Da centralidade da infância na modernidade e sua escolarização: a Escola Estadual João Pinheiro Ituiutaba (MG), 1908-1988

Abstract

The main aim of this research was to make a study on the school called Escola Estadual João Pinheiro, located in Ituiutaba, state of Minas Gerais, covering the period between 1908 when it was created and 1988 as an attempt at understanding the room it set apart for children, above all during the military government (from 1964 to 1985), the pedagogical practices it developed in the elementary grades, and how these latter incorporated a certain social behavior determined by the educational dynamics at the time that is to say, its political and institutional determinants imposed by the military regime. Also, it tries to understand what the creation of elementary grades in a public school that time meant to the local society and the developments of the official curriculum. Theoretical references that support this research include authors such as Kuhlmann Júnior, Priore, and Tozoni-Reis. Their studies made possible to grasp if not the whole childhood dimension at least the extent to which our hypothesis points out the relationship between pedagogical practices and childhood , since this work discusses the centrality of the child as a being within the school aforementioned, which is taken as modernity institutional expression. The methodological procedure was the document analysis, which included book of records (of students who were promoted to advanced grades, of teachers who took office, of enrollment, and of meetings with headmasters, supervisors, advisors, and teachers), classroom attendance books, and inspector s visit records. Newspapers of the time and accounts given by former students, teachers and headmasters were used as well. All these documents became the relevant source to both unveiling the historical meaning of that school and understanding the process its schoolchildren experienced. Therefore, as the final result, it can be stated that child education in the elementary grades played an important role in the local social context and consequently helped to spread ideas, principles, and conceptions regarding the child as a being and the childhood itself.