2.1. Creation and initial functioning of the School

The concern with school education in this part was directed at the emergence of the institution, especially at practices and discourses that guaranteed it a unique existence.

The institutionalization of education for children, in the socio-political configuration called Batayporã, materialized with the emergence of a school institution, created in 1955, called The Mixed Rural School of Batayporã²⁰, later School Group Batayporã, created by Decree #2066 of March 4, 1955 (MATO GROSSO, 2015). It was observed that the official creation of the School and even its transformation into a School Group occurred in the same year and before the village was administratively emancipated. Aspects that may highlight the urgency and importance given to education in that place.

The literacy of the children also began even before the creation of the school was officialized and it was improvised, at the initiative of the community, in a room of the only hotel in the village. At the beginning, it had seventy students of different ages, evidencing the existing demand and the adoption of school education as a "necessity".

With the name of Mixed Rural School, the institution seems to have worked for a short time, because in March 1955, as already mentioned, the Batayporã School Group was created. However, the name Mixed Rural School continued to appear in the bookkeeping until 1962. In the Student Roll Book (MIXED RURAL SCHOOL, 2015), the name "Mixed Rural School" appears until April and, from this date on, the term School Group appears in the records of the same document, showing that the change in the nomenclature of the Institution.

Since the Federal Constitution of 1946 (BRASIL, 1946), the gratuity of primary education and other levels of education that presented a lack of resources was officially ensured, determining that federal, state, and municipal governments should apply a minimum percentage in education. In Batayporã it was observed that until part of the 1960s there were no investments for the school by governments, except for the payment of teachers. Lack of support that was not restricted to the municipality in question or to the institution studied.

According to the report of the First Teacher of the Group (INTERVIEW, 2014)²¹, CVSPMT helped in the construction of the School building with the purchase of permanent materials. In the narratives of the other interviewees, it was observed the need to show that the School had, since its beginning, some relationship with the Company, but emphasized the decisive participation of the local community. The emphasis on the Company appears, in particular, in the narrative of student David (2014), the son of an employee of the Company; with it appears a direct indication of appreciation of the company's support in the construction and maintenance of the Institution, however, support seems to have been limited.

Due to the importance given to school education at that historical moment, it can be affirmed that there was an interest of the Company in the Institution, having as condition the permanence of families and the implementation of the ongoing colonization project. But this finding does not seem to have materialized in investments, and this discursive practice was carried out at the expense of the effort of the "population" and this seems to have been in fact the strategy.

It was also observed that some documents²² of the school bookkeeping of the first year of operation of the Institution, such as call books and enrollment books, were printed from the State of São Paulo, signaling, in addition to the little governmental assistance, the difficulty of access, of those who lived there and those involved with education, the capital Cuiabá, where the state administration was located.

From the information provided, books, primers, chalk and other materials for the performance of classes were not made available by the government. Also, no records of resources or other provision of meals for students were obtained. It was also identified that, until the first half of the 1960s, there was no school cash as provided for since the Regulation of Primary Public Education of the State of Mato Grosso (MATO GROSSO, 1927).

Until the political-administrative emancipation of Batayporã, no proof of the state government's participation in the maintenance of the school was found, but in the narratives, information appears that some parents of students, when they could, collaborated with the donation of food or school supplies, such as pencils, erasers, and notebooks for low-income students, who were the majority. In addition to the First Teacher (2014), who claimed to buy for several years, materials such as pencils, notebooks, eraser and even primers for their "poorest students", coming from the State of São Paulo, considering the distances between the cities and Mato Grosso.

Another aspect considered in the research was the architecture, the buildings, the location of the School in the spatial organization of the city and its furniture, as the material part of its operation (^{FRAGO; ESCOLANO, 2001}).

The school's headquarters in the years of its operation changed location. Beginning with the analysis of photographs available at the Memory Center and narratives of the individuals, it was possible to conclude that it began its operation in 1955, in a room of the only inn existing in the small town. All students were alphabetized in the same physical space. The First Teacher (2014) said that there came a time when that space, in the hotel, became "[...] very small and warm for so many children."

In 1957, the first building was built for the School (Figure 1), made of wood, with two small rooms, dirt floor and a bathroom outside the building. A simple structure that differed little from other rural schools of the period. As ^{Garnica (2011}, p. 70) shows, generally rural establishments "[...] operated in wooden structures, consisting of only one room, without the existence (or precarious existence) of toilets, kitchen, and patio."

Source: "Jindrich Trachta" Memory Center (2015).

Figure 1 Batayporã School Group Building, backyard (1957) 

Still, the scenario changed with the construction of this building, done free of charge by two Portuguese carpenters who lived in the city. The construction did not have the financial support of the state government, but was done with materials provided by the Company and the community. It was only in the late 1960s that the municipal government built a brick building in another space on the same land, for the operation of the School.

With the support of ^{Frago and Escolano (2001}, p. 47), it can be affirmed that the school "[...] in its different achievements, is a product of each time and its constructive forms are, in addition to the support of cultural collective memory, the symbolic expression of the dominant values in different epochs." In the few photographic records, it is possible to observe the furniture and the distribution of students in the setting, as well as their clothing. In one of the images there is a teacher standing at the door and her 44 students, some with upright posture and others talking, some barefoot and others not. Thus, it is noticed that there was no requirement to wear uniforms at that time.

The students used, as desks in the classrooms, a table fixed to the seat (bench), which generally accommodated two children. In one of the photos, three children settle in school desks, but this distribution may have been organized only for everyone to appear in the photograph. In other images they appear in pairs of boys or girls.

According to student David's narrative (2014), only on exam days boys and girls sat together, so that there was no opportunity for "conversations and cheating" during the exam. According to his narrative, they were "nervous days", sometimes they even cried, because he had to share the exam desk with a girl, since they did not have a relationship of "friendship" and "intimacy".

In dialogue with ^{Frago and Escolano (2001}), it can be affirmed that school architecture constitutes a "program", which controls spaces, educates by the establishment of certain rules and imposition of habits, values.

Although the students sat together during the classes, the teaching-learning practices were not collective, but individualized, because the teacher was solely responsible for the activities, "scanning" them through their notebooks, evaluations and grades, the control of behavior, their posture in front of the classroom, and all their written notes about each student. This process was capable of separating the bodies of the individuals, even though so close. For ^{Foucault (2004}, p. 123), in institutions it is important to

establish presences and absences, know where and how to find individuals, establish useful communications, interrupt others, being able at every moment to monitor the behavior of each one, to appreciate it, to sanction it, to measure the qualities or merits.

Each and all institutional architecture contribute to "compose" and "conform" individuals as subjects of specific types (^{ROSE, 2001}) and constitute a material element of what we call "schooling device".

The Batayporã School Group did not have a grand frontage, staircases, entrances for boys and girls, among other aspects that were designed for these buildings built throughout Brazil, from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, according to ^{Buffa and Pinto (2002}), Faria Filho and Vidal (2000) and ^{Souza (1998}). According to Faria Filho and Vidal (2000, p. 31-32):

Instead of the sumptuousness exhibited at the beginning of the Republic, the struggle for democratization of the school was felt in functionalist buildings, technically designed for a fast and efficient education, with specific places to host machinery, such as mimeograph, and provide control of the teaching staff through increasingly capillary administrative mechanisms, and in the more rustic solutions, which associated formal teaching to the teacher's house in rural areas.

In addition to architecture, the "school time" was inaugurated with the creation of school groups in the country. With them, time gained importance in the organization of teaching. Faria Filho and Vidal (2000, p. 32) state that "[...] school time is associated with the hours when one stays in school, counted in bells, playgrounds, notebooks, in the same way as in the clockhands". The division of the school year into classes, periods, days, semesters, vacations, also evidences this distribution and temporal control.

Without the obligation to provide lunch by the governments, state and municipal, students took to school what they "had at home". In the late 1960s, milk began to be provided to students. Later, according to student David (2014), the school had established an agreement with a brand of noodles to serve it during lunch. However, for this to happen, parents needed to buy the same pasta for consumption in their homes. Another indication that there was little financial support from the governors and that the school sought or used these alternatives to function and serve enrolled students.

Through the sources, it was found that the School was far from the students' homes and that they traveled for miles to attend classes. Even with the distance from his home to school, the student Mario (2014) states that he "loved going to school", because he played a little and when he was there he felt free from the work in the crop he did with his parents. Narrative that points out a meaning given to the school by a farmer's son, according to an utterance that began to establish itself, according to which "the place of a child is in school" and not at work; but in that locality the formative and professionalizing perspective that was already circulating in the country about the function of this social institution was still distant.

2.2 Teachers and teaching methodology

This item included aspects related to working conditions, teacher training and selection and teaching.

Recalling, in different discourses, including the oficial one, the role of the school and that of the teachers indicated education/instruction as a condition for the formation of children for life in society. In the Message (MATO GROSSO, 1952) given by Governor Fernando Corrêa da Costa to the Legislative Assembly, we observe the importance given to the knowledge and to teaching:

Because teaching, even if they are only notions of teaching programs implies having knowledge that is not only related to reading, writing and accounting, but of hygiene, health, mastery of the land and social affairs related to the interest of the collectivity in which the teacher is active [...]. (MATO GROSSO, 1952, p. 26).

In the early years of operation of the School, only one teacher taught, but in the following years, other teachers were hired to practice teaching. Until 1963, no records or narratives were found that there were other employees, such as a school attendant, doorman, and inspector. According to the First Teacher (2014), the role of principal was occupied by her during at least the first decade of operation of the Institution without, however, having been appointed or receiving the salary consistent with the position of principal. The justification given was that "she was the oldest teacher". In this respect, no record was found (nor the Official Gazette of appointments), referring to the period in which she reports having occupied the functions of teacher and principal. A practice far from that provided for in the legislation, which established that to be director of a public school the teacher should prove experience in teaching of at least three years, in addition to going through a public tender (^{BRITO, 2001}). The first teacher of the Institution had primary training and studied the initial grades of middle school, without completing it. Only in the late 1960s, as pointed out, a "trained" (normalist) teacher officially assumed the role of director of the School.

Teacher Maria (2015), the city's first normalist, took over classes and the direction of the School Group in the second half of the 1960s and remained in office until 1969, when she started to direct the Batayporã Middle School²³. According to narratives, soon after the creation of the Middle School, six qualified teachers from the city of Alvares Machado in São Paulo went to Batayporã to teach classes, invited by the mayor of the city.

With the data from the interviews and other available records, it was observed that teachers rarely participated in courses or improvements offered by the state government in the cities of Campo Grande and Cuiabá. One of the main reasons was the release of said training and the distance between Batayporã and the cities where the training was offered.

Regarding the payment of the Group's professionals, the first teacher narrates that, during the years she worked there, when she needed to receive the salary it was "another problem", because there was no road between Batayporã (district) and Bataguassu (municipality) where she used to go to receive, because to get there she had to go "bordering" the farms and that, on rainy days, it was more difficult to reach the destination. She also states that, due to the distance, she would go "up to five months without receiving" (FIRST TEACHER, 2014).

As for teaching, recurring obstacles were encountered for the education of students, because, as in the first years there were rooms with multiple series, there were children starting literacy and others already mastering writing and reading.²⁴ The main reference for teaching was the Soft Path primer. The teacher herself bought it for the students' use, evidencing the lack of indication and gratuity of a specific primer by the state's public authorities, as well as the requirement to follow a specific primer. According to the teacher, she had worked with this primer before going to Batayporã, so her choice followed her own experience and schooling.

The Soft Path primer had its first publication in 1948 and was widely used and accepted in the country until the mid-1990s. According to ^{Peres and Ramil (2015}), it consisted of alphabetizing students from the printed images. According to the authors, the primer related

the shape of the typographies of the letters or syllables of the words to the format of their respective image which contributes to the memorization by the child who associates the shapes of the fonts of the typography used in the word to those of the represented image, because the characters occupy virtually the same space and take on very similar shape, by fitting within a detail of the figure. (^{PERES; RAMIL, 2015}, p. 63).

Besides de primer, the teacher used dictation, to teach writing. The addition of content and activities appears only in the late 1960s. The Establishment Form, Production and Data Bulletin (SCHOOL GROUP, 2015a), about the students, contains information that in 1967, in March and April, four singing and one recapitulation classes were held, respectively.

The spatial-temporal distribution, care for hygiene and behavior, moral exercises, daily prayers, records about behavior, and other practices that were developed in the institution studied ended up composing and conforming the individuals.

According to ^{Foucault (2004}), the school, as a "closed" social institution, is a place maintained by the disciplinary order that aims to train the body and mind by obedience, docility, and productivity for work and life in society.

In the scarce localized school bookkeeping, which deals with the students' grades, it is perceived that there was an expressive number of "low grades", especially in the item called "Application". The Application scores were the sum of the behavioral scores and the grades of the subjects taught by the teachers; with which the arithmetic mean was calculated. Analyzing the data, it was concluded that some students did not do well, because they did not "behave" according to the established rules.

In one of the students' statements, however, one can locate a form of resistance to this discipline and control present in the Institution:

sometimes, of you want to go to the bathroom and here, for example, there was no bathroom inside the school, it was those little houses like in a farm, because here it was like a farm, and sometimes we wanted to go out, take a walk outside the playground and there was no way, you couldn't leave, you had the playground and stuff and sometimes when you were holding it in, then we went. And one of the shenanigans that I got tired of doing, I took chalk and cut it with the razor and made some pills like that [small gesture with hands] right, and said teacher, I need to take my medicine. Then go [the teacher would say], and then I'd go there, have some water, stand there, and come back looking sick and stuff. (STUDENT DAVI, 2014, p. 5).

In dialogue with ^{Foucault (2013}), it can be reflected that an "individual’s position" occupied by the teacher (and other teachers) guaranteed her or demanded some autonomy in the exercise of her function as "educator"; position that implied the control of her students, especially or if necessary, by using discipline. However, it is necessary to problematize this conduct of teachers, since they themselves were subject to certain rules, if not from the education department or the school inspection, but from their own colleagues, when they held the position of head, as director or, also, by the control of one's own conduct. In this sense, the Establishment Form - Bulletin of Production and Data (SCHOOL GROUP, 2015a) allows observation of the type of information required of teachers when teaching classes in the School Group that, in addition to academic training, addressed marital status, experience, and activities carried out in the classroom.

There are also detailed records in school bookkeeping about students, such as enrollment date, weight, height, age, origin, gender, grade, which school they came from (private or public school); records that were part of the school's assignments; in addition to family data, such as profession, religion, schooling and others. Detailing that shows that, through different records and measures, "all" subjects were captured in this school record.

For more than a decade, in Batayporã, at the end of the 4^th grade, the students stopped studying if their parents could not afford to send them to study in Bataguassu (nearest city) or in another city, which was the condition of most residents; a situation that appears in the narratives of the students about the 1960s, when the first children had completed the primary course.

2.3 Educating and instructing for life in society: morality and civility in school

This topic analyzed the teachers' responsibility for the moral and civic formation of children, through discourses and practices that took place in the School and in the commemorative activities of the small town. A task that implied the existence of teachers "full of virtues", who served as a model to be followed, examples of "citizens who worked for the homeland". An aspect reinforced in the Message (MATO GROSSO, 1952) of governor Fernando Corrêa da Costa, mentioned above.

Upon arrival at the School, daily, students were greeted with a moment of "welcome", in which they sang the National Anthem and hoisted the Flag of Brazil, as well as praying for the day that was beginning. After the welcome, they were taken to the classroom for pedagogical activities.

The playground was not free, but controlled through directed activities, recreational or not, which explored other forms of care about the bodies of children and adolescents who studied at that school. Looking at the students, one may ask how they acted, resisted and dealt with a certain space-time curtailing.

In the interviews with the group's teacher and students, these aspects appear in some passages, in which they affirm the frequent holding of civic festivities, celebrating, for example, Flag Day; moments when parades were held with children's battalions marching and playing an instrument before the authorities who were present at the official parades (an image that is still familiar to us). Teachers and students interviewed show enthusiasm and pride in having participated in these practices, these rites, because it was "honoring a historical fact of Brazil".

In this sense, these activities, considered extracurricular, contributed to the education of children and adolescents enrolled in the Institution, or, with the support of ^{Rose (2001}), to compose and conform child subjectivities, in this case, patriots. With the interviews conducted, in addition to photos found at the Memory Center "Jindrich Trachta", the presence of these acts that occurred in the School was observed, from the daily reception with the execution of the National Anthem and the raising of the Flag of Brazil, to the Tiradentes Day and 7 September, for example.

In two images identified as being from 1955, the boys and girls (separately) appear in uniform, indicating the participation of the School in an official event of the city.

Source: "Jindrich Trachta" Memory Center (2015).

Figure 2 Students during the 1^st Civic Festivity in Batayporã (1955) 

We did not obtain information that would allow us to state whether the uniform was used only on "special" days or on "commemorative dates", but it is possible to state that on these days they were worn. These dates, in addition to being a showcase of the school's achievements, according to the narratives of the individuals interviewed, make it explicit that there were political contacts between officials and governments, for hiring and indicating functions within the school or education in general.

From this apparently "complementary" formation, it is possible to infer that the school and teachers were responsible, in addition to many other aspects, for the constitution of the imaginary and the national memory, instructing themselves and their students in values such as respect for the signs and symbols of the Fatherland.

In dialogue with the production of other authors on the theme, ^{Vidal (2006}, p. 9) shows that the school groups "founded a representation of primary education that not only regulated the behavior, [...], of teachers and students within the institutions as it disseminated social (and educational) values and norms."

In addition to consolidating and reinforcing in children examples of "patriotic heroes" to be followed, for having fought for the country, these practices implied, at the same time, the attempt to constitute docile, disciplined citizens, able to live in society, and consistent with the interests of the Republic:

the public school became the stage for the realization of civic celebrations, another one of the unequivocal traces of the primary school's alliance with the Republic and with civic-patriotic values. Such celebrations aimed to solemnize some "remarkable" dates of our history. (^{SOUZA, 1998}, p. 265).

According to ^{Souza (1998}, p. 241), it can be affirmed that:

The Republican school has instituted rites, spectacles, celebrations. At no other time, the primary school in Brazil had shown itself so frankly as an expression of a political regime. In fact, it began to celebrate the political liturgy of the Republic; in addition to disseminating the republican action, it embodied the symbols, values and moral and civic pedagogy that was its responsibility. Celebrations, school exhibitions, parades of children's battalions, exams, and civic celebrations were special moments in the life of the school for which it gained even greater social visibility and reinforced shared cultural meanings.

It is observed a certain "governing" of the bodies of children and adolescents, correlated with the notion of "institution". Intrinsic in these relations of power or government of the other, present in the teacher-student relationship, there were also spaces of resistance or controlled "freedom":

Although surveillance may not occur at all times, it is felt permanently. The constantly watched individual learns to watch over himself, internalizes power relations, and learns to discipline his body and his way of life, thus becoming his own guardian. (^{MORAES, 2008}, p. 61-62).

The Batayporã School Group was configured as an environment for the preservation and cultivation of civic and patriotic values, contributing to some extent to the constitution of "educated" child subjectivities in a specific way.