Introduction

As in face of an artesania², we put ourselves, as well as the studies of ^{Silva (2000}) and ^{Luporini (2005}), for using the photography record as a source of research to the re-constitution of the collective memory³ of this Institution of Education, marked by the cultural-historic context launched in 1949 when the Technical and Industrial Schools are created, offering a professional education in a level equivalent to the secondary, initiating, formally, as mentions ^{Machado (1982}), the process of linking the industrial education to the country structure of education.⁴.

Within the 1956 and 1961, the priority in the education area was the formation of professionals oriented to the development goals of the country⁵. It was in this timeline that, on October 22, 1959, through Ordinary Law 3.646/59, that the School of Viticulture and Enology of Bento Gonçalves⁶, was created, currently one of the campuses of the Federal Institute of Education, Science, and Technology of Rio Grande do Sul that was subordinated to the Institute of Fermentation of the National Service of Agronomical Researches of the National Center of Education and Agronomical Researches.

As ^{Silva et al (2009}), we will try to not emphasizing only the “quantification or description of the collected data but the importance of the information that can be generated from a critical and careful look of the documentary sources” (p. 4556), contributing to the comprehension of the past and thinking of the future.

The emergence of the School of Viticulture and Enology

The interest for the creation of a viticulture and enology school in the region of the Gaucho Sierra clouded over the municipality of Bento Gonçalves during the period of 1950, as ^{Jalfim (1993}) demonstrates in his study entitled "Elements to the study of the winery agroindustry: an approach of the Cooperative Winery Aurora", where, from interviews with founder members and analysis of documents belonging to wineries of the location, this researcher identifies the increase of the winery production in the region since 1936. However, “the inadequate transportation means, and packaging produced grape fermentation, affecting, inevitably, the quality of the wine that it would originate” (p. 691). For this reason, to have a school that would put the rural producer in contact with the new production, transportation, and winemaking trends, became the central purpose of the winery companies as, in this way, they would have a product of better quality and in larger quantity, not interfering, however, in the value paid to the farmer⁷.

According to a study conducted by ^{Anderle (1998}), the intention of creating an institution that focused on the teaching of Viticulture and Enology had already been manifested by the director of the Central Laboratory of Enology of the Institute of Fermentation of the Ministry of Agriculture, professor Manuel Mendes da Fonseca, in 1937, moment in which the 3rd Brazilian Congress of Viticulture and Enology of Rio de Janeiro⁸ was holding. By knowing that, in 1944, the so municipal mayor of Bento Gonçalves, João Mário de Almeida Dentice, signs the Decree-Law no. 71, authorizing the acquisition of a group of real estates and transferring to the Federal Government the 341.560m2 area destined to the construction of a station of Enology by the Ministry of Agriculture.

The elaboration of a project that resulted in the construction of the School of Viticulture and Enology, according to ^{Cardoso (2012}), was conducted by Bento Gonçalves vice-mayor Childerico Bevilaqua⁹ and, on February of 1960, with the nomination of Amyntas de Assis Lage for principle, the school starts functioning, established provisionally in the building of the Experimental Station of Enology, later transformed in the Brazilian Company of Agricultural Research (EMBRAPA). Taking into consideration that the school was recently created and the course offered was unknown by the population, even though fifteen students were enrolled in the first class¹⁰.

The 1960s served as a scenario for several changes that directly affected the functioning of the Institution locus of this study. With Decree no. 53.558 of February 13, 1964, the School of Viticulture and Enology is denominated College of Viticulture and Enology (^{BRASIL, 1964}), assuming the initials C.V.E., which will be much later the brand of products manufactured and market by this institution. Since its foundation, C.V.E. is connected to the Ministry of Agriculture. However, in 1967, following what was preconized by article 6, of the National Education Guidelines and Bases Law no. 4.024 of December 20, 1961, Decree no. 60.731 is published, transferring the responsibility for the agricultural colleges and universities to the Ministry of Education and Culture, being created in this Ministry the Direction of the Agricultural Education (^{BRASIL, 1967}).

In this transition period from a Ministry to another, ^{Anderle (1998}) mentions that the Institution faced countless difficulties, which extended for many years with the lack of skilled teachers, support staff, resources for food and students' maintenance, at the same time that male accommodation and other common areas were inaugurated. In a try to change this situation of financial dependence, the institution implemented a School-Farm System, already adopted in its philosophy.

The “learning-doing” was not a novelty in the Agricultural Colleges. According to ^{Tavares (2007}), the School-Farm System had as purpose the integration of instruction, work, and production, handholding structural models that would be applied later in all agro-technical schools of the national network. Expecting to be able to afford this new reality and accomplish all exigencies of the international financing program to the implementation of the farming projects in the technical schools, the National Coordination of the Agricultural Education (COAGRI)¹¹ is created, and implements the School-Farm System, having as principle "learn to do and do to learn", with the intention of enabling the student his self-maintenance, incorporating the education-through-work to the pedagogical practices developed in the institutions, reinforcing the technical character of education. With this, the National Center of Personal Improvement for the Professional Education (CENAFOR) elaborated the Manual of the School-Farm¹², highlighting the bond between learning and work, viewing to motivate the students to produce. According to ^{Marques (2005}), students performed all duties, starting with farming and ending with marketing agricultural products of the projects developed from the School-Farm System.

In this scenario, the School-Farm System main objectives, according to the Ministry of Education document (1977), were

The Manual of the School-Farm System highlighted too, the structural components of a School-Farm, within which are the classrooms, the Practice and Production Lab, replaced later by the Educative Unities of Production (UEPS); the Guided Agricultural Program, excluded from the system soon after; and the School Cooperative. It is worth to stress that this structure remains in many campuses of the current Federal Institutes originated from the agrotechnical schools, even in the one presented in this study, for unknowing the guidelines that originated the Federal Institutes or for being immersed in the School-Farm methodology for much long period, as demonstrate the studies of ^{Koller (2003}) and ^{Figueiredo (2008}). Picture 1 presents the elements that composed the School-Farm structure and its dependence relation:

Source: BRASIL. Functioning Guidelines of Agrotechnical Schools. Brasília: MEC/SENETE, 1990, p. 11.

Picture 1: Representation of the School-Farm structure. 

These structural components were dimensioned by the National Department of Technological Education (SENETE), through the publication of the Functioning Guidelines of the Agro-technical Schools (1990). The SENET presented each of the components, explaining its function in the system development. In this sense, the classroom was considered a place where the capacity of analysis and reflection were stimulated in favor of the student education; the educative production unities¹³ were responsible for the production process, functioning as teaching laboratories and the cooperative-school constituted by students with own structure and statute viewed the self-education (^{BRASIL, 1990}).

It is in this scenario that the College of Viticulture and Enology (CVE) starts to integrate the COAGRI schools network, in an attempt to minimize its financial difficulties and searching for governmental support with the implementation, in 1975, of the Technician in Agriculture course. In the face of this perspective, the wine production, which until the moment was artisanal and served as a practical activity to complement education, becomes commercial, generating financial resources that helped the institution in its maintenance. Besides this, other projects developed in the UEPs were posteriorly commercialized in the cooperative-school. From this process rises the brand C.V.E., which stamps the wines, juices, and sparkling wines labels produced and market by the cooperative-school.

The structuration of the School-Farm System has continuity with the creation of the Students' School and Work Cooperative of the College of Viticulture and Enology¹⁴. Although they already maintained activities of association character, it is only at his moment that students organized themselves in the form of cooperative and were certified by the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) under the no. 2791/79. The cooperative statute is presented and approved in the first meeting of the entity. It is worth highlighting, however, that there is no record of girls' participation in the first administration board of the cooperative school, and we credit this to the fact that its initial purpose was to subsidize food and provide conditions for the maintenance of the boarding school, which was a male exclusivity.

Female participation becomes a little more effective in the following year¹⁵, a moment where girls participate as members of one of the slates that concurred for the cooperative administration. Although, within the periods of 1979 and 1994, the positions claimed by women were never the cooperative presidency¹⁶. To extend this debate, while analyzing the contribution of feminist criticism to scientific knowledge, Lourdes ^{Bandeira (2008}) mentions the female absence in the philosophical, historical and scientific discursiveness, once the modern science was constructed based on the naturalization of genders, justifying women inability to participate in discussions due to their obscurantism and emotions.

Transformation of the Agricultural College in Federal Institute

The period within 1970 and 1980 was marked as the moment where people relations with the environment constituted an essential element of progress, in which occurs the transition of agricultural colleges, whose focus passes from agricultural instruction to technical agricultural, converted into agro-technical schools in the entire country. As part of this moment, the College of Viticulture and Enology becomes the Federal Agro-technical School of Bento Gonçalves (EAFBG¹⁷, contemplating the agricultural education based on the Farm-School System).

The transformation of the Agrotechnical School into the Federal Center of Technological Education (CEFET-BG) was widely debated by the school Consultative Technical Committee (CTC) and by the school community, culminating in its implementation in August of 2002¹⁸. According to Decree 2.406, the CEFETs constituted a modality of specialized institutions of professional education (^{BRASIL, 1997}), which has as basic features:

Thus, the priority of courses offered by the CEFETs was centered in the Technical level of High School as well as in Technological Superior, arousing several criticisms, all of them based on the idea that the latter viewed the training of workers in a short period time, which would benefit productive sectors to the detriment of the quality of the education. With a focus on the applied teaching, according to the demand of local productive sectors, and the increase of jobs in immediate form, the CEFET-BG creates the superior course of Technology in Viticulture and Enology, posteriorly implemented in the Superior Courses of Technology in Food and Technology in Horticulture.

With the creation of 38 Federal Institutes, it is instituted the Federal Network of Professional, Scientific and Technological Education, through law 11.892/2008. According to this law, the CEFETs, the Agrotechnical Schools, and the Technical Schools begin to compose the Federal Institutes of Education, Science and Technology specialized in offering professional and technological education in the different modalities of learning. The creation of these Federal Institutes deeply marked Brazilian education, with a proposal of technical and professional instruction based on the concepts of integrated and vertical teaching¹⁹. In this context, the CEFET/BG becomes the campus Bento Gonçalves of the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of the Rio Grande do Sul (IFRS).

Women starts writing their stories in enology

Photographs of the School of Viticulture and Enology showed us that only one woman attended the first class of the Technician in Viticulture and Enology course of the school inaugurated in 1959 and, in view of that, we felt the need to meet her to inquire about how education was at that time, how was her relationship with schoolmates and teachers, and what memories she kept, or tried to forget. We believed that it would be difficult to find traces that would take us to her. However, we are subjects of a technological world, and while searching in a social network, we found Adelina Mussoi Maioili connected to the virtual world. More interesting was learning that one of Adelina's daughters worked in the same institution locus of this study at the moment it was realized. The collection of information was developed from a semi-structured interview conducted in the residence of the interviewee, with the aid of an audio recorder, and followed by the material transcription.

One of Adelina's memories concerned the moment the School Regulation was approved, and the end of the works of what would be denominated the Central Block, a building that would provide the classrooms, the administrative part of the institution and a few laboratories, a situation that caused the practical activities to continue next to the Experimental Station of Enology. While questioning her how the practical classes were held in 1959, she answered that

[...] we did all those terraces of the Enology. It was us who did all those in that lowland, where we learned to use theodolites. Those trees over there also, were us who planted them as we had the first and second year of class down there [...] and later then they built up here, only in the third year we came up. We did everything, landscaping, and learned to level the ground to make a terrace. (^{MAIOLI, 2013}).

In this moment of the interview, Adelina asks permission to go into her bedroom and returns with a box full of memories: photographs of countless activities realized in the School of Viticulture and Enology during the period she studied in this institution. Among so many photos, the one that kept the image of the entire class in the moment of the course completion, on December 15²⁰ (Picture 2).

Source: Adelina Maria Mussoi Maioli’s private collection.

Picture 2: Graduates of the E.V.E. first class, in 1962. From the top to the bottom: Waldomiro Vicente Fontanive, Adelina Maria Mussoi, Firmino Splendor e José Pozza. Noeli Gugel, José Cândido Abella Porto, Valdir Camerini, Aurindo Fontanive, Terílio Possamai e João Vignatti. Antônio José Grazzia e Leonir Francisco Baldissera. On the top, Ivo Siviero. 

The photos kept alive the memories of the first technical visits, like the one that occurred in the Cinzano Factory; the first school plays, in which boys and girls were involved and also the moments of practical activities, in which the pruning became essential.

However, a woman concluding a technical course in a historic-cultural context of 1962 was disturbing for patriarchal precepts that limited women to the domestic environment and their duties, introducing sexual segregation in the work division. ^{Perrot (2005}), while problematizing what is considered a woman working in the nineteenth century, mentions that female professions in this period are “placed in the extension of natural, maternal and domestic functions” (p. 252), inducing them to specialties that would be specific of women, according to the biological condition and reinforcing male domination until the twentieth century.

In the ambiance expressed in picture 2, men wear dark suits and shoes, as well as tie. It is not possible to specify the color of the dress and shoes of the woman in the photograph, once the original is black and white. However, it is noteworthy the contrast of the dress next to the dark suits. Note still that the ambiance has bee organized for the occasion, with a rug covering the steps, and arrangement of flowers on the staircase sides, which in many events serve to decorate and value the moment. One of the graduates who are in the second planimetric row is away from the others, gaining more visibility for the possibility of being seen and recognized immediately by who see the image. Although the photo is identified in the inferior left corner by who took it, many of the graduates were with the eyes away of the camera, looking at what was happening outside the scene ambiance. Concerning the perspective composition, the center of the image is occupied by the only female figure, remaining a man located in the last planimetric row alone and out of the central plan.

In addition to a higher number of male students, as it is possible to observe in picture 2, the writings of ^{Anderle (1998}) mention a conjuncture in which the technical education recently instituted in the School of Viticulture and Enology is taught from men to men. We observe that in two moments: the list of names of the first teachers, being all men²¹ and in second, in the class of the first graduates only one woman, denoting the reduced female participation in the technical education, which will last for some decades in Bento Gonçalves. It is not a feature only from this space, once that, during the 1960s, technical schools of the whole country were considered a male stronghold. The study accomplished by ^{Figueiredo (2008}) exemplifies very well this masculinization of technical education when analyzing the technical course in Buildings and Constructions and higher course in Technological Control of Works of the then Federal Center of Technological Education of Mato Grosso, where, besides students and teachers incorporating their personal beliefs regarding what is to be man and woman, gender studies related to technology pointed to the massive masculinization of courses such as engineering. While questioned about who were the C.V.E. teachers in 1959, Adelina Maioli remembers that the technical area was entirely taught by males, mentioning their names and respective domains:

[...] the professor, he was a doctor, director doctor Amytas de Assis Lage, who came from a Embrapa station of Minas Gerais. He came here, because he was known for the wine part. Our key professor was doctor Pimentel, from close, from Flores da Cunha. Professor Pimentel was great, wonderful. Enology was an Italian, Fenochio, and the people from here, from the math, you know, chemistry, he was from here, Fernando (^{MAIOLI, 2013}).

This male homogenization, not only of body but also of speech, becomes evident with the help of the interview, being many times supported by official documents of the own Institutions of Education, as is the case of the Regulation of the School of Viticulture and Enology, where is mentioned, in Chapter VI, addressed to the female instruction, that, at the same time that was allowed the access of women and the school was designated as mixed, the boarding school was not guaranteed, as well as programs and practices, which were differentiated. Thus, access became an equal right to men and women; however, if the question was the permanence, the male was privileged, as there was no boarding school to contemplate the number each time higher of girls in the courses of the Institution. The school reinforced from its regulation the distinction between men and women education, as noted from the following transcription:

The Female Education

Art. 42 The right of access to the School courses is equal to men and women, being the coeducation provided.

Single paragraph. While there are no proper installations and a sufficient number of enrollments that justify the maintenance of a female boarding school, female students only will be enrolled in the semi-boarding or day school.

Art. 43 In the development of the educational programs and practices for female students, it will be taken into account the characteristics of gender, not being allowed to them inadequate works. (BRASIL, 2013).

This naturalization of genders is present also in the talking of Adelina, at the moment it comes to her memory the practical classes sessions, mentioning that "doctor Amyntas thought that I didn't need to employ the hoe, anything of these heavy things" (^{MAIOLI, 2013}), even if she had all material for the practical classes, since boots to the pruning shears, bought by her father. When she was approved to enroll in the Technician in Viticulture and Enology, she was seventeen, Adelina did not see it as a male course, but faced it "as a challenge, because I always liked challenges and my father also gave me support, as he liked the area" (2013).

From Adelina's memories, one more relevant narrative is presented. From her box, she takes two knives, for pruning²² and graftage, being one of them a present from her father when she enrolled in the course, in 1959. The narrative gains more emotion and runs the memory of the interviewee with the recordation of her father, from the pruning and graftage knives to the imported books of the Viticulture and Enology area bought by him.

Adelina reveals that her father worked in the enology lab of Bento Gonçalves and nourished a particular interest in the area. Stems from there maybe his desire that his daughter also worked in the enology area, following his notes that, according to Adelina, were made in many notebooks, as in that period the empirical process stood out in the wine production. Some of these books with the notes of that time are with Adriana, Adelina's daughter, who keeps them as a reminder of her grandfather, a man who, at the end of the 1950s encouraged his daughter to enter a space which would later become a male stronghold, enabling, since this period, that it would be possible to problematize the gender relations in the technical education.

According to her narrative, after achieving the technical course, she took a State civil service examination and was approved, working since 1963 in the same enology laboratory that her father had worked. At the end of the 1970s, Adelina exchanged the enology laboratory for the health secretariat, despite being approved in civil examination held by Embrapa in this period, she opted for not assuming, and shows in her speech the regret for not have worked longer in the area of enology:

[...] we used to do everything manually and was very interesting. Then, I left. I changed the job, and I went on an internship when I got into the health secretariat, but it is all about family. I had a small child, and they offered me a good deal for the lack of a laboratory technician. So I did a short term course in Porto Alegre, and begin working in the secretariat, but I regretted it. By the way, I took a civil service examination for Embrapa and passed, in the occasion I took the second place and did not assume, I was pregnant of my last daughter and a series of problems came and I could not take it, it is something that I always felt sorry, I would have continued. (^{MAIOLI, 2013}).

The end of the 1950s and 1960s were marked by the naturalization of female representation, and the region of the Gaucho sierra was coated by the "production of holy-little-mothers", using the term of Mary Del Priory (2009), in reason of the strong influence of the Church in this region of Italian immigration. In the face of this scenario and even having received her father's support to conclude her studies, the Technician in Viticulture and Enology, Adelina, was restricted to take care of her family, monopolized by the domestic work, corroborating with what ^{Perrot (2005}) mentions about the woman condition in which "following a career is a little feminine notion and implies, in any case, in renouncing, especially to marriage" (p. 255).

The watchful gaze of teachers and workmates, the scarf on the head and long skirt, characteristic of the time, even in a day of practical activity, possibly represent the conception of a woman naturally gentle, sensitive, and fragile. Can she do it? The male bodies bow to close accompany the girl Adelina who performs a pruning activity, according to her report while showing us a photograph, in a probable indicator of the representation of the male sense of protection which prevails when the gender relations are approached from the binaries emotion/reason, strength/fragility, domination/passivity, among many others.

Given the naturalization that man is the one that has the ease for activities of technical nature, while a woman is just dedicated, emerges the possibility of finding, in picture 3, the central focus of the image not in the female student that performs the activity - and who is difficult to identify for the scarf - but in the three men looking straight to the action she accomplishes. We risk observing that possibly this action of keeping the eyes on the performance of the only woman tensions the training moment.

Source: Adelina Maria Mussoi ^{Maioli’s private collection, 2013}.

Picture 3: The student Adelina Maria Mussoi while realizing a pruning of citrus, in 1961. 

Our meeting with Adelina was marked by pleasure, by trust, and by the desire to tell a story that many knew, but that few valued. Since 1959 until today, many female Technicians in Viticulture and Enology graduated by the Institution are hired as auxiliaries of the laboratory activities, being responsible for organizing and cleaning the glassware, while male Technicians are the ones that deepen their knowledge in the manipulation of reagents and quality control.

Currently, the Bento Gonçalves campus of the Federal Institute of Education, Science, and Technology counts with a total of 118 teachers, of which 55 are women. Regarding the number of enrollments, the technical course in Viticulture and Enology registered in 2019 a total of 83 students, of which 50 are girls, according to data obtained next to the Coordination of Academic Records of Bento Gonçalves campus. With the increasing number of enrolled girls, it was established in the Institution since 2012 a policy of home assistance to female students who needed to pay rent in the city, as a form to encourage their permanence and success, once boys, in that time, had on-campus student housing. However, there is also the need for public policies that allow the continuity of female students in technical education, giving them equal conditions of access, permanence, and success.

However, although the institution tries to establish gender equality, proposed in the struggles of the feminist movements and theorized by several authors from the concept of gender (SCOTT, 2005), sexism constitutes a significant element and much present in situations and practices in the technical courses where boys are considered more “skilled” or “adequate” to enroll. The constatation of the benefit of lodging, the care and handling with animals, the existence of a male changing room to change clothes before and after practical classes, are determining facts for this observation.

The meeting with the first woman that studied in the then School of Viticulture and Enology, interviewing her, analyzing documents and photos, composed a cutout that challenged us to extend and deepen the investigative path. Photographs keep the memory and the history of the institution and persons who constitute this educational environment. Details that reveal gender relations, which produce dualist understandings naturalized as woman's things and man's things. Seeing these modes of naturalizing and, in a certain way, not reproducing them, can help to deconstruct, through the debate, the way this discussion takes place in a technical course.

The farewell after the interview with Adelina ended a stage of epistemological curiosity about the story of a technical course populated by men and a daring woman. As we close her apartment door, which was so gently opened, we do not have any idea of everything that went through the head of our interviewee, but in ours, it remained ajar the problematization of gender relations in the technical education. “Unveil” this female presence in the first class of the Viticulture and Enology technical course enabled us to see from another perspective the institution and gender relations intertwined with technical education. The fact that Adelina was a member of the School of Viticulture and Enology first class is an indication that changes already pointed to the debate and problematization of gender relations, allowing women to write, daily, their stories in this educational space.