A Escola Normal de Uberaba, Minas Gerais: modernidade, civilidade e progresso (1881-1905)

Abstract

Linked to the line of research History and Historiography of Education of the Graduate Program – Doctorate in Education of the Federal University of Uberlândia, the aim of this paper is to investigate the historical-educational process that involves the creation and installation of the Uberaba Normal School, respectively occurred in the years of 1881 and 1882, as well as understand the functioning of this institution and the relations stablished with the municipality until 1905, when it was closed. Specifically, there is the description of the recent production of the field of history of education, what concerns to the normal schools and public instruction; apprehension of the legislation that permeates the moment of creation of the Uberaba Normal School in the referred space and time; gathering and analyzing information in the reports of the presidents of the province and state and other documentary corpora, such as conference proceedings of the city council of Uberaba, press clippings and correspondences, which allow us to understand the relationship between the State and teaching, more specifically the teacher’s training under its sponsorship. Uberaba Normal School was a public institution, maintained by the province – and later State – of Minas Gerais, and intended to train teachers for primary education. It is argued that the creation and installation of the Normal Schools were strategies for the pursuit of modernity, civility and progress. It also attempts to understand the institution’s relations with the society, that is, how the institution is produced by society and also produces it, interferes with its culture and daily life. Therefore, ways of investigating an educational institution are discussed, based on theorists who discuss the history of the institutions. As a theoretical framework for this research, there is the Cultural History, represented, above all, by the discussions made by Justino Magalhães (2014). We mainly consider materiality, here comprising material conditions, organization, regulations; and representation, based on agents, factors and information. In order to analyze the data collected for this qualitative, documental and bibliographical research, a content analysis technique is used, understood from the work of Maria Laura Puglisi Barbosa Franco. We consider this technique an ideal instrument for working with messages, utterances and speeches, passing through description, explanation and interpretation of the documentary content, in order to develop arguments that solve the problems raised, the main one being the non-execution of the project of modernity thought to the Uberaba Normal School. It is believed that the selected documentation helps in understanding and reconstructing the practices and thoughts of the time. The results obtained allow us to verify that although the strategy of the installation of the institution has as primary intention the development of the city and the improvement of cultural and civilizational conditions through education, what is revealed is little investment in the material conditions of the institution, as well as a mismatch between the prescriptions of legislation and the practice of laws.

Key-words: Uberaba Normal School, Public Instruction, History of Institutions, Content Analysis, Minas Gerais.