Always impetuous, always daring, and always completely involved in his campaigns (...) [Afranio Peixoto] was a master, friend, animator, writer and incomparable conversationalist, radiator of culture, and a seductive center of convergence that stirred everyone and everything around him. (...) He always fascinated the youngsters and retained a spirit of youth that he never betrayed until he died. (Athayde inRibeiro, 1950, p. XV)
Introduction
When he presented the book of Leonídio Ribeiro, Tristão de Athayde described Afrânio Peixoto as an extraordinary polygraph, a polymorphous man, impertinent and competent conquerer, expert, with ductile intelligence, iron will, tireless curiosity and inexhaustible inventiveness, tone of praise expected for a biography written by a former student of his.
Peixoto effectively worked in multiple functions throughout his trajectory, so that it is not possible to assess the innumerable qualities emphasized in the epigraph, which are not the focus of this article. Here, the challenge is of another order.
As a doctor, he was a professor of hygiene, forensic medicine and criminology; he acted equally in parliament, public administration, and in the fields of literature and history2. For three years during his life (1932-1934), he taught history at the Institute of Education of Rio de Janeiro (IERJ). The book “Noções de História da Educação” (Notions of the history of Education” resulted from this experience. This was the object of three successive re-editions, in which he systematized the didactic course and produced a memory of that which future professors of the capital should be taught3. In this course book, he established an origin for the school, equally postulating a certain function of the school mechanism to be reproduced in and by the teacher training institution itself. In the exercise here performed, the endeavor is to establish a counter memory of this occurrence, in an attempt to dissipate this beginning, aware of the discontinuities that cross the emergence and functioning of the school, as well as of the knowledge and agents associated with the school mechanism.
The Course Book
In the beginning of the report about the discipline published in 1935, in the periodical of the Institute of Education, Afrânio Peixoto offers some elements that help to think of carrying out the program in Groups 11, 12 and 13 under his responsibility4.
To him, the process of teaching the history of education could only be informative if it were associated with a debate or seminar class, because this concerned knowledge that did not allow the possibility of experimentation. To follow, I offer two personal testimonies; the courses of 1933 and 1934.
In 1933, the students chose an educator or system of education. Whereas, in 1934, the subjects were drawn by lottery to prevent “sympathy from leading many of them to choose to the same topic”.
Beside this work, the students read “Emilio”, by J. J. Rousseau. According to the report, the book was discussed; the pedagogy of Rousseau was criticized, as its historical environment, precursors and contemporaries, its own ideas and, above all, its success and condemnation were known.
Although contained in the manual, the report published in the official periodical of IERJ provided visualization of complementary strategies adopted by the professor, such as practice of the seminar class and displacements operated in the exercise of the discipline5.
A complementary clue, which allows one to distance oneself from the thesis of the book as “observatory of the classes” (Gondra & Teixeira, 2010), consists of the notes taken of the course, deposited in the “Casa de Cultura Afrânio Peixoto”6, in the city where the author was born, in Lençóis, Bahia. This document covers points that are absent from the book, an indication that if the book had to function as “the grand master of the schools” (Teixeira, 2008), the author himself did not convert the book into a mirror of the classes dictated to the students of IERJ, However, from the doctrinary point of view, it would be possible to perceive homologies between the notes written by hand and the manual published shortly after the first course that he would give the normalists of IERJ, in 1932.
In the notes and book, the principles assumed right from the preface of the first edition, gained visibility when he affirmed that the “globalization of culture hardly supported the non-didactic artifact of the specialized monographies”. To him, this concerned a type of instrument that could perhaps be instructive, but it certainly was not educational because it was “unappetizing and tedious”. Therefore, the men of letters, science, history of parliament, management, education and teaching argue in favor of that which they teach and write; that is, a panoramic, irreducible perspective of what they describe as being “merely microscopic documentary fields”. The course was, therefore, compromised and aligned with an educational purpose, lighting up the evolution of some ideas, less trapped by the chronology of facts, dates and names. When writing the preface of the manual in these terms, the author recognized and collaborated with outlining the guidelines of the discipline, coupled to a certain conception of education, institutional project of pedagogical renovation and perspective of social action of the normalists7.
If there is, from the doctrinary point of view, a type of strong line of interconnection between the course and book8, from the point of view of the arrangement of the classes “given”9 and those who would be guided by the manual, there are traces of opacity and differentiation, and may be found in Table 1 10.
Summary | Notes made for classes |
Preface | |
I- Introduction Savages and Primitive Individuals Geniuses ..Education for society |
I- Education - Means and purposes. The idealism and pragmatism of education History of Education The anecdotes of Silvio Romero, Machado and others Human dualism: The individual The society to which he/she belongs Social dualism - Organicism and contractualism |
II- Archaic education .. Synchronism ..India ..China Chaldear-Assyria ..Persia) |
II- Primitive and savage peoples: rudimentary education, immediate interests of survival. Mystic and prelogical mentality. Previous Abstract: the genius and mediocrity - individual and society. The savage - the myth of the good save... Up to Rousseau - before Montaigne.. Brazil.. after Romantism - the reality: Hobbes, Freud Contractualism, organicism, Fouilleé11 Primitive mentality - “is not a rudimentary form of our word “childish” and quasi xxxxxx12”, but normal in the conditions in which it is used, complex and developed in its manner (Levy Bruhl)13 Thought: relations among things - Hebrew - Arabian - German - English Mystical-savage relations Logical- civilized relations There is no system whatever of simple schools and unconscious imitation Acquisition of means for satisfying bodily needs: foods, clothing, housing Practical things (hunting, fishing... fabricating weapons Theoretical things: (practices, verifications, etc. Example: get the fish, get the hunted prey From wild (feral?) children to women: foods, fabrics, ceramics Afterwards to the men: hunting, fishing, making war ........ learning by doing Wild education: adaptation to the environment: as the environment does not change, it remains stationery (xxxxx), from which unpredictability arises (Spencer)14. Development of perceptive, non-reflective faculties |
XVII, XVIII and XIX - Brazil15
..Synchronism ..Brazil .. Jesuits: Anchieta ..Pombal; “literary subsidy” ..Monarchy (1822-1889) ..Republic (1889-1932) .. Brazilian Educators |
XXVI16 - Brazilian Educators - Precursors: Jesuits, Anchieta Ferreira França Lino Coutinho and the Letters to the Crown Cartas à Cora Pero II. Tautphoeus, Calogeras, Ramiz Galvão Bernardo Pereira de Vasconcelos and secondary teaching Abilio Borges - born in Rio das Contas, where he studied Latin, French and philosophy. “O Ateneu” - Raul Pompeia. . 1847 - Doctor; 1856 - director of xxxx . 1857 - 400 years in the drylands and 600 of the xxxx. Method (xxxx syllabication against spelling. Progressive teaching, thus direct from the languages, after grammar, xxxx, sciences, co-education of the sexes, against the exams of satan, school mathematics Medeiros de Albuquerque and the Pedagogium17 Benjamim Constant and the Normal School, and Benjamin Constant minister Ruy Barbosa and the report of 1882 The reforms of the Republic Cesário Mota in São Paulo, school buildings. Azevedo Sodré and professional teaching. Normal Night School Limit of enrollments Frontin and the four excessive items(?): Anísio Teixeira Veríssimo and his book Góes Calmon and Anísio Teixeira in Bahia Francisco Campos in Minas Fernando de Azevedo and the active school Anísio Teixeira and Lourenço Filho and xxxxx Education of women Education of boys Professional Higher Education University Normal High School Faculty of Philosophy and xxxx Marta and Maria |
Note: Author's organization
Based on comparison between the book and the class notes, three commentaries are required. The former concerns the topical remission to the colonial period, with a set of important highlights relative to the Imperial period and an even stronger accent on what was processed in the republican period, above all that which was contemporary to the author. As far as the contemporaries of the author are concerned, it is worth pointing out the presence of the fellow countryman Anísio Teixeira and the protagonists of the new school movement, beginning with Azevedo Sodré, through to Fernando de Azevedo. Another aspect to be observed refers to the presence of some themes. In this case, it is worth returning to the reference of the XIXth Century Bahian Abílio Cesar Borges and agenda to which he is linked; that is, renovation of the school and methods; which helps to understand the outstanding position of the equally polyhedral colleague and countryman18. Finally, an outstanding point via contrast is with respect to the absence of female protagonists in the synchronism of class notes relative to Brazil, although the “Notes” demonstrate concern about the education of women. However, the reference system and arguments of authority mobilized by the author are all of a masculine nature.
A Lateral Book
In the polyhedral and vast written production of the Bahian physician, “Noções de História da Educação” is a secondary production. However, installed in the domains of the history of education, it has come to occupying another position; to a lesser extent because it is considered the first manual destined for teaching the history of education in teacher training courses, outstandingly at IERJ and in normal schools. The accent and highlight of this statement result from it being inscribed in a certain discursive chain, committed to the reform of society by intermediary of renovation of the school, articulated with the conception of history as the “master of life”, from which the past is converted into a source of lessons not only to be followed, but also abandoned. In this key, an endeavor is made to establish an intimate relationships between virtuous action; that is, an action guided by ponderation and reflection, and the examples of the past. Therefore, history as the gear responsible for shifting past events must be considered the “master of life”; that is, by means of examples and counter-examples, the history of education must teach future professors to act in a better and more prudent manner. Thus, adhering to the concept that history must function as a moral foundation for new conducts.
As far as narrative models are concerned, the author establishes an interested polarity by distinguishing the monographic from the panoramic type, pointing out the benefits of the latter solution to the public for whom the book was intended, and from whose experience it resulted, as noted, When exploring this narrative, I focused on the manner in which Peixoto referred to the appearance of the school, seeking to problematize the statement contained in the book, based on the postulations of Foucault with respect to the history of genealogy.
According to Resende (2005), genealogical research allows the reunion of the multiple in the occurrences taken as being unique, as though their formation had occurred in a unique, continuous manner without dispersions19. The point of view from which I worked, aligned with the synthesis of Resende (2005, ibidem), sought to consider the peculiar dispersion of the occurrences, the more or less regular presence of accidents, fissures, mistakes, failures, and aimless wanderings that configure existences/experiences. Along this line, it does not concern promoting a withdrawal into time to re-establish a prolonged evolutionary continuity up to the present, considering it as part of a long and inevitable chain of causalities, overlooking the accidental externalities. In following these warnings, I tried to observe the presence of the word school in the narrative articulated to the games of regulation, in which one could think of the word as a happening, since the games results in and integrates into certain conformations and demarcation of positions; so that one invests in what one wishes to legitimize, weaken and recompose from the forces in relation. To Foucault, a history elaborated along these marks would be an effective history, because
The purpose of a genealogically directed history is not to re-encounter the roots of our identity, but to the contrary, it obstinately dissipates it. It does not intend demarcating the unique territory from which we came - this first homeland to which the metaphysicians promise that we will return; it intends to make all the discontinuities we come across appear (Foucault, 1992).
When following-up this line of reflection, it concerns perceiving the scenario constructed by the author in the narrative directed to the professors, based on the operations performed, considering the conditions of production of this statement, agencies in which the author participated, and the grammar available at the time, in terms of making history and the history of education.
With respect to grammar, the author defended education as changing civilization20, which views the future with concern, trying to enhance the “organs of this immense and immortal organism, which is society”. Within this truth, human future “can only be resolved by means of the previous experience of the past”; which considers educational and pedagogical justification for the study “of this history of education”. In this key there is a double positioning. The first, with respect to education, defined as civilization on the march from the past to the future. The second corresponds to a definition of thee history and its lawful and pragmatic character; both associated with references to that which by design he calls the “active school”, largely inspired by the events occurring in parts of Europe and the United States. To him, the North Americans do not expect a prelogic miracle or any mystical remedies whatever: “They deal with resolving the problem, as in the active school, by means of previous experience, logically....” (1933, p. 11). Therefore, a double formulation is fixed, coupled to a model, as well as counter-exemplary, wild, irrational and nonscientific experiences to be followed.
The long and inevitable march into the future may be shown in one of the regular elements of the manual, synchronism, organizer of the narrative, present from the second through to the twentieth chapter. This resource functions as a type of time-line that began in the year 5000 before Christ (b.c.), closing in the present time of the author, in the chapter especially dedicated to the New School. This extensive interval works as a mechanism enabling the author to make visible the most relevant happenings to understanding the march of civilization, emphasizing those that would be more related to the history of education and renovation of teaching. For the effects of this reflection, I focused on the references to the term school21 inscribed in the 6,932 years covered by the narrative, as a resource that allows the presence of this to be recognized with reference to the synchronisms organized by the professor-author22.
The first occurrence of the term school appeared in the year 392 a.c., attributing the establishment of a school in Athens to Isocrates. These data may be visualized in Table 2.
Year | Remission |
---|---|
392 b.c. | Isocrates established a school in Athens. |
75 b.c. | First schools subsidized by the Empire |
529 a.d. | (Justiniano) Abolished paid schools |
817 a.d. | Division of monastic schools into internal and external types |
1089 | Saint Hugo, Abbot of Cluny, began construction of the abbey church, prototype of the school of romantic architecture. |
1101 | School of Salerno |
1231 | Privileged School of Medicine of Salerno |
1537 | Founding of the school of Sturm23 |
1559 | Plan of the school of Württemberg24, first system of public schools. |
1633 | First school in the United States |
1794 | Normal school in France |
1633 | First school in “New Amsterdam”, later New York |
1635 | Latin School of Boston |
1805 | Society in favor of the public school in New York. |
1821 | First High School in Boston |
1827 | Free-of-charge schools in Massachussets |
1837 | First Superintendent of Urban Schools |
1838 | First normal school in the United States |
1845 | Horace Mann, elected Governor of his State, preferred to be the director of a school. |
1867 | Free-of-charge public schools in New York |
1823 | Reformation of primary instruction: introduction of the Lancastrian system in public schools |
1826 | Law that order opening of public primary schools in the main villages and cities of the Empire. |
1830 | Normal School of Niteroi (Niteroi). |
1872 | First municipal school in the “Praça 11 de junho” |
1876 | Foundation of the School of Minas of Ouro Preto |
1880 | Normal School of the Municipality of the Court, later than different other schools in the country |
1932 | “Educational Manifesto: for the laypersons school, mandatory, unique active and progressive. Institute of Education |
1889 | Abbotsholme School25: Reddie |
1892 | Oundle School26: F. W. Sandersons |
Year | Remission |
1896 | Laboratory School of the University of Chicago27: J. Dewey |
1899 | “École des Roches”: 28E. Desmoulins. “Bureau International de l’école nouvelle29”: AD Ferrière |
1901 | Montesca and Rovigliano Schools: Alice Franchetti |
1906 | “Project d’école nouvelle”: Ferrière |
1907 | Ermitage School30: O. Decroly |
1909 | “Odenwaldschule31”: P. Geheeb |
1910 | “Arbeitsschule32”: G. Kerschensteiner |
1911 | Montessori Methods, in primary school: Maria Guerrieri |
1913 | “The schools of tomorrow33”, of John Dewey |
1921 | Regional School of Merity34, of D. Armanda Alvaro Alberto |
1926 | Experiences of the active school of Lourenço Filho in São Paulo |
1927 | “La paix para l’école”, of P. Bovet. “The New School”, of Lourenço Filho |
1930 | “Introduction to the study of the new school” of Lourenço Filho |
1931 | “L’école sur mésure a la mésure du maitre”, de Ad. Ferrière |
1932 | “Manifesto Educacional” (for the active, progressive new school, with secular, free-of-charge, and mandatory co-education), Rio, São Paulo. The Institute of Education of Rio de Janeiro, seminar for the progressive school - “Modern School”, by M. dos Reis Campos. |
Note: Author's organization
The 43 occurrences of the term school allowed a dual consideration to be traced. The first, most evident consisted of increasing the mentions (remissões?) as from the XIXth Century, with an ascendant curve up to the last occurrence, associated with the movement of educational renovation to which the author was linked and committed. The curve that produced causal links of effects between schooling and the march of civilization. However, this does not concern expanding all and any school whatever to include all the populations, an aspect that can be observed in the light of the initiatives directed towards pedagogical renovation, progressive, active, new schools.
A second commentary concerns the emphasis attributed to the experiences/experiments and authors, which compose a type of script and constitution of an archives to be known and consulted by the normalists. This archives, which in turn was configured by the proximity to the doctrinal principles articulated with the educational renewal movement. Correlated to this, it refers to worlds worthy of being known, which compose axes for communication about pedagogical knowledge by interconnecting Germans, Swiss, Belgians, Italians, English, French, Americans and Brazilians.
In the case of sending these to the peers of Brazil, two characters are highlighted. The main personality being Lourenço Filho35, either because of his involvement with pedagogical experiments linked to the active school, or by intellectual production, demonstrating his investment in systematizing and offering the public an instrument that would allow access to the fundamental principles of the so-called new school. The other highlight refers to an experiment with the renewed school, conducted by Armanda Alvaro Alberto36, an additional witness to the possibilities of applying the postulates of the progressive school.
To reflect on the selection of interest promoted by the author and his/her(?) commitments to some doctrinal principles of school renewal, I made a more intensive excursion into the chapter devoted to Brazil, without disregarding the metonymic nature of this operation, (by using a linked term to stand in for an object or concept). Nevertheless, the eight mentions of the term school in the chapter on Brazil convey the concerns about the reformations of the normal school, with the creation of municipal schools, higher learning, finalizing with the reference to the so-called educational manifesto of the pioneers of new education in 1932, to which Afrânio Peixoto was one of the signatories.
With this type of investment, the doctor-professor sought to indicate to future professors that which should effectively be learned. That is, it would be worth observing and recording the actions of the State, types of establishments constituted, and above all, the fundamental principles that must anchor a scientific educational project. This could be observed in the motto of the mandatory, unique, active and progressive lay school. These were the marks that would be put into practice within the scope of the Institute (IERJ), where the classes were being given. This made the students recognize in the professor, not only a lukewarm report of the facts and dates in his lessons, but also someone who was extremely interested in disseminating and legitimizing the principles of the new school, a condition necessary to effectively enable the march of civilization.
Final Considerations
By avoiding an “unappetizing and tedious” monograph, the Bahian doctor offered a panoramic study, allowing future teachers to recognize him, starting right from antiquity through to initiatives directed towards education and schooling. Along the strict chronological line established, it was possible to observe the increase in the number of mentions of the word school, which occurred in a manner strongly associated with foreign experiments that trailed the pathway of progress, science and civilization. By means of this type of narrative, I end by forging an evolutionary line, coupled to a game of causalities, based on a relationship of determination between the school and civilization.
Nevertheless, this does not constitute the only resource present in the narrative, as history is being taught, narrated and will be reproduced. It also operates in the recording of history as the “master of life”, in history that extracts from the past that which must be preserved and that to be avoided. Effectively, it concerns history as a lesson contained in the history of “Notions”.
The two movements used by the doctor-professor and many men of letters appears to have been derived from their belonging to, and militant policies in favor of a society and life governed by principles and protocols of scientific rationality. When circulating through polymorphous fields and processes of configuration, I was able to test in classes, conferences, actions in public management, parliamentary life and affiliation to diverse scientific societies, the force of reason and belief in the evolution of mankind, provided that these are guided by the rationalities that constitute them, and those that he advocated throughout his polyhedral trajectory. Therefore, in many senses, the evolutionary history of education, and as the “master of life” that “dictated” and that which he wrote could be understood in more than one word, aligned to the rationalities and truths in which he was profoundly immersed.
However, the reflection here developed was unable to fully recover that which is processed in the ordinary situation of classes, and even less so in that which is processed in the extraordinary game of reception. What was effectively transmitted in the “dictated” classes given by the Bahian doctor over the period of three years during which he ministered the discipline of the history of education? What were the individual and joint effects produced by the classes and book on the young students? On the death of Peixoto and replacement of the book in the Collection “Atualidades Pedagógicas” (Pedagogical Actualities), what was constructed in terms of regular and novelty events? What were the new beginnings they tried to fabricate, and which of the traditions did they try to maintain in the educational projects and most particular domain of the discipline?
This inquiry refers to and demands another type of operation, not contemplated in the present study. Nevertheless, these effectively are the questions that still mark our present situation, which made sense of and guided the work with the documentation explored. That is, a book exclusively directed towards teacher training, considered the first manual with these characteristics, and simultaneously, the records of classes elaborated by a doctor-professor that served him as guidelines and markers for the classes he conducted between the years of 1932 and 1934 at the Institute of Education of Rio de Janeiro. We certainly did not find “the first homeland” in the sense of thinking about the origin of the discipline and teaching the history of education.
The promised civilized world to be constructed based on science is still being constituted in the face of open challenge, visible in the number of inequalities, some of them supported by increasingly more refined processes of rationalization. What is possible to be observed in the schools and training of teachers in society, are the various (dis)continuities that cross and regulate our present time in many different ways. This indicates that the lessons of the past, in the form of notions of the history of education have followed unexpected, surprising, uncontrollable, and unpredictable itineraries - That are sometime unappetizing and tedious.