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Educação em Revista

versión impresa ISSN 0102-4698versión On-line ISSN 1982-6621

Educ. rev. vol.36  Belo Horizonte  2020  Epub 19-Ago-2020

https://doi.org/10.1590/0102-4698223025 

ARTIGO

BETWEEN GESTURES OF KEEPING AND ACTS OF WITNESSING: THE ARCHIVE OF MEMORIES OF THE FACULTY OF EDUCATION/UFRGS

DÓRIS BITTENCOURT ALMEIDA1 
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4817-0717

LUCAS COSTA GRIMALDI2 
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4654-1032

1Professor at the Faculty of Education and of the Graduate Program in Education - UFRGS. Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul (RS),Brasil.<almeida.doris@gmail.com>

2Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul (RS),Brasil. <lucascgrimaldi@gmail.com>


ABSTRACT:

This paper discusses the establishment of the Archive of Memories of the Faculty of Education/UFRGS. Its organization concerns the field of the History of Education, and its relations to the postulates of Cultural History, by enabling the investigation of educational experiences sometimes overlooked by historiography. The theme is also related to contemporary discussions about archival practices. This archive houses many different historical documents. But "the flavor of the archive" (Farge, 2009), without neglecting the official documentation, resides in the receipt of personal files of teachers and students, many of them consisting of ordinary writings, and also in the production of the oral memory of individuals who make up the faculty and school communities. These gestures of keeping focus efforts for establishing a Living Archive, in which the issues raised in the present, which quickly turn into the past, direct our actions and intentions about what to keep, why to keep and for whom to keep.

Keywords: Archives; History of Education; Personal Files; Oral History

RESUMO:

O artigo problematiza a constituição do Arquivo de Memórias da Faculdade de Educação/UFRGS. Sua organização se inscreve no campo da História da Educação em interfaces com os postulados da História Cultural, por promover a exploração de experiências educativas, por vezes esquecidos pela historiografia. A temática também filia-se às discussões contemporâneas acerca das práticas arquivísticas. Neste lugar, abrigam-se documentos históricos em diferentes dimensões. Mas “o sabor do arquivo” (Farge, 2009), sem descuidar da documentação oficial, reside no recebimento de arquivos pessoais de professores e de estudantes, muitos deles formados por escrituras ordinárias, e também na produção de memórias orais dos sujeitos que compõem as comunidades acadêmica e escolar. Nesses gestos de guardar, concentram-se esforços para a constituição de um Arquivo Vivo, em que as problemáticas colocadas no tempo presente, transformadas rapidamente em passado direcionam nossas ações e intenções acerca do que guardar, por que guardar, para que guardar, para quem guardar.

Palavras-chave: História da Educação; Arquivos Pessoais; História Oral

RESÚMEN:

El artículo aborda ele stablecimiento de las memorias de la Facultad de educación/UFRGS. Su organización se suscribe em el campo de la historia de la educación en las interfaces com los postulados de la historia Cultural, fomentando la explotación de las experiencias educativas, a veces pasado por alto por la historiografía. El tema también filia a las discusiones contemporáneas acerca de prácticas archivísticas. En este lugar, estan almacenados documentos históricos en diferentes dimensiones. Pero "el sabor" (Farge, 2009), sin descuidar la documentación oficial, reside en la recepción de archivos personales de profesores y alumnos y muchos de ellos fueran compostos por escrituras ordinarias y también bajo la producción de memorias orales de los sujetos que conforman las comunidades académicas y escolares. Estos gestos para mantener esfuerzos para la creación de um archivo vivo, em el que las cuestiones planteadas em el presente, se convirten rapidamente en el pasado, conducen nuestras acciones e intenciones sobre lo que guardar, por qué mantener, para quién debemos guardarlos.

Palabras clave: Archivos; Historia de laeducación; Archivos personales; Historia oral

“This new memory is an archival memory, a paper memory. We recognize in this obsession with the archive the great mutation taken to the extreme by the myth of the in vention of writing in the Phaedrus: the victory of the scriptural at the very heart of the memorial. Superstition and respect of the trace. The sentiment of loss, as in the Platonic myth, becomes the counterpart of the institutionalization of memory. The imperative of the age is to fill archives ... the archive is no longer a more or less intentional record of actual memory but a deliberate and calculated compilation of lost memory.” (RICOEUR, 2007, p.410).

This paper discusses the establishment of the Archive of Memories of the Faculty of Education of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (FACED/UFRGS), located in the city of Porto Alegre. The history of education in Brazil is still silent on many issues, among them the history of educational institutions. It is still common for the schools’ and universities’ past to be little known to their communities, which often remain indifferent to the time that has passed. This forgetting, marked by a mutism in relation to the past, seems to force itself upon the relations established between individuals and the institutions they attend.

How is it possible to remain attentive and faithful to the past if no care is devoted to keep its traces and memories? Paul Ricoeur helps us to reflect on this question when he states that "we have no other resource, concerning our reference to the past, except memory itself ... we have nothing better than memory to signify that something has taken place, has occurred, has happened before we declare that we remember it" (RICOEUR, 2007, p. 40) [translated from French by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer in Ricoeur, Paul, Memory, History, Forgetting, University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 21]. Thus, this paper argues for recognizing the importance of institutional archives as social constructs, as refuges for memories, with a disposition to cultivate an "ambition [to achieve the] truth" (ANHEIN, 2018, p. 122), through material links to the past. They preserve "traces of human practices" (ANHEIN, 2018, p. 152), at times made invisible, but which, through historiographic operations, become places for the epistemology of History.

What can be said, then, of the Archive of Memories, the subject of study of this text? It preserves materials used in a teacher training institution, the Faculty of Education3, but also stores documents from the Colégio de Aplicação of the university (CAp/UFRGS - an elementary and secondary school), in view of the long and close relationship of both institutions4. In a room in the FACED building, number 610, we built a space that, by preserving numerous documents that represent the past of the Faculty and the Colégio, is a place for sharing memories that can foster academic research and the consequent production of versions of the history of these important institutions of teacher education and basic education. Besides Faculty’s memory, the Archive also preserves, in a broad sense, other memories of the UFRGS5 and, therefore, is an initiative to share and value the educational heritage of the University6.

THE FLAVORS THAT MARK THE GESTURES OF KEEPING

The establishment of the Archive is part of the History of Education, which is a fundamental component of the history of cultural practices and its relations to the History of Educational Institutions. It also shares the theoretical postulates of Cultural History, a historiographic approach that distances itself from historicist conceptions, recognizing subjects in a perspective that places them as participants in the History of their time, promoting the investigation of experiences of those women and men sometimes forgotten by historical studies.

Besides these epistemological considerations, it should be emphasized that the theme also relates to contemporary discussions about archives, which are sometimes infrequent in historical research. In historical archives, complex temporal relationships are established, in which the three dimensions of time intersect. There, a past materiality is preserved, which is investigated in the present but aims for permanence; that is, past, present and future are intertwined in archives, places that accumulate layers of time, as strata of experiences that persist or change at a pace of their own. These conceptions allow the researcher to ask herself "how much of the past dwells in our present?" (KOSELLECK, 2014). In view of this, it is the present that constitutes a kind of guide and thus conducts our gestures of keeping. In other words, it is the problems posed in the present time, quickly transformed into the past, that direct our actions and intentions related to what to preserve, why to preserve, why to preserve, for whom to preserve. Ahnein (2018, p. 153) explains that archives represent "the presence of the past in the present", that is, as Ketelaar (2018, p. 198) says, "archives do not lead us to the past: they preserve the present for the future, by transmitting authentic testimonies and experiences of human activity through the ages". In this sense, Ahnein (2018) clarifies that the "nature of archives" is marked by the "persistence" in seeking for traces of times past that, through their preservation, are still present.

Over the years, the Faculty of Education and the Colégio de Aplicação have become, each with its specifics, as references, places of discussion and production of knowledge related to education. In 1970, the Faculty was established, an outcome of the University Reform of 19687, formerly part of the Department of Education of the Faculty of Philosophy. In 1971, the Graduate Program in Education was structured. A year later, the Master’s Program was established with three areas of study: teaching, educational planning and educational psychology; in 1976, it was the first such program to receive official recognition of the Ministry of Education and Culture in Brazil. The Doctorate Program in Human Sciences and Education was created soon after, in 1977, focusing on learning and teaching processes. In the Archive there are also many documents referring to Graduate Programs8. Considering this, FACED and CAp are understood as "memorable places" (RICOEUR, 2007), as mainstays of social identities, leading to the development of a research project entitled "Memories and Histories of FACED and CAp"9, which seeks - especially through oral documents and personal archives - to produce historical accounts concerning these institutions.

For many years, the building of the Faculty of Education has been a sort of icon, standing out for its modernist architecture, daring for the 1960s, in the midst of the UFRGS Central Campus10. Over the decades, many people have been circulating through this space; for some, it is work place, for others, a place for studying. Teachers, students and staff walk the corridors of its ten stories every day, alone or in groups, each with an intention, many in a hurry, in their daily chores. We dare to say that they might know little about its history.

Thus, we should remember that the Pedagogy Course was created in 1942, at the time at the Faculty of Education, Sciences and Literature of the University of Porto Alegre. In 1947, the University of Porto Alegre became the University of Rio Grande do Sul; in 1950, it became part of the federal system and in 1970 became known by the acronym UFRGS, the same year of the foundation of the Faculty of Education. The material memory of what is now called the Faculty of Education, although much has been lost, goes back to other spaces and temporalities, back to a time when the University had not even been federalized yet.

The work developed there has been based on a proposal of continual reorganization and reflection on the meanings of building an institutional Archive of Memories11. In the Archive, we share Ketelaar's (2018, p. 196) view that "filing and archiving are much more than classifying documents in archives, covering all stages, from the collection of documents, their management and use to filing". Therefore, we should remember that, when the activities began, some years ago, we found that the documents produced by the various administrative departments of the Faculty and by the Colégio were completely neglected and had received no archival processing. In a kind of warehouse, a number of cardboard boxes, containing many papers stacked, were arranged on shelves, one on top of the other, which made them difficult to move and access. We soon perceived the urgency of acting to preserve the already almost deteriorated documentary collection of FACED and CAp. These pieces of evidence of past institutional life were stored in adverse conditions because of their storage in inadequate and unhealthy facilities that jeopardized both the existence of the documents and the health of those who had contact with them. Carelessness with this memory, incorporated in ancient media, contributed to forgetting the daily life of countless people: teachers, students, directors, administrative staff, librarians, among others12.

But why face the challenge of building an institutional Archive of Memories? What moved us? As researchers studying the History of Education, our focus is on preserving documents that, if examined, can tell stories. However, as teachers of the History of Education, we also care about the formative scope of this place, that is, we work to foster among the students of the Pedagogy Courses and of other teaching degrees the desire to learn about the history of UFRGS, exploring the documents preserved there. This practice helps students to realize the potential of the History of Education as a research field and not just as a subject in university courses.

According to Arlette Farge (2009), archives are vestiges of singular and complex places that need to be unraveled in their materiality, like a sea in which one dives but where one may drown. In these spaces, we can "capture speech" and recognize "faces and sufferings, emotions and the powers created to control them" (FARGE, 2009, p.94). Diana Vidal, based on the observations of Pierre Nora (1993), highlights that archives are memory places, dual places that store historical collections but at the same time are "constantly open to new readings of the past and the present" (VIDAL, 2005, p.19). Places that need adequate treatment, with organization and disposal understood as complementary procedures of technical archival processing, which requires, therefore, a dialogue between historians and archivists.

The past is otherness, we are aware of the impossibility of restoring the time that is gone. Taking Certeau (2008, p. 35) as a reference, the only certainty that accompanies us is that "one could not rekindle what life has extinguished", so what motivated us to create this Archive is a desire to preserve the memory of institutions and of their subjects, "to restore a forgetting, and to find men (and women) through the traces they left" (CERTEAU, 2008, p.35), to impart motion to something that was still, in a state of quietude. Thus, far from thinking of the FACED and CAp Archive as something dead, what we see there is a lot of life, observed in the daily work of teachers, graduate students, scientific initiation scholarship students who engage in the cleaning and cataloging of documents, producing interviews, receiving personal files, as well as conducting individual research that gives academic meaning to archival activities.

What other assumptions guide the documentary preservation work? Escolano (2017) explains that all the elements that make up the institutions "speak," express values ​​and transmit information about school, education and its relations with society within each historical context. For Pierre Nora, "if there are traces, distance, mediation, we are no longer within true memory, but within history." Memory, for the author, is rooted in concreteness, in space, in gesture, in image, in objects (NORA, 1993, p. 9). Viñao Frago (1995) observes that school culture refers to a set of institutionalized aspects, to the daily schooling, to the ways of thinking, to the school objects, to physical materiality; in short, school culture is the whole of school life. The study of school material culture cannot be understood as a simple reflection of social relations. On the other hand, the modes of object use, their choice and receptivity, the absences and presences of utensils, their acquisition process and origin, among others, are all elements that actively participate in the creation, operation, maintenance and/or abandonment of school experiences.

Therefore, in the Archive of Memories we are concerned with preserving the vestiges of the Faculty and Colégio, looking at what, for different reasons, managed to survive time, considered by Escolano (2017) "school rubbish," materials, usually banal, but that can promote new understandings of the past of education.

In all constitution of archives, there are disputes over what is important to conserve. We understand that everything depends on the epistemological convictions of those who propose to do this work. After all, archives do not speak for themselves, they reverberate the interests and hopes of those who propose to organize them. In the Archive that we discuss here, there are innumerable historical documents13, produced by the two institutions over the years in all their different departments. But for us, the "flavor of the archive," to use the metaphor by Arlette Farge (2009), without neglecting the role of official documentary organization14, resides in the receipt of personal files, composed of diverse documents, many of them ordinary pieces of writing, representative of the Faculty and the Colégio and it also resides in the production and preservation of oral recollections of members of the academic and school communities. These are our gestures of keeping in a Living Archive, constituted by "silent documents" of the University, that "today want to make themselves heard" (PINSKY, 2005, p.7).

It is in this perspective that many objects find a place of reception and get to be housed at the Archive of Memories of the FACED/CAp, which can be understood as a kind of refuge, amid the pressures of daily study and work. As a place, it provides "links between past, present and future" (Anhein, 2018, p. 131), after all, there remains a presence of the memory of past times that also aspires to be present in the future. There is interest in "school vestiges that hold secrets that disturb the silences in the History of Education" (ESCOLANO, 2017, p. 38). In the wake of this thought, Nora says that "memory places are first and foremost remnants" (1993, p.12), remnants of what has passed, "fragments of truth, dazzling of clarity and credibility" (FARGE, 2009, p. 27). This is how loose and seemingly unorganized sheets of paper, intimate notebooks, class planning notebooks, calendars, student papers, photographs, graduation invitations and speeches and notes tell a lot about the culture of these educational institutions. All of them are received, sanitized and stored for later consultation by researchers. We understand the production and keeping of these records as a form of attestation of our existences, which situate us in the world and are practices of "archiving the self" (ARTIÈRES, 1998), of self-construction and resistance.

Beyond the interest in personal files, we have also developed an archive of oral memory of teachers, employees and former students, which is constantly expanding15. By applying the Oral History methodology, we conduct interviews and, in these contacts, we try to urge each interviewee to rummage through their past, to look for old stored papers accumulated with time and thus to make donations. This is not an easy job, because most of the time, the gesture of delivering things that are ours, which are intimate, demand sensitivity and trust in those who become a kind of guardian of the memory of others. In the next section, we seek to problematize the production of these files, both oral and personal, which, with the consent of the subjects involved, become part of the FACED and CAp Archive of Memories.

AMONG JOURNALS, NOTEBOOKS, ESSAYS AND ETC ...: THE WEALTH OF PERSONAL FILES

For some time now, motivated by theoretical reflections on the issue, we have had trust that personal files, although apparently silent, can be powerful, concrete documents that bring, in different ways, the memory of institutions and their members. Sue McKemissh (2013, p. 244) considers them as records that offer "evidence of our interactions with others in the context of our own lives and the place we occupy in theirs." They are thus evidence of "our existence, our activities and experiences". Here we reiterate the significance of the Archive of Memories constituting a space for receiving these "practices of archiving the self" (ARTIÈRES, 1998), respecting the idiosyncrasies of the ways in which each individual organized his relics. There are some made up of intimate notebooks, others composed of assorted sets of papers, and still others that are school planning notebooks. All of them, regardless of their specificities, are endowed with complexity, demand close attention when investigated. It is necessary to highlight how hard it can be to donate intimate papers, often difficult to let go. Finesse and kindness are important attributes that must be part of the relationship established between the donor and the one who, in the name of the institution, receives these documents. When we accept these objects, we try to maintain an attitude of reverence before the donor. We consider these donations to be true relics, for few survive their useful life, since the trash is often their final destination. In this sense, Cunha reflects on these documents, conceived as "relics," explaining that "they bring with them stories, events, recollections, memories, for they are imbued with meanings and qualities of representation that go beyond their original situation" (CUNHA, 2007, p. 84).

Why and by whom were these objects kept? What conditions and motivations have permeated the donation to a public archive? Ketelaar (2018) explains the importance of reconstructing the itinerary of documents from their creation to archiving, when they acquire a new status. In this sense, it is worth of notice that donations, in general, are not spontaneous, which would be unlikely; it is sometimes during the interviews that an effective possibility of raising awareness for the future donation happens. At other times, it is rummaging in drawers and lockers of teachers at the Colégio that gems of the History of Education are identified16.

Personal files "are born of disorder, they also presuppose hands that manipulate and classify documents, eyes that observe the writing, smells that awaken memories" (CUNHA, 2015, p.16). In our Archive, these documentary sets are important; we might say they are our beloved child. Clearly, many of them were built with artistry, over the years, with autobiographical dimensions expressed in its construction. Archiving is a way of witnessing, of recording our memories, of recognizing the "written tracks" (CASTILLO GOMEZ, 2003) of ordinary people. Although they carry an institutional mark, sometimes tenuous, such documents are endowed with something personal. Bringing Sue McKemmish (2013) again to the discussion, these artifacts constitute "evidence of me," but also "evidence of us," that is, they represent evidence of the institutional culture, specifically, and of the temporalities in which they are inscribed.

Notebooks, both intimate and used for planning, stand out among the personal files17. It is noteworthy that this kind of document was not always a well-known material for research in the field of History of Education as it is today. However, the development of documentary investigation brought this writing medium to the fore, in its relation to "the interest of historians in investigating life in the classroom" (MIGNOT, 2008, p.7). Gomez (2012) observes how much the interest in these documents has been increasing, as a debt of the History of Education to ordinary, everyday materials and, at the same time, he emphasizes the "inquietude of the search [for it]," after all, we know that they are not produced for perpetuity. This situation reinforces the enthusiasm of the researchers when they come across these documentary sets. It is like finding treasures that may at last be explored by historiography.

BETWEEN VOICE AND WRITING: THE ARCHIVE OF ORAL MEMORY

Even before paying attention to personal documents, a desire emerged to build another archive, anchored in the oral memory of those who lived in the Faculty and/or in the Colégio an important period of studying, working and teaching. Justino Magalhães (1999) explains the close links between the history of educational institutions and individuals, in his words, "a memory constituted by reports and representations, symbolic or material ... A memory integrated into everyday practices” (MAGALHÃES, 1999, p.69).

For that, we chose Oral History as methodology. Sensitivity, friendliness, respect, attention to the speech of the other (ERRANTE, 2000) and solidarity are essential characteristics for those who choose these research approaches that value the narratives of different persons. The experience of so many interviews allows us to say that the establishment of the "interpersonal bridge" (ERRANTE, 2000, p.152) begins before the first meeting, when the first contact is done by e-mail or telephone. From there, the way the person receives the interviewer, her or his preparation for that moment, the degree of readiness to speak, all contribute and consolidate the opportunity of establishing a good interaction. The metaphor of the bridge underscores the importance of seeking to build a relationship of trust between the one who asks and the one who wish to speak and, according to Zago (2003, p. 302), is a sine qua non of the production of significant data, ensuring a fruitful interview.

Staff and former students carry in their memory the history not only of the institution but also of the historical processes affecting the education at national and regional level, which justifies interviewing them, thus avoiding the forgetting of educational practices related to a specific time and place. It is, therefore, the production of the memory of a teacher training institution and of a school in which social and educational experiences are articulated in the context in which they occurred, allowing the observation of the interconnections between the different histories lived by the individuals and the material conditions of certain educational processes.

Research of oral documents offers a singular dimension for approaching the past. Encounters with narrators - when seeking to capture remembered moments, betting on the power of the "small miracle of recognition" (RICOEUR, 2007) - in many cases, constitute instances of human relations fruitfulness. We know that the environment where the interviews take place should be carefully evaluated, trying to ensure that there is minimal interference and that the chosen place promotes immersion in the past. For building up this archive, we let the interviewee choose where to conduct the interview; in most cases, it ends up being in the premises of the Faculty itself. Such a choice bolsters the evocative power of memory; being in that building, therefore, facilitates the act of remembering. Talking with people, perceiving how they move in space, observing their emotions when looking for old recollections of places that sometimes no longer exist or when looking for colleagues who may not even be in their old posts, listening to them, observing them constitute precious moments, when we can get closer to the marks of another time, which escapes us because we have not experienced it. The sense of humanity promoted by the Oral History (PRINS, 1996) deepen in the researchers, who, far from understanding that there is any redemption in methodology, find in their use new forms of understanding the past, with which they identify themselves.

Working with oral documents is working with the interaction of narrative, imagination and subjectivity. Speech is susceptible to the vicissitudes of each moment, but it does not mean that memory is intangible. On the contrary, speech allows us to approach the truths we want to find in the experiences of others. It also has the merit of revealing nuances of the past, which might be forgotten and that sometimes are unattainable with other documents, as well as giving visibility to the individuals in the construction of history. It deserves attention, thus, the narrative thread that interviewees choose to tell their histories. "Interviews are events that tell" (ERRANTE, 2000, p.143), this maxim accompanies us in the building up of the archive of oral memory, which is continuous and always open to new possibilities of narrative production. The memory is labyrinthine, plural and indomitable. Therefore, even though there is an interview script, and regardless of the researcher efforts to guide the event, it is the one who tells who directs the conversation. He chooses about what he wants to talk. "Memory narratives are identity narratives" (ERRANTE, 2000), thus we can understood why the recollections of FACED teachers often take an autobiographical tone, in which memory and the feeling of identity are closely intertwined. "Memory is a constituent element of the sense of identity, both individual and collective, insofar as it is also an extremely important factor in the sense of continuity and coherence of a person or group in their reconstruction of themselves" (POLLAK, 1992, p.29).

Another issue that emerges in this discussion concerns the potentials and weaknesses of oral history archives. After all, do researchers in these archives work with Oral History? We affirm so, despite its specificities, because the researchers did not produce the document, that is, did not participate in the interview, not even in the making of the script. They have access to transcriptions and audio recordings. Even so, they are dealing with documents that have an oral origin and were later transposed to written culture, but without losing their specificity. Producing oral memory is also a priority in our gestures of keeping. Preserved in writing, the voices of narrating individuals remain in perpetuity. Would these archives be a means of perpetuating the presence of staff members and students in the present and in the future? We believe so.

As of 2018, 46 life history interviews with teachers were conducted, emphasizing the professional formation, the experiences in higher education, the employment in the Faculty of Education and the professional trajectory in the University. It should be noted that there was intentionality in the search for interviewees, that is, the fundamental criterion was having many years of experience in the Faculty. Several questions were posed to them. Who are they? What they did before entering the Faculty or Colégio? What post have they occupied over the years working in the Faculty or Colégio? How did they perform in their jobs? What historical circumstances experienced in FACED have affected them? What aspects were preponderant in their trajectories? To what extent did they assimilate current educational discourses and how did this interfere with the constitution of their identities? What meanings did they extract from their teaching experiences? Which people were important in the history of the Faculty?

Six interviews were also carried out with students who had graduated from the Pedagogy Course and two with staff members. We point out that some of these interviews were conducted in the context of Master's thesis, Scientific Initiation studies and Bachelor thesis in pedagogy. Three interviews were part of the project of scientific initiation "Memories of black presence in the Faculty of Education;" three interviews were about the memories of former Faculty students; three interviews focused on memories of Professor Mérion Campos Bordas; and five interviews focused on the memories of teachers from the Colégio de Aplicação.

Some of the themes evoked in the interviews are biographies; Colégio de Aplicação; teachers' strikes; the military-civilian dictatorship; FACED in the 1970s; participation and politics in the 1980s and 1990s; the emergence of Post-structuralism; gender relations in the FACED; the Graduate Program in Education; relations of belonging. The theme of relations with the Faculty space was the most recurrent in the memory evocation process - after all, as Paul Ricoeur (2007) says, places are "memorable." We perceived that spaces related to student transgressions were viewed as places of belonging, but also as spaces of dispute, mainly between the Colégio de Aplicação and the Faculty of Education.

Somehow, those links that once united teachers - when they resented the military government and later struggled to improve public higher education - still exist; perhaps more subtly, but no less evident. The ties connecting them are still present today, since FACED continues to be a space of many political struggles for education, which unfold in different nuances. It is worth emphasizing the last question that we usually ask our interviewees: How do you see the Faculty in the future? Many project it as a mainstay, recalling the past of struggles for plural, democratic and quality public education. The richness of this archive of oral memory lies in the intertwining between the past, present and future of Brazilian education.

A TASK THAT CONTINUES IN THE GESTURES OF KEEPING

Returning to the epigraph chosen for this text, Paul Ricouer talks about this time, marked by the imperative to create archives, which translates into "an archival memory, a paper memory" (RICOEUR, 2007, p.410). This paper discusses the constitution of the Archives of Memories of the Faculty of Education and the Colégio de Aplicação/UFRGS, considering the epistemological issues involved in the establishment of this place for archiving the memory of the institutions and their subjects, especially the memory of teachers and students.

The relations established between the educational past and the present that we live are fruitful. These interrelations arouse interest in the History of Education and demonstrate the significance of studying the educational thinking and contexts of other epochs. The action of time tends to erase traces, so the gestures of keeping are true acts of resistance in the face of a growing presentism, where there seems to be little room for reflections about the past. The preservation and production of memory are also ways of piecing together the processes of identity construction of educational institutions and their subjects, so that they do not forget, so that memories do not disappear.

Deciding what to keep and what to discard raises a number of issues. First, regarding archival norms, which regulate and determine, based on temporal considerations, what should be preserved. On the other hand, our sensibilities led the work in the Archive of Memories, promoting an emphasis on oral and personal documents of individuals that were marked by the Faculty and/or Colégio.

There are still some issues to be addressed regarding the challenges facing any institution, especially the public ones, which is currently creating Archives of Memories. What are the structural and financial conditions, broadly speaking, of the institutions? What are the priorities and the current areas of dispute? What are the working conditions and demands of students and teachers? For whom and whom to preserve? For the institution, community, researchers? What is the past that you want to preserve? What kind of training would sensitize to preservation? How do we develop in teachers, students, community the gestures of preservation? How do we foster a pedagogical component at the work in an Archive of Memories? None of these questions is easy to answer, and none has unique answers. They require, rather, continuous consideration from those addressing them. After all, as the poet says "to keep something is not to hide it or to lock it away/ In a safe one does not keep anything/ In a safe, a thing is lost to sight/ To keep one thing is ... to admire it , that is, to illuminate it or be illuminated by it ... it is to watch over it, that is, to be awake for it"(ANTONIO CÍCERO).

We conclude this paper by recalling the incompleteness of the commitment to this Archive, considering that, in addition to being a contemplative space for the past, it is a place where different activities are performed. According to Ketelaar (2018, p. 193), archives "never close, they are never complete, each individual or each generation can have their own interpretation of the archives, they have the right to reinvent and reconstruct their view of the past". In agreement with Cunha (2007, p. 295), we emphasize the meaning of institutionalizing school and university archives, considering their relation to the preservation of memory and to the historical cultural heritage of education. Thus, it is possible to approach the "mysteries of the school and the uncertainties of its individual and collective labyrinths considered refined handicrafts". Finally, we believe in the power of gestures to preserve also as a way of resisting forgetfulness, especially that produced by the acceleration of time, by the presentism, as Hartog (2006) argues. After all, in recent decades, the "confidence in progress has replaced the concern to keep and preserve: preserve what and who? Preserve this world, our world, future generations, ourselves"(HARTOG, 2006, p.270-271).

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3Most of the preserved documentation originates in administrative activities of the Faculty of Education. We highlight the documents of the Faculty’s Departments (Department of Basic Studies, Department of Education and Curriculum and Department of Specialized Studies), of the Graduate Program in Education, of the Management, of Research Commissions and of numerous extension projects carried out at the institution.

4The Colégio de Aplicação was inaugurated in 1954, idealized by Graciema Pacheco, Professor of Teaching at the Faculty of Philosophy of URGS. It occupied several spaces in the university and, in the end of the 1960s, the school began sharing a building with the newly created Faculty of Education. On the history of the institution, see Lima (2016).

5There were some efforts by the Rectory in the 1970s to preserve University documents, but they were not fruitful, which culminated in the establishment of specific documentation centers for each academic unit.

6In recent years, we have seen the creation of several departments within the university aimed at preserving historical documentation, producing interviews and collecting personal files. Such as Ceme, UFRGS Museum, Archive of the Institute of Arts, among others.

7On the University Reform and the context of the Civil-Military Dictatorship in the Faculty of Education, see Almeida; Lima and Silva (2013).

8Minutes and drafts related to the establishment of the Graduate Program in Education are preserved, as well as some documents from the first coordinating team. We emphasize that we keep a small part of the documentation, since much of the collection still is in the keeping of the PPGedu.

9This project began in 2010 with the organization of the FACED documentary collection and the production of a collection of oral memory, based on interviews with former teachers. These actions seek to give visibility to the different memories of the Faculty of Education of UFRGS.

10On the building of the Faculty of Education, see Grimaldi and Almeida (2018).

11Every day, we carry out the following activities in the archive: cleaning, cataloging and packaging of documents; work of analysis and identification of documentary typology; receipt/organization of personal files of teachers.

12In addition to organizing the collection of documents, receiving personal files and establishing the archive of Oral Memory, we carried out actions to disseminate the memory of this institution, such as exhibitions at the UFRGS Open Doors event, participation in the organization of the commemorative events of the institution (celebration of the 45th anniversary of FACED’s founding).

13Among the historical documents, we can highlight the collection of the extinct Faculty of Philosophy of UFRGS (1942-1970). In this collection, there are administrative documents of the course of pedagogy, periodicals, some documents of the Student Society, diplomas, certificates and disciplinary processes of the period of the Civil-Military Dictatorship. In addition, we also keep the minutes of creation of the Faculty of Education and of its Graduate Program and the minutes of the departmental meetings and collegiate meetings.

14For this, we count with the support of the archivists of the university and all documentation coming from the administrative sectors is screened based on the Temporal Table of Documents of the National Council of Archives - CONARQ.

15The FACED oral memory archive keeps more than 50 interviews with teachers, employees and students who graduated from the Pedagogy Course, available for local consultation.

16Usually, FACED and CAp faculty store their study and research materials in lockers located in the corridors of the institution. Many teachers, after retirement, forget to empty these lockers, so we are often called upon to screen these "forgotten" documents that turn out to be rich personal files.

17Some documents that we have in the personal files are papers donated by Professor Balduino Andreola, calendars of Professor Luzia Garcia de Mello, notebooks of Professor Isabel Loss, memorials of the students of the Pedagogy Course, student papers, photographs, letters and others.

Received: April 23, 2019; Accepted: June 10, 2019

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