In this paper, we shall compare the regulation about public instruction produced by the Couto Ferraz reform in 1854 for the city of Rio de Janeiro, with the Falloux Law, which was created in 1850 to regulate primary and secondary instruction in France. Our purpose is to gather evidences of how that legislation produced in Brazil appropriated of the provisions of the French law, by emphasizing the differences between them. This study aims to avoid the perspective of cultural transplant, which has made some scholars interpret the use of foreign laws as references by Brazilians politicians of the nineteenth century as a simple imitation due to their presumed lack of creativity and awareness of their local reality (CHIZZOTTI, 1975; REIS FILHO, 2003). Thus, we use the notion of appropriation developed by the French historian Michel de Certeau. This concept has an important role in his reflections about culture and his new propositions to analyze everyday practices. Certeau (1998) uses the term appropriation to refer to ordinary people in their everyday life and the active attitude revealed in the inventive ways of using products of varied nature received by them. This perspective highlights the impossibility of deducing the uses directly from the products, by taking into account the appropriation made by users. Therefore, this research does not aim to refer the legislation produced by Brazilian politicians to an origin which would be found in foreign territories and which would have been lost in a poorly made copy. Having discussed the theoretical background of our study, let us now turn to the comparison between the Couto Ferraz reform and the Falloux Law. Two elements have been chosen to be analyzed: the study program for primary school and the inspection system. As result of the analysis, we have found significant differences between these laws. With regard to systems created in order to inspect public instruction, the Falloux Law has a remarkable presence of religious authorities, while this characteristic is not observed in the regulation of Couto Ferraz. In the case of the study program for primary school, although the laws have similarities, e. g., the division of contents in two parts, Couto Ferraz did some substitutions, additions and suppressions. For example: the French law determined the study of agriculture, industry and hygiene. However, these subjects were not included by the reform executed in the Brazilian Court. These evidences demonstrate we should analyze the Couto Ferraz reform as an appropriation rather than an imitation of the Falloux Law. Moreover, the results suggest possibilities of better understanding the aspects which were incorporated in the process and what could have been the reasons for the appropriations. Regarding all the results, we expect this research to contribute to the studies about educational characteristics in the city of Rio de Janeiro during the 1850s and about the international circulation of ideas between Europe and Brazil through public instruction reforms.APPROPRIATIONS IN PUBLIC INSTRUCTION POLICIES: COMPARISON BETWEEN THE COUTO FERRAZ REFORM IN RIO DE JANEIRO (1854) AND THE FALLOUX LAW IN FRANCE (1850)(