Summary: This text looks at the actions of educators, in disputes concerning education projects in Brazil in the years 1930 to 1940. Discusses intellectual history approaches used in Brazil, especially in academic work on education history. It deals with the presence of intellectuals on the Brazilian public scene who believed in the academic power of the school and established themselves as interpreters of the people and the nation and believed that it was necessary to act from above, as an informed elite, and thus to shape society and the people. The Brazilian intellectuals at the beginning of the 20th century shared the understanding and perspective of Mannheim (1974) that responsibility for the formation of the new leading elites in the country would fall to them, since, according to that thinker, the intellectuals are mediators of social conflicts. Keywords: Intellectuals. Educational projects. Education and modernity.