Resumo

FELGUEIRAS, Margarida Louro  e  AMORIM, José Pedro. Regentes Escolares and poor children’s literacy promotion in Portugal (1930-1976). Acta Educ. [online]. 2024, vol.46, n.1, e69218.  Epub 01-Ago-2024. ISSN 2178-5201.  https://doi.org/10.4025/actascieduc.v46i1.69218.

From 1930 onwards, incomplete schools were created, later designated teaching posts and school posts, in Portugal. A measure that seemed positive to reach isolated populations, without school or minimum conditions to retain teachers to combat illiteracy, revealed a different nature. This article aims to show how these teaching posts were aimed at the most disadvantaged sections of the population, whether rural or on the outskirts of cities; characterise the literacy of poor children and the existential situation of these teaching agents. The work is based on a literature review and investigations by the authors in institutional and district archives and collections from schools within the scope of projects financed by the FCT. The historical documentation analysis allows us to verify that regentes escolares replaced teachers who graduated from Normal Schools. Regentes were teaching agents whose necessary qualification was, in general, only having the 4th grade, having good moral behaviour and showing adherence to the regime. They earned half the salary of a teacher, were from the local area and were almost exclusively women. There would be no danger of circulating ‘foreign’ ideas, behaviours or values to the community. The regentes escolares functioned as a form of control over teachers since the former could easily replace the latter. Compulsory schooling was reduced to the 3rd grade. Children were prepared to listen to the priest's sermon on Sundays and work from dawn to dusk, with no other ambitions than having ‘four whitewashed walls’ to live on.

Palavras-chave : education of poor children; dictatorship in Portugal; depreciation of teaching agents; minimum learning; illiteracy.

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