Os grupos escolares e o ensino primário no Brasil e em Alagoas

Abstract

The present work has as its central theme the school groups and its purpose is to study this type of public school institution in Brazil that, for several years managed to maintain a quality primary education, ensuring students the mastery of the basic skills of reading, writing and the calculation. Initially designed to cater to a middle-class population such as the children of liberal professionals, it gradually included students from a more heterogeneous population, such as children of urban workers and children of immigrants. This work is characterized as a qualitative research, whose basic methodological procedure used was the bibliographic search, with the objective of elaborating a historical panorama including the origins, characteristics and legacy of this institution. The motivation of the research stems from the experience lived as a scholarship holder of the Observatory of Education Program (2012 to 2017), and it can be observed that the schools affiliated to the project did not have adequate minimum infrastructure for its operation. This fact is aggravated by the fact that in these schools there were students attending the last years of the first stage of elementary school (former primary school), and could not read, write or count fluently. From this perspective, the paper seeks to understand the contributions of school groups to our educational reality. In this regard, three chapters are presented: the first brings the history of the implementation of school groups in Brazil; The second chapter deals with school groups in the state of Alagoas and the third focuses on two school groups that stood out in the educational scenario in Alagoas: The Diegues Junior School Group and the Ladislau Neto School Group. It is also worth mentioning the use of a historical document, dated 1938 - the first Almanac of the State of Alagoas Education - that brings us important information about education in our state in the first half of the twentieth century.