Grupo Escolar Prof. Ildefonso Mascarenhas da Silva: sua historicidade e o contexto econômico e social de Ituiutaba em sua implantação

Abstract

This study was carried out within the post graduation program in education at Federal University of Uberlândia in the area of history and historiography of education. Its overall aim was to understand how the public school in Ituiutaba (MG) developed amid contradictory relations between economic development and education development. Its starting point is the following questions: why did a municipality of economic strength had high levels of illiteracy? Why does it take so long to create more public schools? What implications and correlations would there be between economics and schooling? Would illiteracy be the result of the lack of political action in favor of the population? The research outlined circumstances of the dissemination of the public school in relation to the economic, social and political context (financing, illiteracy and politics) in order to recompose circumstances of creation and functioning, to identify characteristics of the public school and the educational demand and to recognize the interface of the public with private in the public school. The research was based on bibliographic and documental sources from the 1947–61 period and followed the dialectical historical materialism method. Sources included written documents (laws, statistical data, newspapers, and magazines), photographs and oral accounts. Sources were read according to these categories of analysis based on Buffa and Nosella (2013): funding, public/private and daily school. Documents from state, municipal and school management (guidelines, determinations...), laws and the like, statistical data, photographs, newspapers and magazines, official communication, letters, teaching materials, student and teacher materials, minutes books, teacher meetings and enrollments, school grades, interviews with former public school employees... everything was considered as likely to become a historical source to develop this study. The theoretical framework was mainly based on Souza (1998; 2008), Saviani (2007), Vidal (2006), Schelbauer (1998), Veiga (2007), Vidal (2006), Araujo (2006; 2012). Results indicate a school created without its own building and inadequate funding, so that it was up to the school management to support attendance of students who could not afford schooling minimum costs. Even working in an improvised and precarious way, it helped develop education in Ituiutaba to the point of projecting itself as an important school. A prominent element was pedagogical practices. Teachers and students took a hard time to overcome obstacles by founding an internal newspaper in which they were able to explore subjects’ content such as textual composition and studies on Brazilian history.