“Vida Fecunda, Obra Imperecível” Ana Rímoli de Faria Dória à frente do Instituto Nacional de Educação de Surdos 1951–61

Abstract

In 1951, Ana Rímoli became director at the National Institute of Deaf Education in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. To hold such position was to deal with a problem requiring a board of directors able to act on several fronts: management, pedagogy, teaching, teacher’s training, pedagogical-didactic theoretical material etc. Ana Rímoli held the position without being professionally apt for the educational work with deaf people. Ana Rímoli, however, was able to structure and renew curriculum, methodology and methods. Such understanding about her led to this thesis’ subject matter, which covers her (intellectual) background, her professional action and the materialization of her work. This theme was developed within limits outlined by the following questions: how did Ana Rímoli come to manage an institution marked by the renewal of the education of deaf people in Brazil? How did she leave the condition of being a regular technical employee at the education ministry to become author of books on deaf education? What were the resources she relied on? How did her training and previous professional performance affect her decision to take hold of the institute management? The attempt to unfold these questions is based on aims such as: to place Ana Rímoli in the education intellectuality in Brazil; to describe facts of her in form of a profile personal and professional profile; to characterize actions of her in the institute; to map her intellectual output. The research relied upon document evidence with a focus on the history and historiography of Brazilian education. The method to develop it followed steps of the biographism, especially the life trajectories (background); but aimed at historical ends, analysis and interpretations. Research sources were typed sheets (résumé; history; personal documents; certificates; declarations, certificates and diplomas; travel report; diplomas, personal documents, certificates and declarations, certificates; book season editions); press (newspaper and magazines); iconography (family and work photographs); oral sources (accounts from one interview). The research time covers from the entering of Ana Rímoli in the institute (1951) as director to her exit in 1961. Research results suggest her background as an elementary teacher determined to work to the Ministry of Education and who saw a challenging opportunity to reach higher in the functional hierarchy; her actions at the institute had an emphasis on teacher’s education and on the publication of books on oralism as a pedagogical approach to educate deaf people. This production situates Ana Rímoli in the field of the education intellectuality in Brazilian and links her to special education: to the relations between education, deafness and regular school. She was among São Paulo intellectuals aligned in the progressive school movement and intellectuals who surrounded education minister Gustavo Capanema in the 1940s. Therefore, putting deaf children in the regular school was one of the most notable of Ana Rimoli’s contributions as an education intellectual agent and thinker since she led to the laying of legal bases of what has become the policy for educational inclusion in Brazil.