A complexidade plural das Pedagogias reformada presbiteriana e norte-americana no Brasil: um estudo de suas origens (1870-1900)

Abstract

This study is a historical approach concerning the plural complexity of the reformed- Presbyterian and North American pedagogies in Brazil. It tries to apprehend the process of the Presbyterian Education in the American School of São Paulo and verify its influence for the intensification of the formal education in Brazil. The investigative curiosity refers to a chronological time between 1870 1900, period of installation of the North American missionary agencies in Brazil and of their first Presbyterian missionaries. They came to Brazil with the mission of educating from the reading of the Bible, but, did end up implementing the binomial of the evangelization by the education, that on its turn, was constituted inside that formal and informal educational process, in a complex phenomenon, detainer of crises and conflicts among its principal agents. Led to that sense, our study tried to appropriate and also give emphasis, to its pedagogic innovations said as "new and modern" that were rooted under a context of full social, politics, cultural and economical effervescence. With the sources and theoretical-methodological guidelines, both historical-educational and historical, the present text tried to analyze them by the optics of the New History, as well as by their crossing/dialogue, in the light of the paradigm of the complexity of Edgar Morin. The sources that served as support to the research express those different dimensions. We analyzed, therefore, both normative documents and those that refer to the school practices, as well as the circulating periodic press in such time. In that way, the historical context and its subjects are taken into consideration, starting from the pedagogic informal process of the Presbyterian Church and the formal process of the American School, however, without neglecting the multiple dimensions that insert the Protestant education in the social, political and cultural world. Such a study contemplated its whole complexity range. The emphasis given on its pedagogic innovations, printed in the documents of the institution as "new and modern" helped us to confirm the hypothesis that the missionaries pioneers of the Presbyterianism in Brazil, also followed the same vision of John Calvin's political / educational thought, in the intention of establishing objectives and plans of actions on behalf of the individual's integral education. In that way, this work unmasked the ideological presence of the liberalism in its daily practices both secular and religious and concluded with the results of the methodological process, that the foundation of the American School (formal) added to the efforts of the Presbyterian evangelization (informal), was then constituted in a complex phenomenon because its North American founders had a more pragmatic than theological orientation. The work was based on bibliographical and documental sources, having as theoretical referential and speakers the presuppositions and statements found in the Protestant literature and in researches already accomplished about the Protestant education in Brazil.