This paper, as the just title indicates, intends to discuss about Portuguese pedagogical contest at the end of the XIXth century and at the beginning of the XXth century. The used documentary sources were magazines specialized in education, directed whether to the parents, or to the teachers. Such periodicals, that were including articles from reputed intellectuals and "pedagogists" of the epoch, had the objective to discuss the great questions internationally set within the educational area. They were talking a lot, during the New Pedagogy epoch, about the New Education, a tendency that was intending to bring the science development contributions to the educative area, and about the recent investigation practices, already in force in the countries considered as more advanced, more civilized. One of the themes that deserved a great notability within the specialists in that time, was the one that would give to the education the mission to fight, wether the social obstacles, or the limitations coming from the hereditariness. Against the biological and social determinisms, it was the role of the pedagogy to fight them. In such case, the educative act was seen as a social bet, that would be performed by a specific, specialized and necessarily renewed institution. The school, already considered as "tradicional", was not up to the obstacles with which the new educators had to face. Then, it was necessary to modify the old method and content conceptions.
education; childwood; determinism