Escola noturna Machado de Assis : primeira instituição municipal de ensino primário noturno da cidade de Ituiutaba, MG (1941 1960)

Abstract

This work seeks to enlarge the academic research in the history of Brazilian education focused on schools of little visibility in society. For that, we proposed to inquiry the history of Escola Noturna ―Machado de Assis‖, an elementary public night school in the city of Ituiutaba between 1941 and 1960. Above all, we aimed to understand the emergence of urban public education kept by municipal government and the relations between elementary night schooling and educational, political, and economical context, both locally and nationally. Methodological procedures included bibliographical research upon public education especially political efforts and legislation and on aspects of the making of municipality in Brazil. Besides, we drew from interviews with school s former students, staff assistant, and teachers, from Brazil former presidents and Minas Gerais former governors messages, from minutes of town council meetings, and from local newspapers printed during 1941 and 1960. Reading critically these written records and interpreting oral accounts from interviews has made possible to assert that adult literacy in this school occurred itinerantly and precariously, for it had no building of its own. Such a lack suggests that, even if this school met the interests of local government, it deserved no attention from the latter, as it received a restrained financial support from Ituiutaba s city hall. And yet, even if this school were of no interest to the local political debate and had no impact on local society, it was relevant to a share of the population adults and adolescents who lack education and who could not attend day schools because they worked in the daytime. In meeting their schooling needs, this school played its role so well that in the course of its history it evolved from a condition of having no local expressivity to the one where it is seem as a relevant institution in the local and regional scenario.