O ensino de primeiras letras de alagoas oitocentista: vestígios sobre noções de infância nos discursos e práticas escolares

Abstract

This research sought to understand and analyze the school of first letters in the nineteenth province of Alagoas who tried to carry out the education of children, to understand concepts and practices developed in that period. The questions that guided our work are marked by the following questions: What are the vestiges of the notion of childhood discourses and practices in school Alagoas in the Brazilian Empire? What type of training, knowledge and methods were required to childhood teachers? And what of those circulated in the schools of first letters of that period? To try to answer them centered sources were used in the first and second Empire referring to teachers maps, reports and requirements of school inspectors, directors of Public Instruction and provincial presidents, as well as documents relating to the execution of the Normal School in 1869 . The theoretical and methodological basis for the analysis of such sources is in studies of the Annales School and New History, especially in the work of Marc Bloch (1886-1944), Apology of the story - or the craft of the historian (2001), which guides to the intersection of several historical sources in the investigation of a particular object. Was traced an overview of the historical constitution of the concept of childhood education developed in Modernity, by leading classics that theorized on the subject, as François Rabelais, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Montaigne, Comenios, Rousseau and Froebel. It was also the organization of the public school of first letters from a civilizing ideal presented in Brazilian law as well as the battles fought in the constitution of a Public Instruction model in the context of nation-state formation. To specifically address the schools first letters were analyzed traces on the formation of childhood through the analysis of local sources, located in the collections consulted - Public Archives and Historical Institute of Alagoas General - subsidized by the reading of the theoreticians who bothered to theorize that phase of human life. For the characterization of space and clientele of the schools of first letters, as well as for analysis of textbooks and manuals circulated, was based on theoretical and methodological reflections from authors such as Bastos (1999, 2001), Dolphin (1996, 2011, 2012), Faria Filho (2000, 2006, 2008, 2010), Gondra e Schelbauer(2008). Thus, from the analysis of space and instructional materials circulating in the schools of first letters, it was possible to understand the traces on the notion of childhood schooling in the province of Alagoas. Teaching first letters was presented in a moralizing and religious aiming to be a childhood shaped and consequently fought his "ignorance". About the traces on the notion of childhood in the discourses and practices in the province of Alagoas, was faced with a project for the child to be educated - poor, not the wealthiest - who treated her like a being without will and without right. The analysis of circulating materials pointed to a childhood historically neglected, since the educational practices still conceived as a "becoming" as a future man or woman who should play responsibly their roles in society.