as the most powerful tool in achieving these goals. The debate promoted by political and intellectual leaders since the 1870s on public education, thinking and formulating laws and proposals on this social field, intensified in the first decades of the Republic. In the heart of this debate was the construction of a new nation, of a new identity, of a republican citizen, to which so much would contribute the public school, means of diffusion of the new values, pillars of a new social structure: without slavery and without subjects. Facing this scenario, we sought to point out elements to understand the book Public education in the National Congress: Brief news, by PrimitivoMoacyr. Published in 1916, by the then editor of debates of the Lower House based in the capital of the Republic, Rio de Janeiro, the book indicates the different places of speech, speeches and yearnings of those who thought of building a new country, trying to break with the roots Imperialism and establishing roles and roles for each social sector in the insertion of them in the locomotive of modernity. In the selection of the documents and speeches that are part of the book, in subtle and brief comments, Moacyr presents his questions and ways of thinking to Brazilian education and schooling. Their concern about the role of the State in the promotion and conduct of school units is well-known, in a context of defenses in favor of the lack of education. From a historiographical point of view, Moacyr inaugurates a modus operandi of historicizing education, as well as the use of such action as a discourse in defense of state public action for the emancipation of classes. In order to face and understand the issues and challenges of contemporary society, it has been a constant to reconstruct the themes of modernity, since its brands and developments are determinants of contemporary socio-political conjunctures and configurations. This procedure equips us to identify historical processes, to face anti-modern tendencies, and to renew the certainty of the centrality of reason as one of the alternatives in the process of seeking human emancipation. To broaden the understanding of the emancipation category in modern society it is a methodological requirement to resort to historical processes in which it has gained different meanings. In this work, we seek to systematize some elements about the relationship between modernity and emancipation, having as a meeting point the book of 1916, in order to theoretically subsidize the analysis and materialization of emancipatory practices. The book is the first of a work indicated by the author as a subsidy for Brazilian education; and used in debates about the processes of schooling of Brazilian society, education as science, as well as support for future legislation and educational actions. The work of Moacyr highlights the public space as a privileged locus for reaching the emancipation.