Introduction

The training of teachers to work in rural schools in the period of 1942 to 1963 received considerable encouragement from the Brazilian federal government. According to Manoel Bergström Lourenço Filho (1953), pioneering attempts had already been made since the 1930s, but it was only with promulgation of the Organic Law of Normal School Education² in January 1946 that this movement expanded. Accordingly, in 1951, 121 regional courses were in operation in Brazil, called rural normal school courses, with a more flexible structure according to the regions in which they were established.

Lourenço Filho (1953, p. 51) highlighted that most of these regional courses directed to training rural teachers did not yet have ideal conditions of organization and operation in comparison with rural normal school courses in operation, but that they carried out “work worthy of recognition and analysis”.

Specialized training for rural teachers was defended by Lourenço Filho (1953) when reporting that even though Brazil was the first country of America to create normal schools maintained by public authority, investigation showed that 48% of teachers in activity in primary schools had not had any opportunity to receive any pedagogical preparation. In the text “Preparation of Teaching Personnel for Rural Primary Schools”, a study published in the Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedagógicos (RBEP) prepared at the request of UNESCO, Lourenço Filho (1953) emphasized the differences in teaching in Brazil. He clarified that in the South of Brazil, more densely populated, economically active, and in notable industrialization, the rate of teachers that had not gone through normal schools was only 10%; in São Paulo, in the Southeast region, primary education establishments in that period no longer relied on “lay instructors” (regentes leigos³).

In the North, Northeast, and Central-West regions of Brazil, however, improvised instructors, also known as lay teachers or unlicensed teachers, prevailed in the teaching profession. They came to constitute up to 70% to 80% of active teachers, not only in primary schools in rural areas, but also in schools of small towns and villages⁴. In rural Brazil of those years, people “[...] worked, formed families, practiced religion, developed ties of solidarity, and came in contact with the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic.” (^{LIMA, 2009}, p. 153).

In the 1940s and 1950s, the urbanization rate of Brazil was 36.2% - this profile remained practically the same up to the 1960s, reaching only 44.67%, according to statistical yearbooks of the IBGE, though urbanization was unequally distributed in the different regions of Brazil (IBGE, 1950). This discrepancy in demographic dispersion and the dispersive type of population structure impeded good school organization with consequent pedagogical and social returns. This situation required official measures to attenuate the problem of lack of schools in rural areas and the high illiteracy rate in Brazilian states.

In 1953, Lourenço Filho described that the rural population was found to be dispersed in isolated houses or centers with few habitations, far from each other, especially in the Central-West and North regions, with demographic density of 1 inhabitant per Km², the reality of two-thirds of Brazilian territory. Agglomerations of more than 5000 inhabitants all together, according to the census of 1940, did not represent even one fifth of the population, and this configured “[...] extensive sectors of the country not susceptible of receiving any type of school organization”; they therefore represented “[...] spaces not amenable to schooling” (LOURENÇO FILHO, 1953, p. 63).

But the truth is the population is not distributed that way. Demographic density varies from region to region. There is only 1.08 inhabitant per km² in the North, i.e., in the states of Amazonas, Pará, Maranhão, Piauí, and the territory of Acre (population of 4,231,545 for an area of 3,928,789 km²). It is 21.41 inhab./km² in the states of the Northeast: Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas (population of 8,238,744 for 384,747 km²). An index of 9.43 appears in the East region, with Sergipe, Bahia, and Espírito Santo (population of 5,619,613 for 595,615 km²). It reaches 18.56 in the states of the South region, with Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul (population of 16,167,806 for 870,994 km²). And, finally, it is 3.29 in the Central states: Mato Grosso, Goiás, and Minas Gerais (population of 8,989,223 for 2,731,044 km²). Moreover, within each region, density is extremely variable. Thus, in the North, it oscillates from 0.25 (Amazonas) to 3.25 (Maranhão). In the Northeast region, from 11.43 (Ceará) to 43.30 (Alagoas). In the East, from 8.18 (Bahia) to 26.07 (Sergipe). In the South, from 5.34 (Paraná) to 49.76 (state of Rio). In the Central, from 0.26 (Mato Grosso) to 13.19 (Minas Gerais). (LOURENÇO FILHO, 2002, p. 39).

For Lourenço Filho, a nationwide plan should consider these dissimilarities among Brazilian regions to determine the “schoolable” area, so as to create and distribute schools to obtain the desired results and break from the high illiteracy rates in the country.

The period that goes back to 1942 and extends up to 1963 is highly significant for the history of Brazilian rural education. In fact, in 1942, at the 8th Brazilian Education Congress, that took place in Goiânia, GO, June 18-28, 1942, the theme was rural teaching. Beginning in 1950, institutional measures were put into effect with the aim of solving the problem of schooling in rural regions. One of these measures was a campaign by the CNER that began in 1953 and would be terminated in 1963.

Throughout the years in which the CNER was active, nine editions of its journal were published, containing information regarding rural normal school courses, such as Centers for Rural Teacher Training, courses and licensing offered for rural teachers, practices proposed by the Ministry of Education and Culture, actions proposed by the Rural Social Service, structuring of Regional Centers for Rural Teacher Training, rural delegations, and primary school, among others.

Therefore, based on this evidence, we seek to analyze how the rural normal school courses were proposed in Brazil and how these courses operated in the period from 1942 to 1963. Our purpose was to understand if a differentiated school model was adopted, i.e., if pedagogical practices different from those prescribed by legislation and applied in urban schools were adopted. To that end, we examined standard practices and concepts that regulated the operation of rural normal schools in Brazil and the proposals that were put forward by those that administered this type of training.

Thus, we sought to learn if, organized under the auspices of training for a rural teaching profession, such rural normal school courses in fact prescribed specific practices established for this training that could be developed by normal school graduates in conformity with the desires of the rural population. In this line of reasoning, the following issues prompt this study: How were rural normal school courses proposed in Brazil, and which educational models were followed for training of rural teachers? What defined a rural normal school course, the environment it aimed to serve or the content taught?

Our hypothesis is that, although the scope of the rural normal school courses had a proposal of specific training for work in a rural environment, training directed toward a single-model school remained. The teaching practices of the urban school teachers underlay the practices of the rural school teachers, which denounces a lack of identity of these rural school courses. Thus, we begin with the apparent provisioning of rural normal school courses to then compare this school organization with the proposals formed in the scope of the CNER.

The important thing is not “The size or the curriculum of the Normal School. The important thing is to develop a mindset”.

Concerning the direction of rural education in Brazil, as already presented, rudimentary knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic arrived in an informal manner to country dwellers in their own home environment and served them for their daily labors in agricultural work. In schools distant from the urban environment, however, reluctance of those trained in normal schools to work in the rural environment predominated, since rural schools did not enjoy prestige, even though the rural environment at that time was home to most of the Brazilian population.

Sud Mennucci had alerted since 1930 that the teachers themselves made a negative campaign of such rural institutions because they did not feel well in rural schools and wished to leave them, and he explained that “while [the teacher] waits for them to remove him/her from exile and from torture, he/she advances a negativist and pernicious campaign that combats love for country life.” (SUD MENNUCCI, 1934, p. 73). For that author, characteristically urban-based laws encouraged teachers to remain in the city, and made it difficult to enter or remain in rural locations.

In respect to educational policies directed toward rural education, Sud Mennucci (1934, p. 132) had already highlighted the precarious conditions of rural schools, in which the school process, a priori, proceeded unchanged after establishment of the Republic. For the author, another phenomenon also contributed to the precarious conditions, namely, “the teachers that go to the country are those with the lowest salaries. The rule is they receive one-third less, and a result of this fact is that the rural area receives the neophytes, i.e., the novices that have barely left the normal schools.”

We can perceive that, with rare exceptions, as the example of the Juazeiro do Norte School (^{BARROS, 2011}) and, later, the Rosário Farm (^{PINHO, 2009}), the offer of courses for rural teachers, as well as the organization of education directed to the rural population, had not been firmly taken on by the administration of the country, or if it had, this was done without any continuity, given the absence of continuity of policies that would establish rural education as a priority in the states, in the municipalities, or at the federal level.

In 1942, this reality of rural education gained prominence during the 8th Brazilian Education Congress, in which basic problems were discussed, such as the high number of illiterate people living in rural areas and the migratory movements of rural dwellers to the cities. In that Congress, although a conservative and nationalist discourse prevailed, the direction of Brazilian rural education was not clearly defined. Yet, a point of consensus was that it was necessary to make every effort on behalf of rural education, aiming at social and cultural development that the State itself clamored for (^{LEITE, 1999}).

Sud Mennucci, in his report entitled “The primary school teacher in rural areas: training, ongoing education, remuneration, and assistance”, defended that a new teacher needed to be trained in a specialized normal school that offered solid training with wide knowledge of agriculture, rural industries, rural economics, and an understanding of prophylaxis, hygiene, and nutrition. In addition, the teacher should act as a leader in the community (SUD MENNUCCI, 1944).

According to Sud Mennucci, the urban school would never be able to train “teachers of this type”. As an example of results, he also cited the establishment created for preparation of the rural instructor: the Rural Normal School of Juazeiro. According to him, this school had already been training rural teachers, with excellent results, since 1937. However, although he defended the establishment of rural normal schools in the mold of the Juazeiro School, he accepted the viability of another type of school for each state, as long as it were a rural normal school and gave the trained instructor agricultural specialization “of techniques directed to the countryside, for its toils and travails”, because the important thing is not “[...] the size or the curriculum of the normal school. The important thing is to develop a mindset.” (SUD MENNUCCI, 1944, p. 291).

In a synthesis of the discussions presented and related to training of the rural teacher, Mennuci presented the following conclusions to the plenary in the 8th Brazilian Education Congress:

In defense of the rural normal school and through support for ongoing education, training, and better working conditions for the rural teacher, Sud Mennucci made the appeal that Getúlio Vargas, then President of the Republic, found and order the establishment of a Rural Normal School in each politically delimited area of the nation to meet the particular requirements of each region.

“Not all programs serve for all children [...]”

A great deal of what had been described by Mennucci in 1942 in the 8th Brazilian Education Congress would mark the Organic Law of Normal School Education of 1946 and, in a more significant way, the campaign undertaken by the CNER. In that congress, consensus was that the teacher going to rural schools must have professional training in the rural environment. When that was not possible, complementary schools or specialization courses should be created that would be offered in specific periods and in a differentiated manner so that once teachers were trained there, they could acquire the mindset, habits, customs, and tasks of those who lived in the countryside. After all, urbanism caused “untold evils” to social well-being and it was fitting for the rural normal school to become a center of accentuated civilizing influence on the surrounding community and, by extension, to limit the migratory flow from rural areas to the cities.

We observe in the talks given by speakers in the 8th Brazilian Education Congress that the school, with the assistance of the teacher, needed both to encourage communities to remain on the land and to promote the moral, economic, and social development of the locations, with incorporation of care for health and hygiene in the policy project of training in rural normal schools.

In describing the situation of the state of Mato Grosso in the Congress mentioned, Gervásio Leite clarified that it would be useless to overload the schools with an extensive literary and language program and that it would not be in harmony with regional needs. For him, organization of the rural school “needs to be different from the urban school. The teacher, the program, the method, and the building also need to be different.” The speaker from Mato Grosso defended an intense campaign “of establishing the man on the land”, because, in his words, “otherwise we will continue being victims of this urbanism that dismays us.” (LEITE, 1944, p. 136).

For that reason, also according to Leite, it was not enough to promote organization of the schools, but “adequate establishment capable of training rural teachers inclined to the rural life was indispensable.” Thus, the rural normal school should help teachers obtain “knowledge of modern ideas and practices of agriculture, hygiene, and sanitation”, which, for its part, would avoid “urbanized teaching that makes the city a permanent center of attractions.” (LEITE, 1944, p.139).

Gervásio Leite furthermore added that as long as teachers did not have “sufficient preparation, all reforms would be useless, the programs unnecessary, and the methods ornamental.” For that author, the solution to this problem would be creation of specialized courses to prepare the rural teacher. And he added, “not all programs serve for all children, nor the books, nor the methods, which clearly showed the distinction that must be given to training in the rural school” (LEITE, 1944, p. 139-140).

Defense of the rural normal school differentiated from the urban school, with training of teachers with agricultural and sanitary awareness, was intensely debated in the 8th Brazilian Education Congress, prevailing the concept of a training school that would give the teacher an appreciation for the labors of rural life. Together with that, the rural normal school should contain training of a high social spirit, of civic duty, of understanding of the moral function of the teaching profession and of the possibilities of the school as a factor of cultural and economic creation, operating as one more possibility for limiting the migratory flow, with an accentuated civilizing influence on the communities in which the teacher would be active. As one of the conference speakers warned:

The plague of urbanism has caused our economy and our well-being untold evils. Teachers for the country and teachers for the city is what should be the norm, opening the possibility only for teachers that move their environment, however, with fitting and obligatory functional adaptation [...] the rural normal school, with specific subject matter, will be different from the urban normal school, both in development of its programs and in its practices and the spirit that should inspire it (SOUSA, 1944, p. 303).

The guidelines established by the conference speakers contained multiple aspects that articulated a broad concern with general improvement of rural teaching. Some recommendations that resulted from the 8th Congress were organization of fundamental primary education in rural areas; provision of schools for the whole population, with adequate buildings for primary schools and standards of school equipment, considering the particular aspects of regions; training, ongoing education, remuneration, and adequate assistance for the primary teacher of rural areas; devotion of resources to popular education material; creation of school outposts as a resource for colonization of sparsely populated areas; establishment of boarding schools and semi-boarding schools to encourage regular attendance at schools; and implementation of cultural delegations as an instrument of entering into the culture.

“More than once, we have rebelled against this school that turns out instructors with eyes directed toward the city, completely forgetting the country”.

As we have seen, the concern over training of teachers for work in rural schools was the motto of the 8th Brazilian Education Congress. The creation of rural normal schools was defended as socially necessary to offer country dwellers a healthy and stimulating education for life in their locations, under the understanding that the existing Brazilian normal schools would not be prepared to do that. This aspect can be inferred by the reinforcement the documents analyzed gave to education in the sense that the rural school should be organized as an “societal company”; through teaching and learning of school subjects, teachers would use auxiliary techniques and educational methods of life and of work of the community that should be reflected in the daily activities of the students, prioritizing the dominant occupations in the region.

Moreover, the rural school should be constituted as a space of economic and professional initiation, with the aim of ensuring elementary knowledge of a trade, and of making reason of parents’ work. It should also become a center of convergence of local interests, extending a civilizing influence to the local community, contributing to raise the level of instruction of the people to increase overall comfort and to develop the regional economy.

It is not enough, however, for the rural normal school to be situated in an agricultural center in order to train teaching personnel to be able to provide agricultural and sanitary awareness to rural populations, as well as precise understanding of the value of providence and of economy. It is necessary, above all, that it be enlivened with such a spirit that contributes, through fitting preparation of the teacher, so that the rural primary school becomes a center of economic and professional initiation, with an accentuated civilizing influence on the entire community of the place in which it is located. (SOUSA, 1944, p. 303).

For that reason, governmental agencies and the school should promote public conferences, patriotic festivities, and associations for cultural, civic, and recreational purposes. After all, if the services of assistance and education were near the country dwellers, it would be easier to encourage them to remain in their location and convince them that the educational authorities would establish the organization of an adequate public education system as a priority to create the social foundations for modernization of their region.

It would belong to teachers, therefore, to teach and, at the same time, have an antiurbanist demeanor, which implied that they should not be only hygiene authorities, but also have a clear and logical perspective on the problems of the countryside, undertaking a crusade against ignorance and abandonment of rural areas, modifying the school, and, consequently, avoiding the loss of rootedness of the country population. In this defense for creation of Brazilian rural normal schools, Sousa highlighted that “more than once, we have rebelled against this school that turns out instructors with eyes directed toward the city, completely forgetting the country.” (SOUSA, 1944, p. 302). For him, “governmental will” should provide country populations with schools different from urban ones, and they should become “centers of economic initiation”.

In explanatory statement no. 155 of December 31, 1945, in regard to the Organic Law of Normal School Education, Raul Leitão da Cunha, Minister of Education and Health, disclosed that two levels were necessary for formation of teaching personnel to work in primary schooling, given the differences of an economic and cultural order that existed between the various regions of the country. The first level of study would correspond to the initial cycle of secondary education courses, composed of four years of study, for the purpose of licensing instructors for primary education. The second level would correspond to the second cycle of this same degree of education, but it would be carried out in three years, after conclusion of the first level, and would train primary school teachers licensed for the primary teaching profession, also allowing the study cycle to be concluded in two years of intensive studies in regional schools.

For the Minister of Education and Health, Raul Leitão da Cunha, Administrative Order (Decreto Lei) no. 8529 of January 2, 1946, should adopt this structure because such differentiation would be necessary for preparation of teachers to work in the primary teaching profession, since some educators proposed rural normal schools. For him, Administrative Order no. 8530 of January 2, 1946, should broaden the idea of rural normal schools, accepting the establishment of regional normal school courses, with flexible structure, according to the locations in which they would be set up. They could be in the direction of the clearly agricultural economy, as well as of an extraction economy, or even of the particular activities of the coastal areas, in line with “adequate means of attaining democratic education”, as had been defined in June 1945 in the 9th Brazilian Education Congress, carried out by the Brazilian Education Association.

Adequate Means of Attaining Democratic Education: a) flexibility of courses and educational branches; b) accessibility of public schools to all through adequate number, through free education of all degrees and branches of study, and through assistance to students in need; c) requirement of a minimum of general culture common to all; d) measures that favor education in accordance with possible differences; e) academic freedom; f) freedom of education with assurance of morality and efficiency; g) unity of directives established by a national educational policy, and structural diversity of educational systems in conformity with the special conditions of each region of the country; h) school activities that develop the spirit of personal initiative and the custom of cooperation; i) introduction in the schools in all the degrees and branches of education of the principles and of the mechanism of democratic rule, a teaching that should be accompanied by systematic practice in school life and examples of democratic institutions; j) service of educational guidance. (RBEP, 1945, p. 260).

For studies of the second cycle, a course of three-year duration should be adopted, like those already in existence in various Brazilian locations, composed of a minimum curriculum and appropriate sequential series of subjects. The same course could be offered in two years of intensive studies in regional schools, which were considered more adequate to the reality of diverse regions of the country because greater enrichment of studies would be necessary, where this were possible. The standards of educational organization should obey a principle of flexibility so that, without breakdown of necessary national coordination, it would be possible for “normal school teaching, in its various state-based types” to find “all the possibilities of continuing education”. (RBEP, 1945, p. 261).

“A broad campaign of education for country people likely constitutes the instruments most adequate for raising the level of material and cultural life of Brazilian populations.”

In 1949, in the Interamerican Seminar on Adult Education, that took place in Petrópolis, RJ, sponsored by the Brazilian government, by UNESCO, and by the Pan-American Union, José Irineu Cabral, director of the Agricultural Information Service, and Manuel Bergström Lourenço Filho, at that time director of the National Education Department, in line with the understanding defended by conference speakers at the 8th Brazilian Education Congress that took place in 1942, proposed teaching of basic education aiming at recovery and development of rural communities.

As of that time, in 1950, in Itaperuna, RJ, the 1st Rural Delegation was founded, with the intention of obtaining the largest number of elements that would allow indication of technical directives of educational and assistance procedures that could promote improvement in conditions of economic and social life in rural areas. In the Itaperuna School, the method used would be based on social organization of the community, and the instrument of carrying this out would be a rural delegation for adult education.

Consistent with the conception of the Brazilian government that rural schools served to prevent the rural to urban migratory flow, Robert King Hall, professor of Teachers College, Columbia University, came to Brazil funded by the American government to collaborate with INEP in creating a model for rural schools that would be set up in Brazil. Robert King Hall in the report he presented to the National Pedagogical Studies Institute (Instituto Nacional de Estudos Pedagógicos - INEP) when he concluded his activities as professor of the Rural Education Seminar, included comments and impressions regarding the plan for training of rural teachers that were in process at the Rural Normal School of Juazeiro in the North region of Brazil, at the Itaperuna School in Rio de Janeiro, and at the rural teacher training school idealized by Helena Antipoff for the Rural Normal School Course of the Rosário Farm in Minas Gerais. According to him, these training courses help “the rural teacher to establish roots in the rural area and tend to reduce the maladaptation of teaching personnel, with consequent exodus to the cities.” (HALL, 1950, p. 114). Hall, in his text, emphasized that creation of these schools could encourage populations to remain in the country and limit the migratory flow to the cities.

To do so, the plan makes use of three means. First, it selects the teachers within the location itself, choosing people that have family ties in the place, that understand the environment of the community and are integrated in it, people that will not feel the frustration and discontentment of an urban teacher, transplanted to the country and isolated there. Second, through the rural normal school, it provides a means of educating the rural teacher in the rural area itself, thus avoiding the great danger that the teacher, after the professional training process in the state capital or in any other large city, becomes so sophisticated and “urbanized” that he does not wish to return to the rural area. And third, with his residence attached to the rural primary school and an integral part of it, it provides a powerful incentive for the teacher to establish himself in the community and feel pride in his profession. Almost without exception, teachers’ residences are the best residences of the place. (HALL, 1950, p. 114).

These proposals for Brazilian education in the 1950s therefore arose in the midst of discussions regarding the rural to urban migration, considered undesirable through the growing threat to national stability. The rural delegations would compose one of the axes of the main program for rural teacher training: the National Rural Education Campaign (Campanha Nacional de Educação Rural - CNER), with the explicit aim of limiting this rural to urban migration and of establishing an education specifically directed to the rural environment (^{CALAZANS; SILVA; CASTRO, 1985}, p. 43).

With the return of Getúlio Vargas to the presidency of the Republic in 1950, he authorized the beginning of the grassroots program that would come to be the CNER, under the orientation of international organizations led by UNESCO.

A broad campaign of education for country people likely constitutes the instruments most adequate for raising the level of material and cultural life of Brazilian populations [...] As it is not possible to achieve new labor processes and better living conditions without a movement for education of the base, reaching the farmer with his family and the social institutions themselves of his community, the Ministries of Education and of Agriculture should coordinate their efforts, plans, and financial and human resources in this respect. (VARGAS, 1951, p. 102-103)

Shortly afterwards, the Ministry of Education and Health, whose Minister of Education was Ernesto Simões Filho, officialized the CNER, attributing to it the main purpose of “bringing movement for education of the base to the Brazilian rural environment.” (BRASIL, 1953). The CNER was to lay the foundations of its work in the community through the school, making of it the “bridgehead for the great strike against ignorance, disease, conformism, in short, all the backwardness and abandonment we have known in rural areas.” (ARREGUY, 1959, p. 84).

Although the statutes of the CNER establish the nomenclature of “movement for education of the base ”, as in the words of Getúlio Vargas, the designation “rural education” was disseminated in Brazil since it is more understandable for the person in the countryside and by “everywhere coming across an environment of good will and understanding.” (ROMERO, 1954, p. 185).

In the scope of the CNER, much of what had been presented by Sud Mennucci at the 8th Brazilian Education Congress in 1942, before promulgation of the Organic Law of Normal School Education of 1946, was utilized. The CNER recommended, for example, that teachers that worked in the rural area should not be trained in cities, to impede their migration to cities.

It appears to us that the practice of bringing these teachers from the countryside for training in the capital is completely unadvisable, notwithstanding the considerable availability of equipment it offers. In a country like ours, up against the drama of rural exodus, bringing teachers from the countryside to large cities is favoring migration to urban centers. (ROMERO, 1954, 186).

In the campaign undertaken by the CNER, teacher training for work in rural areas took up one imperative: regional normal school courses must follow the directives of the Organic Law of Normal School Education (1946), but on an international level, they should observe Recommendation no. 08 of UNESCO of July 13, 1936, pronounced at the International Conference of Public Education of Geneva, denominated The Organization of Rural Education (UNESCO, 1979). The organization, the subjects, and, above all, the practices taught should therefore be integrated with international policies.

The model of the rural delegations that Lourenço Filho brought from Mexico inspired educational activities in rural education and proposed reforms in the sphere of educational policies, establishing measures for development of rural education and improvements in rural school facilities so that families would remain on the land.

the complex problem of rural education was of a much more complex nature. The simplistic formula that elementary school could “maintain the main on the land”, as long as it taught or intended to teach children rudimentary agricultural techniques and techniques for preserving health, could not be accepted. Even though any and all primary school must take the environment in which it works into account, and preparation of instructors in this sense is desirable and necessary, there should be no intent of making it into teaching of a professional nature. To arrive at a good solution, the problem requires measures of much greater breadth: reform of the agrarian system; development not only of services that promote agricultural production, but also distribution of credit and defense of production; improvement of means of communication and assistance services; services for education of illiterate adolescents and adults; “rural delegations” with use of modern technical processes of dissemination, such as those of the movie theater; and, at long last, improvement of school facilities, construction of residences for teachers, and regional organization of their training, with attention toward the general necessities of life in each environment. (LOURENÇO FILHO, 2001, p. 11).

According to Lourenço Filho, the schools in existence in rural areas, considering both the history of their operation and the history of resources directed to them, were characterized by insufficient investments by public authorities in equipping and endowing these teaching institutions with conditions favorable to meeting the needs of the population. Consequently, a new format for rural education was fitting, which explained, for its part, implementation of a campaign like the CNER.

In 1951, according to Lourenco Filho, 112 regional normal school courses were in operation in Brazil, distributed by states, territories, and the Distrito Federal, as shown in Table 1.

It is noteworthy that a contradiction prevailed between the important role played by the rural normal school when most of the population lived on the land and part of it was schooled there (as already noted), yet teacher training occurred in an urban environment. Given this reality, teacher training was not carried out to meet the needs of the student that lived in the rural area and of the rural worker. The CNER took these data as support for its activities and it reinforced that education should be consolidated by institutions of formal education, because “the situation in which the Brazilian rural environment is found concerning instruction is deeply distressful. There are no educational institutions beyond modest and rudimentary primary schools and some adult literacy courses.” (SOUZA, 1956, p. 88).

In other words, in a certain manner, the curriculum, the time of operation, the schedule of evaluations, and other instruments that characterized school operation in Brazil followed the same directives in effect in the teaching establishments in the urban environment (^{LIMA, 2009}), in which the normal school was the model of basic instruction in Brazil. However, for those at the head of the CNER, normal school graduates trained in urban schools were detrimental to the country population.

The teachers who come out of these Schools are of great detriment to rural education when they move in its direction. The Rural Normal Schools and Regional Normal Schools that should prepare teaching personnel of the rural area are of highly reduced number, and in some states, the first of these schools have not yet been created. (LOURENÇO FILHO, 1956, p. 97).

We can consider that preparation of teachers for work in the rural area was defined in the rural normal schools as a process that should contribute to modernize the countryside and civilize the rural resident. For that reason, the CNER mobilized integrative political, social, and cultural elements for the training offered in the rural normal courses and made use of the resources of the cultural delegations. That way, country dwellers could be integrated with the environment they lived in, encouraged by acts of solidarity, cooperative actions, and division of labor. The CNER, however, throughout the years of its campaign, ended up focusing its activity on rural delegations and on training of normal school teachers, basically supporting training in the schools of Itaperuna, of Rosário, and of Juazeiro do Norte through scholarships.

In 1959, the CNER had turned almost totally toward development of educational techniques for vitalizing groups organized by interests that involved community organization and movement for education of the base, directing country dwellers toward development of the environment in which they lived, with the participation of the communities themselves and spurred by rural delegations that brought together countless rural extension courses.

In addition, the CNER maintained Regional Centers for education of the base - CREB in Itapagé, Ceará; Ponta Negra, Rio Grande do Norte; Apiaí, São Paulo; and Colatina, Espírito Santo. Such centers were dedicated to offering courses and training to rural teachers; training courses for basic educators on a regional level; and a teacher licensing course for rural teachers. Aimed at young women, they had the purpose of transforming “the habits of families and rural communities, awakening in them a sense of community toward knowledge and individual and common solutions for their problems.” ARREGUY, 1959, p. 285-286). The duration of these courses was from three to four months in a boarding school system.

In the sphere of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture (Superintendência do Ensino Agrícola e Veterinário - SEAV), five federal schools were created that offered the Teachers’ Course in Rural Domestic Economics (Curso de Magistério de Economia Rural Doméstica), which trained rural teachers: 1) Escola de Economia Rural Doméstica, Km 47, Antiga Rodovia Rio-São Paulo, in Itaguaí, RJ; 2) Escola de Economia Rural Doméstica “Licurgo Leite”, in Uberaba, MG; 3) Escola de Economia Rural Doméstica in Sousa, PB; 4) Escola de Economia Rural Doméstica da Escola Agrotécnica “Visconde da Gra”, in Pelotas, RS; 5) Curso de Magistério de Economia Rural Doméstica, of the Universidade Rural de Pernambuco. With support from the CNER, the SEAV developed such training projects with the intention of “recovering” the Brazilian rural population, aiming at both improvement of production and of living conditions in the communities (^{FERREIRA, 2014}, p. 72).

The Teaching Schools of Rural Domestic Economics, at the level of the 2nd cycle, offered a curriculum of two years with the intention of providing a certain body of knowledge to the rural woman, with the intention of modifying routine behavior through education. The plan of these courses would have a theoretical and practical configuration in which it would be possible to learn how to do the recommended actions “in accordance with the ideal of raising the social and economic conditions of the rural family.” (SILVA, 1961, p. 26).

As a modernizing element, a priori, we consider that this educational modality, rural or regional normal schools, was incorporated by the developmentalism that reigned from 1950 to 1963 as an important mechanism for Brazilian agricultural policies, among them, a certain policy of agrarian reform necessary for modernization of Brazilian capitalism, which disregarded both the context of country dwellers of that period and the desires of rural inhabitants. This first conception of ours is similar to the analyses of Leite, for whom “modernization of the countryside was nothing more than an internationalization of the Brazilian economy to monopolistic interests, and the CNER in performing its educational work did not consider the natural contradictions of rural groups.” (^{LEITE, 1999}, p. 37).

This same author emphasized that the CNER hasn't offered specific courses that the inhabitants of the rural environment needed. In addition, the struggles or demands of the rural minorities were obscured, yielding to communitarian expressions transmitted by the education/information promoted by the campaign. “The small rural groups without representation, laborers, the landless, sharecroppers, seasonal workers, and others, had no rights or say in the face of community decisions.” (^{LEITE, 1999}, p. 37).

Even so, João Roberto Moreira (1957) affirmed that the period under study brought significant accomplishments for education in Brazil. Moreira credited the advances in rural education to Anísio Teixeira, whose presence in The National Institute for Educational Research and Study - INEP stimulated countless actions for rural education that in preceding years had been abandoned, including construction and establishment of schools and teacher training. According to Lourenço Filho (2001, p. 11), Anísio Teixeira defended that the training and education of a “new man, independent and responsible, is what the progressive school should prepare.”

Beginning in 1961, with promulgation of Law no. 4024 of December 20, 1961, the normal school course received a new configuration. Law no. 4024 established the following in Chapter IV, On Training in the Teaching Profession for Primary and Secondary Education, in Article 53:

Training of teachers for primary education will occur:

a) in a normal school of the level of middle school of at least four yearly series where, in addition to the mandatory subjects of the secondary middle school course, pedagogical preparation will be given;

b) in a normal school of high school level of at least three yearly series following the middle school [...]

Art. 57. The training of teachers, counselors, and supervisors for rural primary schools will be made in establishments that require their integration in the environment. (BRASIL, 1961, p. 8).

Thus, as of 1961, normal schools gain a new configuration. Some rural normal schools of a confessional or private nature, as well as those that were in operation in the federal institutions, still remain in operation up to 1963, when the last groups graduate.

Final considerations

In the period under study, the rural or regional normal schools appear to us to have been marked by the intention of governments to create a conception/expression of life and of culture of the community to which these schools would belong. At the same time, the intention was to initiate the professionalization of the students, aiming at regional development to “look after” the aspect of hygiene and civilization of rural populations. To do so, these schools, above all, were to promote specialization and integrate and establish teachers in the rural area, and, as a consequence, maintain the population, in whose midst these teachers realized their educational work, in the rural area.

The educational or training program proposed for the Brazilian rural normal school courses revealed that which the educational authorities of the country at that time established as priority for organization of rural education - education that would be able to create the social foundations for an announced modernization of the countryside and of the most outlying regions of the country. In addition, the route of modernization conceived for rural locations was not to be found in capitals or other cities, but was to be sought and built up in the rural environment itself. This conception was systematized in the most organized way at the 8th Brazilian Education Congress that took place in 1942 in the wake of the ideas disseminated by Sud Mennucci, by Manoel Bergstrom Lourenço Filho, and by he who was known as the educational reformer of Ceará, Joaquim Moreira de Sousa, responsible for founding the first Rural Normal School of the country and a defender of the spread of rural normal schools as a model of training of rural normal school graduates bound up with the real needs of society.

At that Congress, the rapporteur Sud Mennucci clarified that the conference speakers defended a school for preparation of rural instructors aiming to work in primary schools, and that these preparatory schools should be founded in the rural area, considering the principles of production and of cooperation among the inhabitants as the best manner of organization of a school institution. Moreover, it was necessary for school institutions and the training courses to be in harmony with the needs of each region. Two models of school institutions would be accepted: a) rural normal schools, with a duration of at least 3 years for conclusion of the teacher training course for the rural teaching profession; and b) regional schools, whose curriculum would be more flexible than that of the Rural Normal Schools, and could have a variable duration, according to the regions in which they were located. These models were the way to better assure orientation of the teacher and establish the teacher in the rural environment, which would bring greater efficiency and accomplishments to the work of teachers after training.

Therefore, along with the Rural Normal Schools, the Organic Law of Normal School Education accepted the existence of Regional Normal Schools, many of them headed by the CNER from 1952 on, to meet the particular requirements of states and regions. Nevertheless, in the rural normal schools, the curriculum was diversified and extensive, whereas in the regional schools, the contents were not as deeply examined and they were offered in an accelerated manner, in the minimum time possible. These differences suggest the importance given by government authorities to the education that was offered in the more developed locations, in contrast with the education offered in more distant regions, small towns, villages, and rural area, where schools did not exist, or in locations that were more distant from more developed urban centers.

It seems, however, that the opposition between the rural normal school and regional normal school courses cannot be understood only as a political project to compel men and women to remain on the land. These differences rather seem to suggest the importance that Brazilian governing authorities lent to urban teaching, in detriment to the education offered in small towns, villages, and rural locations. It is fitting to observe that the content given was the same, but treated in the rural normal schools in a deeper manner, whereas in the regional schools, the content to be worked with would be the minimum necessary compared to that of the urban normal schools, suggesting acceleration of the content adopted in the rural or regional normal schools.

We evaluate that the trajectory of rural teacher training was thus marked by political lack of definition of the diverse Brazilian governments and of the respective reforms promoted over the years. Training for rural education in countless locations, villages, and small settlements distant from cities remained unequal to that of urban schools, whether in relation to primary school or in relation to the schools dedicated to teacher training.