This article, through the evidentiary paradigm, aims to analyze from different perspectives the Sailor Apprentices Schools in Santa Catarina (EAMSC). It presents and discusses classist and racist elements of the state of Santa Catarina, since its genesis, as a province, in the 19th century. In this context, forms of schooling and professionalization not yet universalized were often offered to poor and black populations through violence and oppression, materializing hierarchical positions and social inequalities. The EAMSC were situated at the confluence of objectives such as obtaining subaltern labor for the Imperial Navy and sanitizing public spaces, ridding the modernizing cities, especially the port cities, with greater social complexity, of the minors who roamed there. On the other hand, they also represented the hope of being educated, fed, paid work and conquered citizenship in the midst of the rigidity and threats in which they operated, for many families and boys who voluntarily entered them.