Introduction

This paper deals with elementary teacher training policies in Brazil, subject that has engendered clashes and propositions, paying particular attention to the training of teachers in the educational reforms throughout our history. As a discussion agenda, whenever public, compulsory and quality education are mentioned, it indicates that elementary school is a reference for the educational system due to its indispensability, an issue that incites reflections in Brazilian reality context in order to evince that the development of educational policies, in the logic of the monetary capital, has placed on the teacher the greatest share of responsibility for its implementation.

This is possible to comprehend with ^{Hill (2003}, p.27), when the author emphasizes that the school, for the monetary capital, through their professionals, must focus on the “development and strength of the only commodity on which the capitalist system depends: the labor power” (highlighted by the author).

Teachers are guardians of the quality of labour-power! This potential, latent power of teachers explains why representatives of the State might have sleepless nights worrying about the role of teacher in ensuring that the labourers of the future are delivered to workplaces throughout the national capital of the highest possible quality. (^{HILL, 2003}, p. 27 - highlighted by the author).

Based on these premises, the purpose of this study is to reveal the disguised interests of the state in teacher education policies that translate into legislation, which indicates in a Marxist perspective that “the production mode of material life conditions the process of social, political and intellectual life”. It is not the conscience of men that determines their being; on the contrary, it is their social being that determines their consciousness”. (^{MARX, 2008}, p. 47).

In this perspective, profound interpretations of common sense that highlight and cover the phenomena’s essence, analyze elementary teacher training policies in the 1920s, a phase marked by the urbanization and industrialization processes under the impulse of capitalist accumulation. During this period, as Caio Prado Junior (2012, p. 2012) argued, “capitalist accumulation is effectively at the expense of a relative impoverishment of the mass of population, especially the working classes, and an increase in the labor exploitation. Is this the true origin of the new formed capital?”

In fact, the 1920s witness a crisis of the Brazilian economic model - agro-exporter. The Old Republic unsettled not because it was “incompatible with the democracy system urge”, but because of its political foundations - built on the “milk and coffee” policy, which could no longer preserve the São Paulo-Minas Gerais hegemony

At the same juncture, the wave of immigrants and the changes generated by localized industrialization, the working press etc. Catholic reforms affected Brazilian social structures and the Old Republic could not reverse or control the social conflicts that had dragged on since the end of the monarchy.

In that moment, an acceleration in the industrialization process was consolidated, because the own “exporter complex of coffee engineered the available money-capital to transform into industrial capital” (^{MELLO, 1982}, p.147), expanding the pursuit of education as the solution to national problems, which reflects on elementary and regular education.

The Catholic church, also into this conflict, rearranged its centralization policy and its presence in the education sphere, mainly, when the industrialization supporters, aspiring the political power recomposition, which was maintained absolute in the power of the landowners, began to realize education as an important changing factor.

In this process, in the essence of the capitalist accumulation process (PRADO, Jr, 2012), there were the state reforms of elementary and regular education, the teacher being the most prominent figure, which made the elementary teacher training courses receive special attention in the educational reforms of the decade. To this end, it’s possible to take as a sample for analysis, the state reforms of the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul

In São Paulo the reform took place through the Law no. 1750 of December 8^th, 1920, signed by the President of the State, Dr. Washington Luis Pereira de Sousa, regulated by the Decree no. 3356 of May 31^th, 1921. In Minas Gerais, by the Decree no. 8, 162, of January 20^th, 1928 which approved the Regulation of Teaching in Regular Schools and the Decree no. 8,225 of February 11^th, 1928 approving the programs of regular education. The reform in Rio Grande do Sul state was placed through the Decree 4,277 of March 13^th, 1929, signed by Getúlio Vargas and Oswaldo Aranha, which “provides for the regular and complementary education of the State”, whereby the Regulation of Regular Education of Rio Grande do Sul State was established.

Through qualitative research of theoretical and documentary character, therefore, having as primary source the educational legislation and the documents at time, aiming to evince the determinant conditions of teachers training courses modernization for the inicial years in schooling in the Brazilian reality, indicating educational policies and signaling for a direct relation between education and the demands of the working world. The main arguments to these questions were listed in the legislation itself, which, based on pedagogical practice, constitutes the fundamentals of formation.

It is important to remember that Sao Paulo stood up in the national context, whereas since the 19^th century, the industrial growth in Sao Paulo was kept as a subordinate activity of the coffee capital (^{MORAES, 1994}, p.30), however, especially since the 1920s, it was possible to witness the beginnings of the coffee crisis with the transfer of capital from the agricultural sector to the industrial sector and, consequently, the loss of the predominance of the countryside over the city. This was the reality that also affected Minas Gerais, which agrarian economy was predominant, as well as the position of traditional supplier of the domestic market of the country in Rio Grande do Sul, since the economy of the state was subsidiary of fundamentally agricultural base.

Nonetheless, the industrialization had not conquered its political space along with the central power. It was necessary to find this space in a society still agricultural and at a distance from scientific progress. Thus, the positivist ideology provided the necessary elements for the implantation of a new order, since the rising of positivist ideology occurred by the defense of bourgeois society, of industrial order, pursuing the conciliation between the progress of the industry and the rise of the capitalist development with society's order.

Included in the set of transformations that operated in the economic, social and political sectors of the country, linked to the strengthening of the capital project with consequences for the reorganization of society, shown in this process, the reflection focus that allows to comprehend, in educational issues, the role of the elementary teacher from stress that are inserted into their training.

The 1920s: The Context, Education, and Prospects for Change

In the perspective of progress along with industrialization interests, in the 1920s, Brazil underwent transformations that, although based on the agrarian-export base, caused changes in the urban centers, especially more consolidated centers, representing a process of economic and social transition from the agrarian-export model to a new accumulation pattern (PRADO. JR, 2012). This context affected the nation's educational project, as can be seen, for example, in the Decree 7566 of 1909:

Considering: that the constant increase in the population of cities demands that the proletarian classes be given the means of overcoming the ever-increasing difficulties in the struggle for existence; that for this meaning become necessary, not only to enable the children of fortune disadvantaged with the indispensable technical and intellectual preparation, but also to make them acquire habits of productive work, which will withdraw them from idleness, vice and crime; which is one of the first duties of the Government of the Republic, form useful citizens to the Nation. (Decree Law no. 7,566, September 23^th, 1909).

In this sense the industrialization process in Brazil, from coffee agriculture and great industry developed:

Under the aegis of financial capital, at a given moment in the world expansion of capitalism that had in its markets not only monetary capital but also means of production and proletarianized men - all of them indispensable for the formation of the capitalism inner market in Brazil. (^DECCA,1981, p.151.).

Under the influence of imported models that shaped itselves into the modernization of large cities, in the industrialized products that circulated, in the grandeur of foreign industries in the country, in the idea of development and progress that permeated the mentality of society at the time, the modern Education ideas are sought in developed countries (^{SEVCENKO, 1992}), going far beyond the daily lives of men and women used to the quiet life of countryside habits.

In this context, a movement that called attention was the tenentismo, a political movement thus started among the young officers (usually lieutenants) which pledged to restore morality to the way the country was being run. Facing the challenge posed by the construction of the Nation and modern Brazil, the “lieutenants” who were participating in the process and inserted in this conjuncture also represented the “new”. ^{Carone (1974}) signals that

It is with tenentismo that the fissure between the old and the new is accentuated, between the traditional political army and the recent political army. [...]. Now, however, the features that characterize the recent political movement are progressively accentuated in a continuous statement. Like the sergeant’s revolts, the tenentismo (lieutenant’s revolts) are collective and totalizing. (^{CARONE, 1974}, p. 383).

The nationalist movement, strongly present at the time, unleashed and led by the Nationalist Leagues, was encouraged by groups of elite and middle-class segments. It aimed to consolidate a Brazilian culture and affirmation of a political conscience according to the dictates of the liberal republic, an idea that exerted great influence on the public policies at the time. (ANTUNHA, 1976).

Led by Republicans, this movement identified the republican regime with modernity. For them, nationality would be “the result of the struggle against the past, the construction of a new society politically organized by the nationals and in which the Brazilian business classes would have a prominent place” (^{OLIVEIRA, 1990}, p.187), adding to education the magic formula for the solution of social problems and economic development.

Along, the nationalism of the Brazilian Education Association - BEA was outstanded. ABE was created in 1924 in Rio de Janeiro by a group of intellectuals led by Heitor Lyra. It was the institution at the level of society that stood out in the 20s with the discussion about the educational issue in defense of full-time elementary school, which subjects were the agenda of the National Conferences of Education.

A markedly nationalistic event, the National Education Conference was built in the scene of conservative and renewing proposals, and it is from a conservative perspective that the Catholic BEA group was proposed since the 1^st Conference, held in Curitiba², in 1927, Religious Education as one of the alternatives of “doctrinal uniformity of the school”.

Convinced of the education’s importance as a development factor along the lines of industrialized countries, BEA members were not restricted to literacy alone, but to a pedagogical proposal for the whole elementary school and, through education, its deployments: education and work, highlighting the BEA as the main agency that unites the different ideas and positions focused on nationalism and the belief that education was above any other national problem. The institution’s slogan was, according the BEA newsletter (July 1927):

The problem of national education will only be resolved the day we have an enlightened and conscious 'elite' capable of understanding its importance and undertake its solution. Preparing an 'elite' is, therefore, the first step to be taken (BEA NEWSLETTER, year II, no. 6, July 1927. p. 1).

Contrary to literacy campaigns, it focused on the elites education, especially the ruling elites, in order to convince the people that the country's backwardness was not the illiteracy but the ill-prepared elites that govern us and the poor ever-growing legions of illiterate people who support them. (^{CARVALHO, 1986}).

It was necessary, instead of 'hastily teaching reading, writing, and counting to the illiterate' - things of bad pedagogy - 'to take serious care to educate their children by having them attend a modern school which instructs and moralizes, which enlightens and civilizes'. (BEA newsletter, no. 8 apud ^{CARVALHO, 1986}, p.101).

The Brazilian education situation at the time revealed the exclusion process which the vast majority of the population was subjected to. The 1920s census indicated that 80% of the population was illiterate (^{NAGLE, 1974}, p.112). This reality evinced an increase in illiterates compared to the 1900s data, as pointed out by the Statistical Yearbook of Brazil, from the National Institute of Statistics, which indicated the percentage of illiterate people in the country at all ages of 75% and, in the population of 15 years, was more than 65%.

Overcoming illiteracy was the priority in the country, as Mário Pinto Serva demonstrated in 1927 at the I National Conference of Education (I NCE) held in Curitiba², when presenting the illiterate situation in the country from the statistical survey by the state in 1920.

Presenting the Federal District with the lowest number of illiterates (38.7%), the North and Northeast States with the highest percentage, ranging between 70 and 88% illiterates, (SERVA, I NCE, Thesis No. 103, 1927, p.643), it can be seen from the studies of Serva that the states under consideration in the study did not present much better situation than the others: São Paulo with 70.2; Minas Gerais with 79.3 and Rio Grande do Sul with 61.2% illiterates.

The nationalist movement emphasized the struggle against illiteracy, aiming to strike “the greatest evil of the Brazilian nation”, illiteracy, “the great shame of the century, the utmost outrage of the people that wants to join the modern civilization” (^{SERVA, 1933}, p.29,30). Literacy in this movement was the order and the alphabet assumed importance in this matter.

State reforms and the modernization process of illiterate elementary teacher training courses

In the dispute between the intended and the existing, corresponding to the ideals of the movements in defense of both the urban-industrial society and the “agrarian civilization”, from 1920 to 1929 the public instruction in the States and the Federal District goes through changes, not just in the quantitative feature of school institutions, as in the relation to the new forms of pedagogical practices organization and orientation that, carried out in a “diffuse way, within the possibilities posed by the Brazilian reality” (^{MORAES, 1992}, p.29), promoted, especially in the elementary school, its most significant changes.

To this end, Rulers and Reformers, in accordance with the modernity assumed by developed countries, guarantee by law free and compulsory public school, a right for men and women and, in some cases, the secular school.

In this particular matter, similar to the Nationalist League of São Paulo created in 1917, ensue the Sampaio Dória Reform in São Paulo in 1920, one of the most contradictory of the decade, whereby a compulsory, two-year regular school is organized, aimed exclusively for literacy, perceived as the magic formula for political customs reorientation.

Through the alphabet it sought to integrate the country into the modern world, facing changes in the axis of development through the political power recomposition, in the same lines of liberal democracy, which led to the need of increasing the amount of voter, the reason why literacy was needed, since the Republican Constitution of 1891, article 70, paragraph 2 prevented the illiterate vote.

Sampaio Dória emphasized the obligation of elementary education. It was highlighted in this program the concern with civic-nationalist formation, whether through moral and civic education, through measures concerning the integration of foreigners or the prohibition of foreign languages to children under ten years old (art.5 of Law 1750/20).

Demonstrating certain rejection to traditional methods, the Sampaio Dória Reform modernized elementary school as a result of a new conception of childhood based on Psychology discoveries. Therefore, it was necessary to train teachers

It is at this moment that, through the increasing of American influence, the field of education was consolidated in Brazil, the escolanovismo³ representative of the liberal ideology, known as the ideal of “modern” education, which contraries the needs of justification for the implantation of a new social and economic order, which inspiration had its expression in the nascent capitalism.

As a common feature, the pedagogical orientation regarding the ideals of the escolanovista movement, is the moment that is introduced into the regular school curriculum, systematically, science education considering of the psychological, sociological and biological aspects of education as a need to socialize and adapt the individual to the society that was outlined.

A better specificity was defended concerning the formation level, the articulation with high school, concerning the pedagogical practices in which the “model schools” and “application schools” are highlighted, institutions attached to the regular schools, practice field to the future teachers or, in other words, the learning field of “pedagogical making”. It was modernized, thus, the course of elementary teaching, which translated, in the school, the importance of the methodological issue.

In São Paulo, despite not presenting relevant innovations concerning the previous reforms, the Regular School proposed by Sampaio Dória, was a four-year course (Art. 246) and presented, in the curriculum, according to article 247 of Decree 3356, May 1921, the "subjects" of Portuguese, Latin, Literature, French, Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, Anatomy and Human Physiology; Plant and Animal Biology; Hygiene, Cosmography, General Geography and Corography of Brazil, General History and Brazilian History, Psychology and Pedagogy, Didactic Methodology (Pedagogical Practice). Added to this list is the “School Orpheon” that should be developed in the regular schools on Saturdays (article 254). The following subjects were still established: Design; Music, and Gymnastics (Article 248).

Even though the duration of the course was four years, the Law mentioned limitations for the development of the subjects. In this case, the law itself instituted the joint development, in special situations, of the whole cast of disciplines. For this purpose, the law has defined that, if there were no scholars or, as long as they do not have a male section, the disciplines should be grouped and should be constituted in a single subject.

Thus, according to the sole paragraph of article 247, Decree 3356/21, the subjects of this curriculum should be developed, “the first with the third, the fifth with the sixth, the seventh with the eighth, creating a joint Latin and Literature discipline in schools where such subjects were not taught. ”, showing a rationalization of time, space and human resources.

Compared to the existing Regular Course, the Sampaio Dória Reform enriched the curriculum with the inclusion of disciplines associated with educational sciences, such as Psychology, in addition to the Pedagogical Practice, Pedagogy and Didactics, which were nonexistent until then.

The subjects, which were categorized as educational sciences, were Educational Biology, Educational History, Experimental Pedagogy, Educational Sociology, however, the subject of Psychology assuming the main scientific domain, providing elements to transform schooling into a highly rationalized technique. With Psychology, the educational task was freed from being understood as a “matter of touch, gift, intuition, practice or calling” (NAGLE, 1976, p.247).

However, scientific questions were not the concerns of the Doria Reform. This is justified if we comprehend that, since the beginning of the century, the civic and moral issue, in human formation, had gained importance. It is within this structure that the efforts and productions of the nationalist currents are justified, as the energies to carry out the country's campaigns against illiteracy.

This could justify the 1920s reform, which stood between what was modern in the escolanovistas standards, and what was sufficient in a society with no higher demands on education than respect for the established order.

Without emphasis on science education, the regular school ensured general knowledge, and for this purpose the complementary 3-year school is created. Attached to the regular schools (art.196 of Decree 3356/21), “the aim of the supplementary school is to prepare students who have already completed high school, without any solution for continuity, to continue their studies in regular schools or gymnasium” (Art.197). Schools which purpose was to broaden the base of general formation in teacher education.

Article 8th of the Law 1750/20, item h, creates mixed classes in regular schools where the attendance to male classes is insufficient: “The regular school in Praça da República will have, permanently, two female and one male classes every year, this in the morning and those in the afternoon” (article 245).

This reform included the proposal for the creation of a Faculty of Education, which, although not a new idea, would be an improvement resource for teaching “aiming pedagogical improvement and general culture”, created under by name of Faculty of Education (article 21 of Law 1750/20). In Chapter III, entitled “From the Spirit and Orientation of Teaching in Regular Schools”, there is a tendency toward practical teaching directed to active methods, when it says that:

[...] teaching in regular schools should be done as much as possible, by the student's active and individual learning, and beyond the utilitarian application of each subject or class, should aim to develop the student's spirit by giving him/her intellectual initiative and critical faculty (SP, Decree 3356/21, Art.255).

In this process, despite the fragile scientific basis on which teacher education was based, there was a tendency to modernize their methods, deviating from the predominant verbal and encyclopedic teaching in the traditional school.

It was a tendency since 1890, evinced in the Republican Period first reform of the elementary and regular education, the Caetano de Campos Reform, when teacher training school started a new phase, under the influence of American ideas through their teachers with training or experiences in American schools. At this stage the “model schools” were created “which served as the teacher's practical learning field and new method evaluation.”

Caetano de Campos justified the “model school” as the great revolution in teacher education and quoting Pestalozzi, foundation of the methodologies “in more advanced countries”, affirmed that it is by “renewed education that Brazilian civilization will be promoted. Thereby, it is necessary to train masters and that is why the Regular Course is reformed. Other nations have already advanced their development,” he said. “The models. It is necessary to imitate them, not with copies, but with adaptations. It is by adaptation, therefore, and not by adopting models that education is perfected, and it is in the “Model Schools” working as laboratories that the new methods will be tested” (apud ^{REIS FILHO, 1981}, p.68). Cunha, analyzing this situation from the beginning of the Republic, states:

The situation was auspicious to the insertion of new ideas, which came in great amount from Europe or the United States. Our intellectuals received them, disseminated them, defended them without, however, subjecting them to a critical process. There were no conditions for that. The centers of higher education that we had at that time, due to their professionalizing character, as in the time of D. João VI, had no critical mass for this purpose. However, the enthusiasm of the Brazilian intellectual with the novelties from overseas would play a positive role, as such ideas expelled our cultural, economic, political and social underdevelopment (^{CUNHA, 1989}, p.51).

Focusing on methods, in accordance with childhood development, without emphasis on the theories that supported it, the “Model School” was therefore justified as a training center, dissociated from its theoretical approaches. This implied a deficient formation in the foundation, with the dissociation between theory and practice as characteristic mark. Handwork, music, singing, and religious moral education were important elements of the method. Religious education was inseparable from moral education and should be carried out as an immediate and practical experience.

Requirement of public education in modern states, the Law Sampaio Doria granted in Title II, free education, in Title III, secularity and in Title IV, compulsory school and, in this case, this law was in accordance with the modern requirements. The pattern was the North American reality, serving as a model for the Constitution, for the industrial order established, and the school needed for this order. Dória just followed the path of republican reforms.

In this scenario, there was a need for a higher organization of the regular school, which had as a commitment to train teachers according with the emerging social order by adding, to the list of general knowledge, scientifically based professional subjects and, thus, it seemed like the school was modernizing in its knowledge and its methods.

The traditional teacher, focused on intellectual training, no longer served the elementary school. No intellectual training was needed for the professional who was committed to the class that was naturally meant for manual labor. Thus, through the teacher's work a new mindset was organized towards the division of labor, to learn to do and not to learn how to think.

In this process, the struggle of the nationalist movements, which sought through education to change society, was not the struggle of the landowners. For them, the educational process was not important. They would not therefore be questioning a two-year elementary school or questioning the lack of vacancy to solve the problem of illiteracy. Exclusion by the school would not alter the existing rural order.

For the agricultural class, the moral order instituted by the school was more important than the intellectual formation. It can be said, with ^{Cunha (1986}, p.218) that, in this context, illiteracy was not the greatest evil in the country but, “the lack of a moral direction to guide the conduct, feelings and nature of workers".

In the article 256 of Decree 3356/21, which determined that civic education in regular school would be given to students in a practical way, “by doing as much as possible through representative exercises, about the teaching of our institutions.” For this, according to the sole paragraph of the same article, there should be a student association in each regular school.

In complementary schools, civic education was integrated into the programs in such a way that, given by article 13 of Law 1750/20, the government was allowed to reorganize the class period and the programs instituting the “maximum didactic autonomy”, “as the Scouting and the lines of fire”, compatible with the “unity and efficiency of teaching”.

Positivism was more important since “the laws that positive science had discovered, and which distinguished it from empiricism, were also positive in affirming the established order as the basis for denying the need to construct a new order” (^{MARCUSE, 1978}, p.315).

Therefore, the maintenance of the existing order was guaranteed, in which the predominance of the agrarian-exporting sector was not in doubt, even by the most lucid representatives of the industry.

In this perspective, the Dória Reform was an essentially conservative reform, as it “admirably combined elements of positivism and liberalism with work discipline”, a new vision of education, based on the “parsimony of spending” from the perspective of an urban society, adjusting this model “to the most dynamic sector of the ruling classes, the coffee bourgeoisie” (^{HARDMAN, 1988}, p.93).

Thus, on one hand focused on “learning to do” and, on the other hand, a rejection of traditional methods, the educational policy of the time was organized by which teachers were trained for elementary school that was modernizing as a result of a new childhood conception based on the findings of Psychology. This instituted, as the center of elementary school, the “natural method” which is:

The intuition, the lesson of things, the contact of intelligence with the realities that are taught, through observation and experimentation, made with students and guided by the teacher. It is expressly banned from school, the tasks of simple memorization, processes that appeal exclusively to verbal memory, the replacement of things and facts by books that should only be used as teaching aids (SP, Decree No. 3.356 / 1921, Art 103).

The methodology, therefore, was the center of the innovations in this reform, since “lessons of things” identified this character in the generalized intuitive method, setting a change in the pedagogical posture. In this context, the “model school” assumed the “place of excellence” in the teacher education, constituting an identity of the “modern” in the regular course, that, since 1890, with the Caetano de Campos reform and, as this reformer ideas, the "model school" was the great revolution in the teachers formation.

The Doria reform implemented in 1920 led the way for reforms that took place in the decade in the other Brazilian states, distant, however, from the elementary school in São Paulo. It is highlighted here, as examples, the Regular School reform in Minas Gerais in 1928 and the Regular School reform in Rio Grande do Sul in 1929.

In the state of Minas Gerais, the remodeling of the school was the central intention of the Francisco Campos Reform, which resumed the issue of illiteracy through an integral elementary school. For this, the need to train teachers, which, by Decree 8,162 of January 20, 1928, under the influence of BEA and its statements on education for a changing civilization and the belief in education as a factor of social reconstruction, reprioritize the quality and democratization of elementary school and, of course, to the training of its teachers.

Aimed for “citizens” formation, the Minas Gerais reform sought to train teachers in the “spirit of reform”, which led to the Regular Course significant changes regarding the existing Regular School, considering that, in this reform, this course would support the responsible for the success or failure of elementary school, the basis for the new order formation.

Considering the teacher's professional duties, the Regulation of Regular Education Minas Gerais state reform established by Decree no. 8162/28, emphasized that the Regular Course “aims to train teachers and other technical personnel for the State's elementary education, and will be taught in two categories of schools: - first and second degree” (art. 1). According to the sole paragraph of the same article, “there will also be, in the first and second category courses, a two-year course for the training of rural teachers”

The regular course was organized into seven years, divided into Adaptation Course, Preparatory Course with the purpose of being the general knowledge base and Application Course, lasting two years, the Application being the regular course itself. Next to the Application Course, the Improvement Course focusing on methods and techniques as a proposal for continuing education was foreseen.

From the importance that the teacher assumes in the proposed political changes, it follows the creation of 21 Regular Schools in the State, in this period, there were only two existing official regular schools. Highlighting its importance, the regular school received in Minas Gerais reform a differentiated and complex structure established by the “Regulation of Regular Education”.

Elementary education has the same worth as its teachers, and their value will necessarily depend on the Regular Course. It will, therefore, be a task without seriousness in its objectives, to revise the elementary curriculum by reframing its programs, establishing methods and processes of teaching, renewing its spirit and demarcating new and broad purposes if, at the same time, it does not aim to form the mentality of the elementary teacher according to the demands to which he/she has to satisfy himself/herself, by ordering, from an early age, the spirit in the intellectual and professional framework in which he/she is called to exercise his/her activity. (MG. Explanatory Memorandum of Decree No. 8.162 - approves the Regulation of Mining Regular Schools).

In defense of his own purposes, Campos sought in Dewey, Claparede and Decroly the theoretical basis, both for his proposal of teacher formation, as for the elementary school, being in this, the student, the center of the pedagogical process, where the respect to the child considering their psycho-biological characteristics, made the teaching act a natural process. In this process, the child should not be considered out of the adult’s point of view, but out of their own motives and interests, which profoundly altered the theoretical basis and didactic procedures of teacher education.

Based on the New School principles, the Explanatory Reasons of Decree 8162/28, stress the importance of the regular course by the demands of the contemporary world, the imperatives of science, industry, labor and culture, which required a change in the regular old school posture.

If we are to find the origin of all this moment, which resembles an act of eviction of the dormant old schools in their practice and routine, we must address not the teaching practitioners but the Jean-Jacques Institute in Geneva, the University of Brussels, the American Universities, the Universities of Austria and Germany, the Psychologists, the Stern, the Spranger, the Claparede, the Decroly, the Dewey” (MG. Motives Exhibition of the Decree 8162 of January 20, 1928) .

In this perspective, in order to develop “Lessons of Things” in the elementary school, the teacher received guidelines of methodology that, according to the regular course program, dealt with:

[...] importance of the lessons of things, its educational character; unity of the mental object; the centers of interest and the organization of notions of things. The graduation of the lessons of things and the evolution of children's interests (MG. Regular Course Programs. Decree No. 8225 of February 12, 1928).

Considering that 79% of the population in the State of Minas Gerais, in 1920, was in the countryside (^{BASBAUM, 1976}, p.141), the emergence of teacher training in this area was justified, for which rural teacher training courses were organized in the Minas Gerais reform which, by Decree 8162/28, article 25, “shall provide teachers to lead the rural schools” in 2 years free courses (Art. 26).

In order to fulfil society in its contrasts, poor in its structure and without scientific requirements, the regular rural course could be identified with the characteristics of the environment for which it was destinated. It can be said that it reflected the environment to which it belonged, being a practical course for excellence, focused on the needs of work in rural areas.

From this it appears that, in this modality, training elementary teachers for rural education corresponded to an immediate measure that, focused on “learning to do”, was shaped by the backward rural structure. Article 33 and the following explain:

[...] the rural course teachers will have the duty to efficiently execute the programs and schedules of the rural course, taking into account their responsibilities, in the training of teachers intended to solve the important problem of teaching children in the rural area (MG. Decree 8162/1928, art.33).

To fulfil this task, the teacher should use “intuitive methods” (art.34) and the pedagogical practice should be, in the first year, “a participation course” and, in the second year, in classes that the students will teach their classmates “with the assistance and guidance of the course teacher, who will help them prepare the lessons, noticing their flaws and gaps, rectifying the first and filling in the second” (art. 35).

Weak theoretical basis, insufficient course duration, absence of scientific disciplines beyond the precarious conditions to develop a work focused on the modern world and its dynamism, characteristic of rural courses, they signaled the legislator's lack of concern in effectively modify the real situation, considering the high amount of illiteracy in the countryside and the prospect of modernization of the most important source of the State’s resources.

Education was offered without, nonetheless, disrupting the established order. It was ensured, in this way, the formation of an existing rural working class in the molds of the existing large estates, where no modernity project was included, the teacher assuming main charge in this task.

The second modality in teacher’s formation comprised teaching in elementary schools, where the regular elementary school would be taught, being these private schools, recognized and supervised by the State (art.21). Receiving candidates approved in the 2nd year of the adaptation course (art.24), the regular first-degree course will, as determined in article 23, last three years The Regular Course, proper called, High School Course, under the competence of the State will consist of three courses: the two-year adaptation course, the three-year preparatory course and the two-year application course (art. 3); which added seven years reserved for preparing the elementary teaching. The presence of Psychology and Biology in the program was justified by being indispensable subjects for methodology development, fundamental point of the whole proposal.

[...] if teaching methods and techniques begin to account for biology and psychology without error of craft ... (…) Here's how psychology, not just general psychology, but educational psychology, constitutes an indispensable part of the intellectual equipment of the elementary teacher. (...) In a regular education reform plan, it would be a fail no to give Educational Psychology its rightful place, not only in terms of general culture, but mainly in the plan for the acquisition of pedagogical techniques s (MG. Explanatory Memorandum. Decree 8162, January 20, 1928).

In turn, “history of methods”, part of the program, was justified in the Explanatory Memorandum as a need for the best application of them, because “the best way to know the 'thing' is to know its genesis, such as the postulate of the genetic method, of current application in all scientific domains”. Thus:

Knowledge of teaching methods and processes, as its results, can only be acquired through its history and attempts, its successes and applications (MG. Explanatory Memorandum Decree 8162/1928).

The concern with the methodologies was a constant in the Regulation of Regular Education, making clear the idea of student participation in the teaching-learning process.

Lessons will not be teacher monologues or lectures on the subject for the intent of telling and elucidating everything; the teacher should appeal to the student’s collaboration, arousing the taste of the investigation of the reflection, in order to awaken them and to exercise the aptitudes to the activity and the intellectual initiative (MG. Decree 8126/28, art.41).

From this, it follows:

[...] the teacher must be careful not to limit himself/herself to the expository method; he/she will always bear in mind that the collaboration and activity of students is essential to their professional training, and the teacher should demand initiatives from the students, documentation and research, in order to awaken their sense of responsibility and personal effort (MG.Decret 8162/28, art. 44).

Besides these determinations, the Decree continued to deal with the methodology associating to it the most important contents of the programs, when, Chapter II established the importance of lectures, conferences and excursions as indispensable for the enrichment of teaching. In this case, assumed great importance, the Methodology teacher.

School teachers, particularly methodology teachers, will organize conference programs on topics that, preferably, deal with supplementary exercises or study and development of the most important points of the programs, always preferred, those on which students have carried out research and documentation or planned study and solution projects (MG. Decree 8162/28, art. 52).

In this task, the school director would also be directly committed.

At the beginning of each trimester, the principal of the school will organize, with the participation of other teachers, lists about: a) works concerning the complementary exercises, intended for reading in each class; b) lectures by students; c) teacher conferences; d) excursions to be carried out, during the trimester, by the students of the application course of the High Schools or of the last regular year in the Middle Schools (MG. Decree 8162/28, art. 55).

It’s highlighted, here, the expansion of the professional part, in its pedagogical aspect and, in this, the role played by the application schools and the summer courses. While the summer courses aimed at the continuous improvement of the teachers while in service, the application schools, working as institutions attached to the Regular School, served as a field of practice for the future teachers, as well as constituting centers of renewal of the Regular Course.

Thus, the application schools served the professional practice which, according to article 63 was divided into model classes, didactic classes, preparation of lessons and practical lessons.

In this regard, the programs of Child Psychology must receive attention, those programs developing studies of Pedology, Pedotechnics, Pedagogy, had in the tests, its graphic representation

The tests in general: collective tests and individual tests; aptitude tests and developmental tests. The ideas association tests. The attention tests. The memory tests. The imagination tests. The tests of the evolution and aptitude of creativity by drawing and writing. The intelligence tests. The character tests ... (MG. Decree No. 8225 of February 12^th, 1928 which approves programs of regular education).

At this time, the phenomenon Saviani called the “bio-psychologization of society, education, and school” was established. Psychological and biological abnormalities were detected through intelligence tests and especially personality tests. “Thus, a pedagogy is forged, one that recommend differential treatments based on the 'discovery' of individual differences” (^{SAVIANI, 1984}, p.12).

In this perspective, the differentiating principles of individuals were introduced through the school deriving out of the Minas Gerais Reform, to satisfy a society constructed in classes, by which students differed not only through tests, but also through the type of school that attended. In addition, the differentiating elements of teachers, established through the type of training received.

The differences between teachers were directly proportional to the differences between their students. To rural students, destined for the rudimentary works, rural teachers with modest technical-scientific formation, besides the precarious general formation; to urban students, teachers of the proper regular course to deal with the most favored strata.

Thus, it was identified in the teacher’s formation the focus on the labor’s division, because, favoring science for some, such as the improvement courses, and marginalizing others which they have no access, such as rural teachers and teachers of the lower grades. In spite of the fact that the Minas Gerais Reform did not pose barriers for teachers to broaden their qualifications, it evinced the distinction established at different levels of education, establishing a social differentiation in the same professional class, a social distinction, through professional preparation.

An elite category was formed, in the teaching itself, which was justified by Campos' authoritarian posture. However, this elite was limited to the execution of the pedagogical process, since these teachers were not allowed to think about the pedagogical process.

Reflecting influences of work’s rationalization, powerful instrument of social differentiation, it is possible to say, from these considerations that the regular school in Minas Gerais was being organized to legitimize a society divided in classes in the molds of the capitalist structure.

In defense of this position, the need to produce “civism”, “civism of the elites” devoted to national causes. “Civism of the people committed to produce wealth - civism that expects to lead the country on the path of what was meant as progress” (^{CARVALHO, 1986}, p.94)

There was a speech of modernity through the methods, the programs, the didactic resources in a society that affirmed itself in the process of capitalist accumulation, in front of the world that was developed under the aegis of industry, of exchange, of the market, of profit.

In this perspective, the teacher, responsible for conducting the process, received special attention, as he was entrusted with the role of, without altering the existing society, introduce new forms of behavior, a passive preparation for the acceptance of a changing society, which indicates that, even under another strategy, another discourse, taking advantage of new processes, the Minas Gerais reform did not deviate from the purposes of São Paulo reform, in which, to the teaching profession is imputed the commitment to, on one hand introduce a new vision of work and on the other hand, to guarantee a national conformation to the existing society

In Rio Grande do Sul, the reform occurred through Decree no. 4277 of March 13^th, 1929, which "provides for the regular and complementary education of the State." With this Decree, the trends of education renewal, that are beginning to be outlined in the Brazilian reality, especially at the initiative of BEA in this period, begin their journey in the State, and with this reform, Rio Grande do Sul was aligned with the Escolanovista movement propagated in Brazil

Getúlio Vargas, President of the State of Rio Grande do Sul at the time, and Osvaldo Aranha, Secretary of Interior Affairs, promoted the reorganization of the Elementary Teacher Training Course, evincing this reform as the most important education measure of the period, presenting diversified modalities of teacher training and updating.

Referring to the “Public Instruction Regulation”, the 1929 Decree referred to Decree no. 3.888 of October 4^th, 1927, endorsing it, being evident that the Vargas government, in this period, did not carry out a reform of elementary education, but sought a renewal of education using the teacher, which justifies in this government only the reform of the Regular Course.

Signed by Protasio Alves, Decree no. 3,898 of 1927 determined, in the article 6, that “there will be complementary schools for the purpose of developing elementary education and preparing candidates for public teaching”, which indicates that until 1929, the formation of elementary teachers was carried out in educational establishments called “Complementary School” denomination adopted from 1906.

Section VI of 1927 Decree dealt with “The Organization and Rules of Complementary Schools”, establishing, in Art. 34, duration and subjects of the course, as well as Art. 36 determined that “Attached to each complementary school there will be an elementary school for students to practice methodology”.

The 1929 Decree determined that “Regular education is lay, free and gratuitous, taught by the State at the Regular School of Porto Alegre and in Complementary Schools located in cities where the Government deems it appropriate” (art. 1). Thus, the Government defines, in this particular case, that the Regular School of Porto Alegre, which should be an establishment for the propaedeutic and vocational training of candidates of both sexes to the exercise of public teaching in all degrees (art. 7). Oswaldo Aranha, when presenting the Report of his Portfolio in 1929, declared:

The teaching situation is not resolved by quantity but by quality. It is up to the State to free our childhood from the ills of a precarious, innocuous literacy, trying to make school a dynamic and reforming element, capable of contributing to the work of social transformation, reacting on the family and the general environment and even leading to its deeper layers its influences and its benefits (apud ^{BUSATO, 1983}, p.135).

Criticizing literacy campaigns and defending a broader education project, continued Oswaldo Aranha:

Literacy is not educating: it is just teaching. The state needs to teach and educate. The school should not only be a house of teaching, but of education. The child must learn to read, to live and to work in school .... The modern school has transformed the old school, the old elementary school of letters, into a true social learning workshop. The school today should be a house of activity, of experience, of work, and not the alphabet mansion (apud BUZATO, 1983, p.135).

The presence of civic education was emphasized in the 1929 document, paragraph 2^nd of Article 1, by stating that “the teacher will use all the opportunities, especially during the break, to provide students knowledge of civility”, while paragraph 3^rd emphasized the physical exercises, which should be "practiced daily and methodically, aiming at the corporal development of the students."

In this context, was evinced the discipline called “Lessons of Things” which, in this proposal, did not assumed a methodological character, as it assumed in Doria’s Reform in São Paulo, but rather as a complement to the knowledge necessary to integrate the student in the modernizing society, having scientific and technical knowledge as basics.

The Decree of 1929, Title II, article 8, deals with the Regular School of Porto Alegre, with the following courses: a) Complementary Course of three years, which comprises the regular Complementary Schools; b) Normal or Improvement Course, divided into 2 years; c) Application Course in 6 years, 4 of elementary education and 2 of middle school education; d) Active teaching course, in 2 years; e) Kindergarten.

It is observed that it is not determined, in 1929 Decree, to open Regular Schools within the countryside. Teacher training will then be carried out by the existing Complementary Schools, organized in accordance with the 1927 Decree, plus in 1929 two years of improvement and modification of their curriculum and methods.

After attending the Complementary School, future teachers may seek improvement in the state capital, in the Regular School or Improvement Course.

Legislation, Pedagogy and Didactics classes of the Regular Course are never less than ten per week; Algebra and Geometry, Vernacular Literature, Experimental Psychology Applied to Education and General Hygiene, School Hygiene and Childcare are in number eight and no less than four, according to the importance of the subject and according to the Director of the School. (RS, Decree 4277/1929, art. 36).

The 1929 Decree offered, to the teacher, the opportunity for improvement through Vacation Courses to be held at Porto Alegre Regular School in January and February, consistingof “conferences and lectures, accompanied as much as possible by practical demonstrations and luminous projections.” (art. 189 - Decree 4277/1929).

The School of Application was more restricted to a space of observation of the general questions of teaching, than properly field of pedagogical practice to the normalist students, as indicated in article 41:

[...] the students of the third year of the complementary course and those of the regular course will accompany, in the Application Course, not only the didactic classes, but also the administrative services and everything related to the execution of the regulation and program of Elementary Teaching...

Without room for practice at the School of Application, the pedagogical experiences of future teachers, by the Decree of 1929, were more clearly limited to kindergarten, in view of what proposed by Article 29, item g: “to make the infant school , less an auditorium, than a laboratory of educational activities, experiences and exercises ”, which, in a way, reproduced article 36^th of the 1927 Law.

It can be said that the 1929 reform did not deviate from what was proposed in 1927, preparing the teacher to train students who could assume the social functions that urban-industrial society required. What has changed in the 1929 proposal was the methods, the student placed in the center of the process, but not the purposes.

It was evident, therefore, the schools role to prepare the student for industrial society, through teacher training, in Rio Grande do Sul 1920’s reform, both by its practical methods and by the type teacher training aimed not only at meeting the requirements of elementary school, but also at working in day care and Pre-k schools, a specific situation in industrial societies. The 1929 Decree was committed to teacher training for this task, already specified in the 1927 Decree in Section II which deals with the “Organization and Regime of kindergarten Schools”.

According to the 1927 Decree, the concern with civic formation in elementary schools is clearly defined in Article 26, paragraph 3^rd, when it states that “teachers who do not teach all the subjects of the program may not have the category of docent, including the weekly lectures on issues of morality, civility and hygiene.”

This is explained by the strong positivist influence, in which moral improvement is the object of education and, in this perspective, the positivism of Rio Grande do Sul state, within the country, stood out, which is evident in 1927, when the First Brazilian Conference of Education, held by BEA in Curitiba, was, according to ^{Carvalho (1986}, p.234), “ applauded the thesis of Raul Bitencourt, delegate of Rio Grande do Sul on ‘The Need for Moral Education in Secondary and Higher Education’, on the subjects of morality and civism, which was the main theme of the conference.

Morality, thus, is an integral part of the positivist education system. Man, doing his duty, would be promoting progress. Education, in this aspect, must be organized in such way that people are educated to obey the laws through civic worship.

It was evident, in the reforms of the states in question, that there was an attempt to modernize the state. The teacher was the essential element for a change, which, without altering the predominance of the organized rural structure, would introduce through the school, new forms of relationship, new techniques. of work, finally, the idea of the modern. After all, the idea of the modern was in the air and education came into the plan that ^{Hardman (1988}) called "ideological metamorphoses proper to the moment of origin and dispersion of the modern factory system."

There was a contagious enthusiasm atmosphere as an expression of progress, and in this scene, the factory represented progress, the possibility of the new, while the existing rural structure represented certainty.

Positivism, therefore, was louder since "the laws that positive science had discovered and distinguished it from empiricism were also positive in the sense of affirming the established order as the basis for the denial of the need to construct a new order" ( ^{MARCUSE, 1978}, p. 315). Positivism and liberalism were the ideological foundations of teache education, both to maintain the existing order and to affirm the process of modernization of society.

By positivism, dominant ideological force in the country, the destiny of Brazilian education was written by the separation between theory and practice, between science and technique, between knowing and doing, considering, according to ^{Chauí (1980}, p. 27-28), that “ Positivist influence establishes a position of subordination of practice to theory and not kindship between them. The theory is reduced to the hierarchical organization and systematization of ideas”. In this perspective, formation has no commitment to the explanation or understanding of natural and human phenomena from their background, but to practice, placed only as a mere technical instrument for applying the rules determined by theory.

In turn, the liberal influence in the country’s education renewed the methods without preoccupation for their respective theoretical references, reaffirming a training supported by practice without theory, which did not allow the teacher to build their own alternatives for Brazilian education, a contradiction evidenced. in the elementary teacher formation since the beginning of our history.

Hence, a training model focused on directivity and control was processed, with no room for creativity, scientific spirit and a contextualized and interdisciplinary training that would allow teachers to seek alternatives compatible with citizens' needs, omitting the analysis of the educational problems that are partly generated by the contradictions of the class society, in which we live.

Final considerations

From the study, seeking to understand the implications of capital in the elementary teacher’s formation in the period when the idea of modern began to be forged in the country, it is stated that the concern with the formation of this professional was always linked to the interests of the dominant capitalist order.

The 20s represented an important moment to the country, as it began a process that was accelerated in the 1930s, indicating an idea of change and renewal, for which education was a requirement for industrial society that was sought.

In this perspective, are necessarily included the processes of initial and continued education for teachers that, throughout our history, have not evidenced characteristics related to the technical, scientific and political aspects, nor evinced the relation between school and its internal and external reality, which made unfeasible any significant transformation of educational institutions, serving only for practice training and passive acceptance of the new order.

Thus, work-oriented education was defined, making clear that, along with training for the exercise of teaching, the elementary teacher training course also had the task of preparing teachers for other professional areas required in society. After all, as ^{Sodré (1977}, p.72) said, if the greatest need was the number of workers rather than intellectuals, "the effort of the State should be far greater in providing the capitalists with the proletarians they needed."

In this process, practice was the order and, thus, the “learning by doing” constituted the professionalization par excellence of the elementary teacher, which justified the importance of the “model schools” and the “application schools, training center for the “Learn to do”.

Along with this concern, laboratories were created, holiday courses were instituted for continuous improvement to the teachers while in service, as well as the creation of offices, laboratories and museums such as Physics and Chemistry, Psychology and Pedagogy. In addition, moralizing measures through civic education to be developed in schools, with compulsory.

The proposal of the Nationalist Leagues of moral formation assumed importance in this matter. The real substance of the effort, the actual takeoff for modernity actually achieved, was the diffusion of the disciplinary regime. From it emerges the ambiguous character of the educational reforms of 1920s, since, while embracing the idea of social change through the change in education, it also sought through education the maintenance of the existing order, which had the agricultural state as foundation.

It is was a practice that reproduced the nationalist movements which, without seeking their own solution and without raising a critical opposition to the backwardness of the country, affirmed measures to shorten the distances and adapt the local reality to the imported models.

To this end, positivism contributed, since, as ^{Pesavento (1985}, p.67) stated, “the positivist view was progressive and conservative at the same time” and therefore contradictory, while aiming to “reconcile economic progress with the preservation of the social order”.

It was necessary to prepare the society, through the teacher, for the acceptance of the new order, for the discipline necessary for the new working methods that the factory generated, for the formation of attitudes compatible with the consumer society that was being established. This situation seemed clear to rulers and reformers, which evinced the contradictions and tensions in teacher education in that time.

In this process, knowledge was replaced by the effective procedure translated into teaching methods, which integrated the modernization of teacher training courses with society uprooted modernization that manifested itself in modern constructions, the means of communication and transport and the new imported apparatus, from which it can be said that, from the 1920s, the process of capitalist accumulation that was consolidating translated into the modernization of the educational project, having in the regular course its foundation. This is the most evident historical evidence of the subjugation of education to capital and, in teacher’s formation.