Introduction

The whirlwind of modern life has been fed by many sources: big discoveries in physical sciences, with our changing image of the universe and the place we occupy; the industrialization of production, transforming scientific knowledge in technology, creating new human environments and destroying the old, accelerating the pace of life itself, generating new forms of corporate power and class war; monumental demographic explosion, penalizing millions of people torn from their ancestral habitat, pushing them through the paths of the world towards new lives; fast and often catastrophic urban growth; mass communication systems, dynamic in their development, wrapping and tying up, in the same package, the most diverse of individuals and societies [...] (^{BERMAN, 1997}, p. 15).

The rush of life, mainly in big urban centers, doesn’t often allow us to enjoy the educational dimension of cities: streets, squares, buildings, monuments, constructions. So many ways of doing it! So many spaces, so many memories! So many lost letters!

If we look closely at school buildings in our cities, a sea of possibilities will emerge: people, objects, projects, fights, dreams. Various studies point to the importance of interrogating details and broadening our outlook for the reality surrounding us, because “as memory spaces, school buildings are invitations to begin investigating their stories, which demands going through the absence of sources, document dispersion and the neglect of school roles (^{MIGNOT; SILVA; SILVA, 2014}, p. 9).

Many cases evidence the importance of refining our perspective on the historical and cultural value of school institutions. A rich example for the History of Education in Brazil is the current Escola Municipal Luiz Delfino, in the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood Gávea. This centennial institution, still working in the city, was created in 1861 by Zé Índio, a literate former slave who acted as a tutor for children in Pedro Pereira da Silva’s farm. Still in the 19^th Century, the school was sponsored by the emperor, receiving the title of Escola do Imperador (Emperor’s School) (RIO DE JANEIRO: SECRETARIA MUNICIPAL DE EDUCAÇÃO, 2005, p. 45). Slave school, emperor school! There’s History of Education in every neighborhood, street and square! But there’s more to historical objects than buildings.

How songs are sung, food is prepared and tools are created are also rich knowledges, transmitted from generation to generation, part of the scope of objects studied by the History of Education. Although this field has, for a long time, resorted basically to official written sources, works made by politicians, educators or prominent intellectuals of any given time (^{LOPES; GALVÃO, 2005}, p. 80), as highlighted by Diana Vidal (2005), an interesting movement began in the late 1980s, with a growing distance from education historiography towards education philosophy. A preoccupation with sources, archival research and collection constitution promoted further specialization and autonomy in the field of History of Education teaching and research.

The writing of this history appropriated concepts/categories problematized as historiographic operation.

However, it’s necessary to understand that those concepts are in constant transformation. The broadening of “culture” as a notion, strongly manifested in historical, anthropological and sociological studies, for example, is the result of a process, as pointed out by Dea Fenelon:

Originally, culture, as a term, designated the growth and care of harvests and animals, or the growth and care of human faculties. Until the 18^th Century, culture still designated objective processes: culturing something, plants, animals, minds. That’s why we must remember that the transformations of so-called modern times also molded new necessities for understanding reality and society, economy, politics and culture became intimately connected to a new concept, that of civilization, which, meaning order, courtesy, preparation and education, was opposed to barbarism and indicated a realized state, implying development, historical process and, especially, progress (^{FENELON, 2008}, p. 273).

Still according to ^{Fenelon (2008}), even though it was highly contested, it was only in the 20^th Century that the concept of culture expanded, becoming understood as language, religion, recreation, music, dance. In theory terms,

working so close to anthropology, accepting broadening the concept, historians began, in a certain way, dealing with the assumption that cultural aspects could be grouped in two modalities: cultural practices and representations. Considering practices as objective culture, as sets of works, realizations, institutions - and even uses and habits - and cultural representations as the result of an action (whether mental, spiritual or ideological) on a human group even in a collective aspect allowed for description, narration and surveys (^{FENELON, 2008}, p. 277).

The understanding of culture, in the author’s perspective, considers the subjects’ ways of life (work, housing, leisure), i.e., “all dimensions of life […] beyond the promotion and development of institutions and daily initiatives with every form of expression and organization and fighting in the social” (^{FENELON, 2008}, p. 277).

If, on one hand, the concept of culture is mutable and was significantly enlarged in the field of Social and Human Sciences, on the other, definitions and uses of the concept of school culture contributed to broadening sources, objects and approaches in research in the field of History of Education, because, from the concept of school culture,

we can attempt to identify, in a broader sense, ways of thinking and acting largely widespread inside our societies, ways that can’t conceive the acquisition of knowledge and abilities unless through the mediation of formal school processes (JULIÀ, 2001, p. 10).

The theoretical plurality that currently makes up the field of History of Education passes through the multiplicity of objects which researchers have been attempting to investigate and through the broader and more diversified source framework that education historians have been mobilizing. It also involves the problematics of places, provoking a displacement in selecting research objects and ways to approach them.

Educational ideas and policies have largely been substituted by practices, uses and appropriations of different objects or read through other lenses. Moreover, innovation in the field includes theoretical dialogue with fields such as Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and Economics. Concepts of gender, ethnicity, generation and social class have become indispensable to understand past educational phenomena and that the history of education of men, women, children, boys, girls, black people, white people, indigenous peoples and immigrants carry their own distinguishing marks.

This displacement from singular to plural - the look towards the previously invisible other or to facts considered “irrelevant” to go down in history - not only indicates possibly unexplored research paths, but also opens new possibilities, transforming old papers, often kept only due to affection or simply convenience, into historical sources. The movement also evidences the importance of creating memory centers and other documental archives to keep and preserve what we begin considering as material and immaterial educational heritage.

With still little incentive, some education historians begin making efforts to organize museums and memory centers in different Brazilian states. If, on one hand, those initiatives are very incipient, on another, they enhance the growing importance (accompanied by investments) of caring for previously discarded records - due to the lack of documental value given to them - and the necessity of caring for our memories, in other to guarantee preservation and the consequent appreciation of our cultural/educational heritage.

Memory and heritage: paths and footprints in the History of Education

Opening the field of History of Education for new objects, sources and approaches, a result of an approximation with New History and, more specifically, with Cultural History, refers us to the understanding of overlapping relationships between History, memory and sources.

It has been inescapable to understand, in first instance, the documental revolution that happened in the field of History and classic contributions of collective work Faire l’histoire (1974), where Jacques Le Goff and Pierre Nora mark the intention of publicize a new kind of history. The announced news is expressed in problems, approaches and objects. Besides these books, the also classic fundamental entries História, Memória and Documento-Monumento (^{LE GOFF, 1990}) have served as doorways for researchers entering the paths of History of Education. The concept of memory must be understood in its differences regarding history:

Memory is life, always kept by living groups and in their name, it’s in permanent evolution, open to the dialectic of remembrance and forgetting, unconscious of its successive deformations, susceptible to long repressions and sudden revitalizations. History is the always problematic and incomplete reconstruction of what is no more. Memory is an always current phenomena, a connection of lived experience with an eternal present; history is a representation of the past. Because it is affective and magical, memory only accommodates in the details that conform it; it feeds on vague, telescopic, global or floating memories, particular and symbolic, sensitive to all transference, censorship or projection (...) (NORA, 1994, p. 3).

Intending to understand memory in its multiple constructions, historians have begun paying attention to heritage as cultural signs that translate, through the discourse they emanate, representation fights drawn in material or immaterial traces.

Studies of heritage and memory are growing in History of Education. Following the movement of problematizing the concepts, themes and objects in writing this history, it’s also important to historicize the notion of heritage itself, since it hasn’t always been conceived as we see it now, as it is mutable in time and space.

In the historiographic operation undertaken around heritage, we can take as an example the findings of historian Rocha Pombo (1857-1933), who, when travelling through the North of Brazil, in 1917 (SILVA, 2012), stated that the action of time in these cities would have left everything in “total disorder and ruin”, “in the village’s primitive settlement” (^{POMBO, 1918}, p. 22), contrasting with some points of renovation in the cities “with paved streets and modern buildings” (POMBO, 1918, p. 22). For the referred historian, “those colonial antiques contrast with some very good streets, with good modern buildings and mainly with many squares. Almost all are small, but gardened” (POMBO, 1917, p. 22). Now, in the early 20^th Century, urban preoccupations were with reforming or destroying the “old”, associated with backwardness, to modernize, in the sense of following the path of progress, building modern, civilized and sanitary nations.

Through the 20^th Century, politics of preservation in Brazil continued to privilege so-called material heritage, especially architectural. It was only in 1988 that the Brazilian Constitution instituted cultural rights and broadened, in article 216, its definition of heritage, comprising of both material and immaterial goods. This broader conception of cultural heritage not only opened space for popular culture expressions, but also for immaterial goods, which make up intangible heritage.

Since the new configuration of heritage in Brazil, redrawn in the last two decades, opens up multiple dimensions, it’s necessary to bring educational heritage for this debate framework. Even though the focus in the field of educational is centered in school, one of the themed lines, in the Brazilian Congress for History of Education (CBHE), for example, has been presenting itself as educational heritage, instead of school heritage. This naming convention indicates the need - or a tendency? - of broadening the notion of heritage in the field of education and its history.

Thus, it’s possible to state we live a process of renovation also in the field of History of Education, which has encouraged discussion on the universe of sources for this history and the technical-methodological paths to deal with this material. In CBHE, “heritage” is a recent theme, only configuring a theme focus since the event’s 4^th edition, in 2011. In this influx, the Iberoamerican Symposiums: History, Education, Educational-Heritage start in 2012, highlighting the efforts of researchers, groups and research projects regarding the theme (^{CHALOBA; CUNHA, 2014}).

Specifically on heritage and material culture, highlights are dossiers organized in journals specialized in the field. Maria Cristina ^{Menezes edited Cultura escolar e cultura material escolar: entre arquivos e museus (2005}), in an edition of revista Pro-posições. Cultura escolar e seus suportes materiais (2010) was edited by Gladys Mary Ghizoni Teive, Elisa Maria Quartiero and Vera Gaspar and published in Linhas. The same journal also published another dossier on the theme, edited by Gizele de Souza and Anamaria Bueno de Freitas: Objetos, Espaços, Cultura e Rituais na História das Instituições e Práticas Escolares (2015). Revista Brasileira de História da Educação also publisher dossiers A cultura material na História da Educação: possibilidades de pesquisa (2007), edited by Rosa Fátima de Souza, and Arquivos, objetos e memórias educativas: práticas de inventário e de museologia (2011), edited by researchers Vera Gaspar and Margarida Felgueiras. Zita Possamai and Cláudio de Sá Machado Júnior edited the dossier Patrimônio, educação, museus: história, memória e sociedade (2015), published in Educar em Revista. These works have been directly contributing to think possibilities and modes of operating with sources and archives, broadening the lens of History to consider History of Education connected to instituting an educational heritage.

In addition to the events, dossiers and articles on the theme, it’s worth highlighting the investment in different communication channels, specifically regarding the issue of educational heritage. That’s the case of the Revista Iberoamericana do Patrimônio Histórico-Educativo journal, which published its first edition in 2016, intending to be

a space for the publication of studies, research, discussions on the Researchers’ Educational-Historical Heritage and groups focused on the published themes, especially through Ridphe_I, mailing list for the Iberoamerican Network for investigating and publishing Educational-Historical Heritage (^{MENEZES, 2015}, p. 1).

The dialogue with the international academic community can also be verified in productions on the theme and in references which underpin the discussions. In Portugal, in the late 20^th Century, the interest in school and its past grew: new looks were directed towards the heritage and history of school, privileging the memories of educational actors and developing investigation and intervention projects on these themes. These actions found support in local communities and governments. However, in Brazil, the process has been slower: the idea of school identity, heritage and history is still undervalued by Brazilians, including governments. Initiatives are still singular and require more mobility and investment from different sectors of society in a collective project of guarding and preserving school memory and history as cultural educational heritage.

In the scope of Portuguese historiography of education, the works of Maria João Mogarro are important contributions, particularly her project Rede de Museus Escolares de Portalegre, which has as its main objective the valorization of its material heritage and school culture. In 2012, the researcher presided over the IX Portuguese-Brazilian History of Education Congress, where the theme of “School Heritage” was in the spotlight (^{MOGARRO; CUNHA, 2012}). An author of many papers, chapters and books, we also highlight in her career the book Educação e Patrimônio Cultural: Escolas, Objetos e Práticas, which she edited, released in 2015, compiling the work of various specialists in question. In Mogarro’s perspective (2015),

educational heritage, its history and memory share the political proposals for social renovation and are an integral part of a movement assigning meaning to the discourse of educational actors, mainly to subjects dedicated to educational practices and teaching and learning processes happening in real time in schools and classrooms, where they acquire experiential knowledge. Material artifacts are part of these processes and its through them that we approach educational systems and realities (^{MOGARRO, 2015}, p. 71).

Another important reference in Portuguese educational historiography on the theme of “heritage and memory” is Margarida ^{Felgueiras (2005}, 2011), who has been highlighting the importance of educational objects and museums, using the concept of educational inheritance. According to the author,

In educational inheritance we include buildings, furniture, course materials, decorative and symbolic elements present in schools, as well as teaching practices, student tactics, games and songs during free periods, and memories of daily student life that teachers and students can reveal. From the cafeteria to the nurse’s office and the administration, it intends to see school as a place for interaction where teachers, students, clerks and families have built and continue to build a relational space, in a structured physical and social framework, participating in defining the concept of children. If pedagogical ideas and theories can be known through writing, school routines and experiences of children, student and teacher must be investigated through memories and materials related to them (^{FELGUEIRAS, 2005}, p. 92).

Spanish historiography of education also presents an important contribution to the debate on the theme of heritage and educational memory. In their work Currículo, espaço e subjetividade - a arquitetura como programa (1998), Antonio Viñao Frago and Agostín Escolano explore the possibilities evoked when conceiving school architecture as a historical issue. According to the researchers, there’s no neutrality in school buildings, and its architecture represents a set of values, projects and worldviews.

In their paper “Memória, patrimônio e educação” (2011), published in Revista História da Educação, Viñao Frago and Escolano state that one of the more developed themes, inside and outside of Spain, in the field of History of Education has been the study of culture and material history of educational institutions. According to the authors, the interest in historical-educational heritage

ha sido el resultado de la confluencia del interés por adentrarse en el conocimiento de la “caja negra” de la historia de la educación, lo realmente acaecido en las aulas y en los establecimientos docentes, su realidad cotidiana, las prácticas, el currículum real no el prescrito o el propuesto, con el auge de los estudios de etnografía escolar (AA. VV., 2003) y del museísmo pedagógico-educativo (Ruiz Berrio, 2010a) (^{VIÑAO FRAGO; ESCOLANO, 2011}, p. 43).

In another paper, titled La historia material e inmaterial de la escuela: memoria, patrimonio y educación (2012), researchers once again problematize the presence of heritage in History of Education studies, as well as warning against the perils of fetishization and collection and to the fact that objects, by themselves, can’t speak. Guiding questions are necessary in investigation. According to the authors,

constituyen dos tentaciones constantes de la investigación histórica en general y, sobre todo, de aquella que recae sobre el patrimonio cultural en cualquiera de sus manifestaciones. El peligro de hacer historia repitiendo “esto sucedió” - en este caso, “esto existió” y doy fe de ello diciendo que existió - o de reducirla a una enumeración o colección de detalles y variantes en relación con unos objetos o personas determinadas, convierte la operación aparentemente histórica en una tarea infinita, sin límites, plena de anotaciones “superfluas”, sin sentido alguno, dirigidas a producir en el lector un cierto “efecto de realidad” (BARTHES, 1987, p. 163-195). Los objetos no hablan por sí solos. Además, su mera descripción o enumeración no nos lleva más allá de las crónicas, cronologías o anales en relación con los acontecimientos (^{VIÑAO FRAGO; ESCOLANO, 2012}, p. 11).

Another fundamental text that also became a reference for education historians in Brazil is Etnografia e historia material de la escuela (2002), by José Maria Hernandez Díaz, who defends the use of school material culture as historiographic material, since the reflection around the role of school memory is fundamental when building a citizen-centered education. For Hernandez Díaz (2002), objects speak and talk about the school’s past, so they must be carefully preserved. In 2013, the author edited the book Prensa pedagógica y patrimonio histórico education, where he conceives of school, student and pedagogical papers as heritage.

In the perspective of Agostin Escolano Benito (2010), the attention given by Cultural History to objects and material culture, as well as representations, contributes to the understanding of school and material heritage as historiographic objects. Thus, the author defends school material heritage as culture and memory. This value given to material sources, previously excluded from what was worthy of research in the face of overrated literate culture testimonies, implies a significant epistemological and social turn. The study of school culture and material culture can “responder a estrategias verdaderamente públicas, promover una hermenéutica pluralista y contribuir a la educación histórica de la ciudadanía” (^{ESCOLANO BENITO, 2010}, p. 26).

The book Patrimonio y Etnografia de la escuela ne España y Portugal durante el siglo XX (2012), edited by Pedro Moreno Martínez and Ana Sebastián Vicente, gathers the experience of both countries, giving visibility to the growing production on the theme.

It’s also worth mentioning the contribution of authors from other countries, beyond Portugal and Span. Among works developed by Italian researcher Juri Meda, we highlight his paper “A ‘história material da escola’ como fator de desenvolvimento da pesquisa histórico-educativa na Itália” (2015), published in Linhas. The author reflects on school material culture, based on Spanish and Italian researchers, in order to problematize two aspects: the exclusively material part of the school material culture category and the fact that this component shouldn’t be seen as “a prerequisite to educational practices in and of itself, but as an epilogue for a production process originated precisely by the growing educational demand” (^{MEDA, 2015}, p. 27).

If, on one hand, material culture and educational historical heritage have been long-ignored by the supremacy of written documents and the excessive value given to literate culture, on the other, debates about heritage in the field of historiography of education tend to overvalue physical and material aspects, such as buildings and objects, even when it comes to studies on the importance of museums, etc. Therefore, what would be the place of intangible and immaterial heritage in History of Education studies? In this sense, we reinforce the questions posed by Cristina Yanes Cabrera:

Pero, desde la creación de los primeros Museos de la educación - o de Historia de la Educación, o Pedagógicos - el interés se ha centrado en la salvaguarda de los bienes materiales, tanto de naturaleza material y tangible mueble (fotos, objetos escolares, mobiliario, etc) como tangible inmueble (edificios escolares, sitios emblemáticos, etc). Como complemento a esta cultura material de la escuela venimos reivindicando una cultura inmaterial o intangible de los hechos, los procesos y las relaciones educativas (CABRERA, 2007, p. 74).

The rise in research on heritage and its relevance for the History of Education, going beyond geographic limits, allows us to consider the issue of heritage as cultural object also in a comparative perspective, opening up borders and enable debate on questions previously little-known and -discussed in the Ibero-American space.

One of the privileged strands of heritage is material heritage and, in the case of History of Education, particularly school heritage associated to school material culture and memory. According to Rosa Fátima de ^{Souza (2013}), the insertion of school heritage in the broader field of cultural heritage enables school senses to be converted in memory spaces. Regarding the preservation of school heritage,

Effective public policies in favor of school heritage [which are lacking in Brazil] involve the value and support given to preservation institutions, such as museums and documentation and memory centers, connected to universities or not, with funds and qualified staff; as well as the maintenance of school archive preservation programs in educational institutions and the support given to investigations and disclosure of this heritage (^{SOUZA, 2013}, p. 213).

On the same theme, it’s worth highlighting Zita Rosane ^{Possamai’s paper Patrimônio e História da Educação: aproximações e possibilidades de pesquisa (2012}). According to the researcher,

the preponderance of investigations based on written communication has expanded in the last few years into material culture as well as visual culture. In this specific repertoire we often find cultural goods strictly set up as historical heritage, whether national, regional or municipal. The most notorious documents are school buildings (^{POSSAMAI, 2012}, p. 116).

It’s no accident that investigations on school buildings have been objects of study by researchers such as ^{Monarcha (1997}), ^{Souza (1998}), ^{Faria Filho (2000}), ^{Bencostta (2005}), ^{Possamai (2012}; 2015), among others.

The preoccupation with preserving institutional memory and, particularly, with the importance of school and its materiality was the conducting wire of the paper A escola e a sua materialidade: o desafio do trabalho e a necessidade de interlocução (2005), where Maria Cristina Menezes argues that:

the effort to preserve institutional memory, a practice that has become widespread among educational historians, makes us go beyond written records, also considering the means keeping these records, bringing previously-discarded evidences. Beyond writing and their means, iconography, no longer seen as mere illustration, but as a source, along with other materials. It’s recognizing school in its objects [...] (^{MENEZES, 2005}, p. 14).

In the same Pro-posições dossier (2005), Laerthe de Moraes Abreu Jr. Writes “Apontamentos para uma metodologia em cultura material escolar”, articulating the concepts of school culture and material culture and giving an interdisciplinary focus to studies on the theme. Rosa Fátima de ^{Souza, on the other hand, summed up studies regarding school material culture (2007}a).

The preoccupation with preserving memory/heritage has also showed up in research led by Ana Chrystina Venancio Mignot, particularly in the book Outros tempos, outras escolas (^{MIGNOT; SILVA; SILVA, 2014}), exploring a few centennary schools in Rio de Janeiro that are still un use, belonging to the state’s educational network. The book unfolded from the film documentary Tantas Escolas, Tantas Memórias (2009). In 2015, Mignot also led the production of course material Nome que dá nome (2015), where she emphasizes school names in fights around memory. In a similar sense, in Mato Grosso, professor Alexandra Lima da Silva produced documentary film Olhares: Instituições Educativas Centenárias de Cuiabá (2015), a result of her research project Instituições educativas centenárias de Cuiabá: lugares de memórias, patrimônio e ensino de história (1858-2014).

School furniture, classroom chairs and uniforms are also important for preserving school memory, as indicated by Vera Lucia Gaspar’s various research projects around material school culture. The experience of the Santa Catarina School Museum (Museu da Escola Catarinense - MESC), created by professor Maria da Graça Machado Vandresen, in 1992, as part of the project Resgate da História e da Cultura Material da Escola Catarinense - Museu da Escola Catarinense is an exemple of fundamental work in the scope of actions developed around the valorization of educational heritage in History of Education research (GASPAR; PETRY, 2011). Definitively installed in the building it occupies today in 2007, MESC

has as its main goal its consolidation as an informal educational space, responsible for preserving the city’s cultural heritage regarding Education. It’s object is specifically School Education, similar to another museum of the same nature in Brazil, Museu da Escola de Minas Gerais (Minas Gerais School Museum), the first of its kind in the country, preserving the memory of school education in that state, with a focus on the work of teachers and their daily lives (MESC, SITE OFICIAL).

In 1994, in Belo Horizonte, the Minas Gerais School Museum (Museu da Escola de Minas Gerais) was opened, as part of the state’s education department’s Center for Teacher Reference, organized by professor Anamaria Cassassanta Peixoto. With the objective of “realizing a systematic work of memory preservation around school education, encouraging and implementing studies and research in History of Education”, the space “has been growing, since its creating, into a research lab and an institution and service provider” (^{PEIXOTO, 1998}, p. 1). The initiative also became an inspiration for other education historians, worried with the dispersion and discarding of school materials and the subsequent erasure of educational history due to a lack of sources. According to Peixoto (1998),

The experience of investigation has been showing the great dispersion (along with little organization) of data, records and documents on History of Education and the quick discarding of important preservation material. Schools, the greatest depositories for this collection, sometimes preserve the building itself - especially the front - and some antique furniture - usually cabinets - and little to none documents regarding pedagogical practices. Pedagogical materials such as adopted books, classroom diaries, lesson plans, reading posters, meeting minutes, etc. are either inexistent in schools - due to being seen as “old news” - or in an awful state. These materials have been in poorly ventilated, poorly conditioned basements, subject to all sorts of external elements, presenting a high and fast level of deterioration. The lack of adequate space in buildings and of specialized staff for maintenance encourage it to be seen as “old trash” and prematurely discarded (^{PEIXOTO, 1998}, p. 1).

Spaces such as the Physical Education Memory Center (Centro de Memória da Educação Física - CEMEF), created by professor Tarcísio Mauro Vago in 2001, are another significant expression of historians’ preoccupation with keeping and preserving historical sources, lost memories, so often forgotten and/or discarded. Installed in the Physical Education, Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy School at UFMG, CEMEF has the following goals:

To recover, preserve and publicize the memory of UFMG’s Physical Education course; to welcome, preserve and publicize historical documents relative to the memory of Physical Education, among others relative to the production and publication of research on History of Physical Education. It isn’t only a material protection space, but also of collection organization and preservation, with library, museum and archive aspects, composed by various materials regarding Physical Education, Sport and Leisure memory (CEMEF, SITE OFICIAL).

Following a similar line, the UFMG Nursing School Memory Center (Centro de Memória da Escola de Enfermagem da UFMG - CEMENF), created in 2006, acts as a “space for preserving the memory and history of health, nursing and nutrition” and intends to “constitute and preserve documental EEUFMG archives, caring for its treatment, organization and conservation” (CEMENF, SITE OFICIAL).

In Paraná, it’s also worth noting the creation of the Paraná School Museum (Museu da Escola Paranaense) in 2013, approved by the state’s education department after a proposal led by the Historical School Heritage Research Group and professor Maria Helena Pupo Silveira. In her words,

Many school museums were created from research initiatives of a new History of Education that values school heritage. The proposal for creating Museu da Escola Paranaense is inserted in this kind of initiative, as it intends to rescue, recuperate and protect the heritage of state schools, putting it at the disposal of Paraná society for studying, rebuilding its history and educational memory, or simply rescuing memories of how school educational practices were led in Paraná […]. It’s worth considering that the concept of a museum, however, has been undergoing modifications and assuming a new dimension, not only limited to the role of showing and housing objects, but also contributing to heritage education actions (^{SILVEIRA, 2013}, p. 357-358).

In another dimension, but still inserted in the relationship between “memory and heritage”, Maria Teresa Santos Cunha has been leading projects attempting to organize, sanitize and catalogue personal collections from teachers and intellectuals from Santa Catarina society, making them available in public collections, giving researchers access to records previously restricted to the family scope. Here we highlight Territórios de muitas escritas. Os arquivos pessoais dos irmãos Boiteux; Perfil de uma biblioteca, traços de um leitor: Estudos sobre o acervo de um professor - Victor Márcio Konder (1925-2005); and the current project, Do traçado manual ao registro digital: O acervo pessoal e profissional do professor catarinense Elpídio Barbosa (1909-1966): dimensões e possibilidades. We can say that this initiative, among many others related to the

significant growth of museum spaces destined to education, is a global phenomenon. Some denominations, such as Pedagogical Museums, History of Education Museums or Educational Museums, have been established since the 1980s to preserve educational archives of some European cities (^{SILVEIRA, 2013}, p. 357).

In the scope of educational heritage, in a broader sense, in Brazil, we have paying significant attention to museums, monuments, cities and the relationships established when constituting these spaces and the subjects previously circulating therein (^{ARROYO, 2005}). However, similar initiatives in the field of History of Education are scarcer, which leads us to broaden the dialogue with other fields of History, for example.

Jezulino Lucio Mendes Braga’s doctoral thesis approaches the relationship between city and heritage, discussing the importance of museums for the life of cities, as “a way of caring for dimensions related to aesthetics in a sensibility sharing process” (^{BRAGA, 2014}, p. 69). With analogous purposes, we can also highlight a book edited by Maria Teresa Santos Cunha and Rosângela de Miranda Cherem, Refrações de uma Coleção Fotográfica: imagem, memória e cidade (2011).

Works such as the dissertation Para Além do Afeto: o projeto de museu-escola do Museu da Inconfidência e sua forma de abordar o patrimônio cultural (2004),the paper Primaveras Compartilhadas: uma experiência sensível de formação docente em diálogo com a cidade (2013), both by Nara Rubia de Carvalho Cunha, as well as the thesis A Educação na fronteira entre museus e escolas: um estudo sobre as visitas ao Museu Histórico Abílio Barreto (2012), by Soraia Freitas Dutra, among others, have been connecting issues of heritage and memory to teaching.

From the point of view of material heritage, we can say that History of Education has been advancing both in scientific production and actions regarding the care and preservation of this heritage, in spite of challenges. However, we still need to pay closer attention to the wealth of cultural production, knowledge and practice, rich with historical sense and sensibility.

In the case of Brazil, the fruition of immaterial goods reveals the pleasure in resuming values and nursery rhymes, the joy of rhythms such as samba de roda, frevo, maracatu and drums, among many other forms of expression and musicality. The acts of reciting verses, participating in festas do Divino, folia de Reis and Carnaval celebrations are practices incorporated into our culture (PELEGRINI; FUNARI, 2008, p. 8). According to the UNESCO World Heritage Convention in Paris (2003), uses, representations, expressions, knowledge and techniques, as well as associated instruments, objects, artifacts and places are, therefore, heritage.

This broader conception of cultural heritage, no longer centered in certain objects, such as monuments, but in a relationship between society and culture, was based on a reflection on the function of heritage and a criticism of the notion of historical and artistic heritage. In Brazil, cultural heritage law was heavily marked by Mario de Andrade’s proposal in the 1930s, including speech, legends, cuisine, etc., much broader than the choice made by Vargas and Capanema, restricted to built heritage, with the subsequent preservation of baroque churches, big houses and other chalk and stone forms (^{FONSECA, 2003}, p. 60).

Regarding the notion of immaterial heritage, Maria Cecília Fonseca states that immateriality is relative, and the expression intangible heritage would be more appropriate, since it refers to what’s ephemeral, fleeting, not materialized in durable products (^{FONSECA, 2003}, p. 65). Regardless of the name, according to Martha ^{Abreu (2007}), the election of a nation’s heritage - material and immaterial or intangible - is one of the most important political operations to consolidate a common history, memory and culture, since it involves the “participation and pressure of new social and political groups” (^{ABREU, 2007}, p. 359-360).

In the scope of actions taken by the Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico - IPHAN), we highlight the dossier dedicated to the Círio de Nazaré feast (IPHAN, 2006), as well as the heritage preservation of Viola-de-Cocho, due to the Popular Culture Celebration and Knowledge Project (Projeto Celebrações e Saberes da Cultura Popular):

Result of a research process, the collected and systematized documentation by the National Inventory of Cultural References of How to Make Viola-de-Cocho (Inventário Nacional de Referências Culturais do Modo de Fazer a Viola-de-Cocho) generated aids to formulating the instruction dossier guaranteeing the inscription of How to Make Viola-de-Cocho (Modo de Fazer a Viola-de-Cocho) in the Book of Knowledge (Livro dos Saberes), confering the title of Brazilian Cultural Heritage in January 14^th 2005 (Dossiê IPHAN, 2009, p. 17).

We also highlight initiatives resulting from research projects such as the film Jongos, Calangos e Folias: Música Negra, memória e poesia (2007), a historiographic documentary with the goal of giving visibility to the political fight and legitimization of remaining quilombo communities in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Capoeira, an immaterial cultural heritage, is also a studied theme, including in the field of History of Education (^{LUSSAC, 2016}). The memory of Carnaval and African heritage are also threads approached in books, exhibitions and research projects (^{CONDURU; LOPES; ARÚJO, 2009}; CONDURU, 2013), giving visibility to the memory and fight of different groups and ethnicities. As warned by Nestor Canclini:

If it’s true that heritage serves to unify a nation, inequalities in its formation and appropriation demand it to be studied as a space for material and symbolic class, ethnic and group wars (^{CANCLINI, 1994}, p. 96).

The author’s words remind us again of ^{Fenelon’s (2008}) reflection, according to whom it’s necessary to politicize heritage, recognizing the historical conditions in which many of its premises were created, and articulating them with the fights for quality of live, environmental preservation, the right to plurality and, above all, cultural citizenship. Those fights lead us to conceive the relationship between memory and heritage as connected to the rights of historically silenced groups.

Final thoughts: is there a drop of blood in every museum?

Looking at the balance of the main contributions of national and international studies in educational historical heritage and History of Education, the preoccupation with material school culture as historiographic object is clear. The need to value and preserve school buildings, objects and collections and the creation of public policies in order to promote a historical consciousness of citizenship are also recurrent themes in these studies.

In spite of contributions and advancements, what are the challenges faced by scholars of heritage in History of Education?

In a clearly lacking response attempt, we point to at least two: the first is in the problematic of subjects and their places. Advancing into cities, museums and schools should also serve to understand symbolic fights instituted in stories that are told, in the ways in which they’re told, in represented subjects and they way they’re represented. It’s in this multifaceted dimension that it appears to be interesting to explore heritage as both a source and a historical object.

The second challenge is in the need to pay attention to other spaces/experiences constituting the education of subjects, beyond school, stressing the relationships installed in these different educational instances.

On one hand, the protagonist role assumed by the school in the educational scene - and in historiography - is fundamental for our understanding, through practices, of disputed educational projects, utilized paths, involved subjects and established relationships, almost always tense and conflicting, around the organization of society through education. On the other, our different national projects allowed - and, often, promoted - various projects addressed to the education of subjects. Whether tangible or intangible, they produced sensibilities, modeled an aesthetic sense, instituted habits and behaviors, values and consumption patterns and forged culture through education; an education happening far from classrooms, but with an equally significant educational potential.

The modern inheritance of associating education to schooling has also left its marks in historiographic production. Undoubtedly, we can significantly advance when penetrating “the school’s black box”, and that advancement seems to open other paths, provoking questions that are worth further explorations, in order to understand, through a broader lens, the multiple dimensions of the educational process. It’s in the crossing of visible and invisible, apprehensible and intangible, what is and what represents, said and unsaid, among so many selected memories, that we can say, following Mario ^{Chagas (1999}) paraphrasing Mario de Andrade, that “there is a drop of blood in every (poem) museum”, enmeshed between memory, heritage and history, traces left by a once-dreamed, lived and, possible, forgotten education, waiting to be told.