Histórias singulares de alfabetizadoras mineiras 1915 a 1971

Abstract

This paper is part of the History and Historiography of Education line within the Postgraduate Program in Education at the Federal University of Uberlândia and aims to investigate the "Unique stories of literacy educators who worked in School Groups in Minas Gerais’ countryside - 1915 to 1971". For this research, we have chosen a Cultural History theoretical approach, supported especially by Certeau and Chartier, as it values the stories of ordinary people, as well as local and unique histories. Thus, the choice of Cultural History aligns perfectly with the desire to investigate the experiences and lives of literacy educators in school groups located in Minas Gerais’ countryside. Initially, the proposal was to work with Oral History, with the purpose of revealing the narratives of literacy educators and other education professionals who worked in school groups in the Triângulo Mineiro region from 1915 to 1971. However, due to the initial research, the results showed few studies in this area. We did not find theses and dissertations that could meet the proposed criteria, and we also observed that a significant portion of these studies had the same advisor, at the same institution. This led us to understand that, in order to avoid endogenous research, a reconfiguration of the methodology and an expansion of the geographical scope, i.e., the investigated localities, would be necessary. In this context, the analysis of the narratives found in the theses and dissertations that used Oral History in its various possibilities occurred dialectically with the other sources used in the study. Among the detected scientific productions, the majority of the narratives were from women – we found only one man at this level of education – which confirms some theses that education in the past was exclusively a female occupation, as being a teacher for many decades was considered an extension of domestic work. Therefore, we mapped the theses and dissertations that unveiled the methods, models, rules, punishments, materials, and evaluations used to teach literacy to students. In the defined period for this investigation, we verified that Reading and Writing appeared in all the studies, and the majority of these researches pointed out the deficiency in these skills as one of the most serious problems in Brazilian education. The narratives revealed that the practices of literacy educators left indelible marks on many men and women, just as the chosen teaching materials, methods, and memory-based instruction marked an era and continue to reverberate in classrooms today. This research allowed us to discover and value the place of literacy educators' narratives and recognize their stories as a "research source". Oral History, as a method, not only values the narrated stories, but also elevates the interviewed literacy educators to the status of authors, and they are cited, along with other renowned authors. Thus, the narratives collected during the interviews become Oral Sources as important as the established bibliographical, documentary, printed, and iconographic sources. Therefore, Oral History as a method breaks with traditional methodologies that only valued the great heroes and official documents.