Estado e Igreja Católica como instâncias promotoras de educação: formação de professoras primárias em Minas Gerais na Primeira República (1892-1904)

Abstract

This investigation has as its theme the State and the Catholic Church, as instances of promoting education, focusing on the training of primary teachers in Minas Gerais. The temporal scope encompasses the time between 1892-1904, the first years of the Republic in Brazil. This period is justified for reasons that are interlinked: First, the demise of the functioning of the schools for the training of teachers as recorded at the time that the analysis of primary sources. Second, with the new regime, given the separation between of the State and Catholic Church took place in the legal framework, it is decreed the secularity of school education. It is also during this period that the movement occurs expansion of primary schooling and, in consequence, the expansion of Education Schools for the training of teachers to work in this level of education. Thus, this study aims to analyze and interpret the action of the Catholic Church in state affairs, so to evidence that the relationship between these two institutions continued very close in the educational field, including teacher training courses, even when the laws, as the Brazilian Constitution of 1891, decreed otherwise. The method of investigation is proposed to documentary research, consisting of documents produced in the daily Education Schools of Minas Gerais, as well as a set of laws produced in the time encompassed by our study and literature that helps us in interpreting and enforcing our arguments. The sources are listed, mostly in the custody of the Minas Gerais Public Archives in Belo Horizonte. These are documents produced in the secretariats of the Education Schools: certificates and attestations with seal of authentication to prove the trustworthiness, civil and religious, women of Minas Gerais; timesheet (containing the subjects taught in course teacher training) and normal evaluative tests (written exams) of some normal schools of Minas Gerais. As additional sources are used the encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891), legislation that organized educational laws that organized teaching in Brazil, laws and decrees of Minas Gerais as the law no. 41 of 1892 (Afonso Pena Reform) and law no. 281 of 1899 (Silviano Brandão Reform) which regulated primary education and teacher training to act in this level of education. The analysis of the sources gives us like result that the action of the Church in the training courses for teachers were part of the rescue project of Catholic ideals in Brazil, in general, and in Minas Gerais, in particular. This project of the Catholic Church has dovetailed with the plans the State which had the interest to train the girls in the traditional model of the family of Minas Gerais. Working together in education, church and State, formed women within the Catholic doctrine - with the goal that it extended this education in the family environment - at the same time that professionalize them to act in the primary teaching.