2.1 Pedological assumption of the child's growth

In the work 'School Problems' the Portuguese scholasticovist refers to the scientific spirit, the methodology of analysis to the characteristics of contemporary education, in which Pedagogy, as an "autonomous science", in consensus with the "positivist meta-narrative", entered "the phase of the scientific method, freeing itself from empiricism" (VASCONCELOS, 1921, p. 13) From this assumption or principle of Pedagogy and the New School derived the essential imperative of the "psychological and pedological education of the teacher", so essential to the pedagogical act of educating (VASCONCELOS, 1909, p. 12). Well, this (psycho) pedagogical assumption had already been mentioned by previous pedagogues of the New School (Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Fröebel) when they warned of the educator's lack of knowledge of the way of being and characteristics of the student. Therefore, the Portuguese pedagogue advocated the submission of curricular content (learning units) and didactic processology to the child's individual psychophysical needs and abilities in the school context. Thus, based on the experimental methodology of observation and experimentation, Pedology resorted to the measurement of aspects arising from the child's schooling process. Well, the knowledge of the symptoms of (a)normality in the child's development turned the teacher/educator into a hygienist who "watches over and favours the normal development" and creates a favourable environment for it (VASCONCELOS, 1909, p. 20) and, therefore, it was up to them to take care of these factors related to the physical and intellectual energies (based on Binet's ideas).

Faria de Vasconcelos considers the teacher as a "researcher", today we would tell a reflexive researcher about his action (thinking), a connoisseur of the laws of general Pedology, of the differences and aspects revealed by it, besides being attentive to his sensitivity and imagination, attention, memory, judgement, reactivity, for example. The emergence of this (new) science of education raised, at the time (scientific influence) the concern for a new scientific object of study (^{WAGNON, 2013}): the growth of the child/adolescent based on laws (development), using the experimental method of approach. This whole scenario made reflect the function of the educator/teacher on the "preservation of the normal evolution of the child" (^{VASCONCELOS, 1909}, p. 33) in a scientific and measurement approach (observation, techniques, methods, examinations and tests) regarding their physical and intellectual growth (VASCONCELOS, 1925). In this sense, Binet, Decroly, Claparède, G. Rouma, G. Compayré, E. Peeters, among others, and Quetelet and Schuyten in this sense terms of school anthropometry. In our perspective, the teacher's 'surveillance' of the child's physical and psychological growth required the use of pedometry, because according to Faria de Vasconcelos (1909, p. 39) ", it allowed us to know in each case whether the child's development is normal or whether it is very fast or whether it is delayed", retarded or with difficulties in learning, besides the help of anthropometric data which indicated "the determination of the gender and the number of physical exercises which must be advised".

Moreover, the child's mentality modifies, grows, and develops so that a gradual differentiation of mental experiences accomplishes this development by progress in its organisation in personal control (^{MARQUES, 1986}, p. 287-289). Therefore, for the Portuguese scholastic innovator, the mental education to ensure the most favourable conditions to the growth and development of the mentality, in the sense of its differentiation and organisation, should cultivate and train the functions and mental processes aimed at adapting the child to the environment, to the variations and modifications that it was suffering and to the new situations that would arise. First, however, ignorance of the psychophysiological nature of the (school) child, their tendencies, capacities, activities, characteristics and differences should be analysed by the teacher in order to establish the appropriate orientation of the teaching provided.

These observations and measurements (pedometry) should, according to Faria de ^{Vasconcelos (1922}, p. 20), obey an analysis framework that would take into account: the rhythms of growth with phases throughout the years of childhood; the differential growth of the various organs; a long period of growth in relation to that of other animals. In this evolution, it was possible to detect an 'inverse correlation' of physical growth and mental energy, knowing that intellectual aptitude decreased during periods of rapid growth, which had specific pedagogical implications:

Current teaching and pedagogy reveal an almost total ignorance of these fundamental and vital questions. It is necessary to adapt the teaching, pedagogy, physiology and psychology of the child so that the school organisation, schedules, programs, classes and holidays are inspired by the demands and needs of the child's body and spirit. (^{VASCONCELOS, 1909}, p.85)

The data obtained in the diagnosis provided a therapeutic intervention and hence the need for paediatric examinations in schools, mainly on stature, weight, thoracic perimeter, biochemical diameter, cephalometry, muscular strength, for example. One of the measures proposed by Vasconcelos was the elaboration of the school notebook advocated by the medical-pedagogic aspect of the New School, which facilitated to the teacher "the knowledge of the march of the physical growth and the mental development of the child" in a physical and psychic hygienic evolutionary normality (^{VASCONCELOS, 1909}, p. 86). Besides this pedological principle of development, Faria de Vasconcelos mentioned, referring to several scholars of the time the following laws: biogenetic law by which children develop in the same order of the species (phases); Pestalozzi's law in which the fundamental law of the spirit the ascension from intuition to abstract was restrictive since it referred to the cognitive instance; Stern's law which, being reductionist, synthesises the pedological evolution from the periphery to the centre (from heteronomy to autonomy). For him, mental development was too complex to be explained by a single law and, thus, using ^{Claparède (1910}), he indicates several more harmonious pedological laws. One, for example, is the law of hereditary succession in which the mental development process is carried out by successive and constant phases, in which the acquisition of the temporal relationship precedes the assimilation of the spatial relationship; law of genetic and functional exercise in which the game has much importance; law of functional adaptation related to the psychic functions. In other words, the natural inclinations, interests and psychological needs of children should be covered by the curriculum, the methods and activities of school children, and knowing the characteristics of mental development and intellectual and moral differences and personal aptitudes (law of individuality). Hence, physical growth and spiritual evolution (law of rhythm) do not take place continuously but with advances and setbacks.

2.2 Assumption of the autonomy to be developed by the child

At the dawn of the new science, Pedology imposes the law of autonomy of the child, which represents a break with the anthropological theory that the child is an adult in miniature and childhood is an instrumental phase of the ascent to maturity. In this way, childhood, considered an autonomous state of the individual's life, was legitimised by the theory and practice of education and the New School. It was not the adult state or maturity that gave meaning to childhood and adolescence, knowing that the child is a unity/totality in itself. Recognition of the principle of autonomy determined the overcoming of the child's conception in the image and likeness of the adult and the subordination of the educational act to their specific interests. The New School intended to end with this "pre-judgment of the adult" (^{VASCONCELOS, 1909}, p. 330). Thus, the Portuguese scholasticovist, based on research, establishes in the child three factors in his mental development: the game (playful part), imitation and interest.

(a)- Play. This factor has a deep significance constituting a high degree of child development, being the "first instrument of the child's development" (^{VASCONCELOS, 1909}, p. 89) since playful activities were sensory-motor activities. He resorts to several theories to explain the advantages of children's play, for example (^{MARQUES, 1986}, p. 290-292): the playground theories (Schaller, Lazarus, Guts Muths); excess energy theory (Schiller, Ruyssen); the activism theory (Stanley Hall); the preparatory exercise theory (Spencer, Wundt, Gross) in which play is a preparation for life; Carr's theory (preparatory exercise and stimulation of the organs, solidarity and discharge of tendencies); Lange's theory (play implies the emergence of latent tendencies); ^{Claparède's theory (1910}) where he deals with mental and physical development, play, imitation, interest (psychobiological) and fatigue. Faria de Vasconcelos recognises the multiplicity of functions of play in development (physical-psychical, mental, individual, social) but distinguishes two aspects: the genetic aspect (pre-exercise of life); and the physical aspect (affirmation of personality in the face of adversities). In other words, for him, "the game is more than a pastime, it is also an intellectual work and, consequently, a school of thought and will" (VASCONCELOS, 1909, p. 93). From the panoply of games of imagination, motor, intellectual, affective, of exercising the will and the attention, of heredity, of imitation, the artistic ones, etc. all of them illustrated the fact that games are interrelated, as to their origin and educational function and the accentuated predominance of certain constitutive elements and particular purposes (MARQUES, 1986, p. 298).

(b) Imitation. This process is connected with a suggestion, habit or voluntary act, that is, reproducing an act of another. For the act of imitation to exist, there needs to be the condition of being, like every human act (conscious and voluntary), and if it is involuntary, it occurs by mental contagion. At that time, the phenomenon of suggestion was related to education since the child internalised unconsciously and involuntarily the symbolic message received. In Binet's perspective, the suggestion was the moral pressure that the person exerted on the intelligence, affectivity or will, in which the word constituted the frequent expression of this influence (^{FERREIRA, 1920}). We know that Bandura's theory modified this conception of social imitation. However, the scholastic innovators' suggestions were the difference between the educational act and the act of suggestion. Because Faria de ^{Vasconcelos (1909}, p. 99) clarified this pedagogical confusion by using Vigouroux, Jacquelier, Guyau and even Gustave Le Bon when he said that "educator, whose mission consists in developing intelligence and not enslaving wills, needs to be aware of his prestige in order to resist the desire to do the work of a suggestion". Obviously, school and teachers are stimulators of the psychic functions of attention, will, inhibition, and the child's resistance to suggestibility.

Intelligence is the function of the organism, but being a complex phenomenon, it was submitted, at the time, to the metric of tests since the processes or delays in the (school) child depended on psychological, physical, physiological and pedagogical factors (^{PINELL, 1995}). For Vasconcelos, this appreciation could not resort to a single method since the body and the spirit combine in a harmonious synthesis. Therefore, the complete exploration (diagnosis) should determine the intellectual value of the individual (^{MARQUES, 1986}, p. 264). Therefore, it was up to the school to introduce examinations (psychological, pedagogical, anatomical and physiological of the child and adapt teaching/education to the student's intellectual and physical development (MARQUES, 1986, p. 565). In other words, it was fundamental to create around the child an environment corresponding to its developmental needs in order to guarantee its natural evolution and preserve it from disturbing or abnormal factors, which contradicted this physical, intellectual and moral regularity.

(c) Interest. This factor, already mentioned by Herbart, W. James, Dewey, Claparède, Luquet, Decroly, was determinant for the child's teaching. It constituted a fundamental principle in the new pedagogy in respecting his natural physical-psychic development (^{VASCONCELOS, 1909}, p. 105), knowing the nature of the child, his interests and the condition of adjustment of the curricular contents to it, by the teacher, taking into account his curiosity and interests, in order to have a good school performance and, on the other hand, success in the educational activity. Based on Claparède (1960), the Portuguese scholastic innovator refers, according to age, to the following interests in the child: the perceptive or sensory, the glossy, the intellectual, the objective and the specialised. Furthermore, the effects of interest, according to Vasconcelos (^{MARQUES, 1986}, p. 310) and following Claparède (1910), would be: the increase in the intensity and sharpness of the perception, through the adaptation of the senses and the attitude of the body; the reaction of the organism to the object which impresses it, is accompanied by a specific feeling, which sustains the perception (feeling of interest) of a sense of pleasure or pain; it increases the intensity of the perception through the dynamogenic action on the nervous centres since the adaptation appropriate to the interesting excitation prevails over the possible adaptations. Hence Vasconcelos (1925, p. 22-26) approached the interests of children and adolescents by resorting to the theses of Baldwin, Luquet, Claparède, among others, as he considered that the natural, acquired tendencies (habits) presented an intensity of impression in which the content and dynamism of the consciousness and the phenomena of the organism were central.

2.3 The psychic functions and the principles of continuity and solidarity

The principles of continuity and solidarity accompany the psychic functions since they "are solidary, interdependent" (^{VASCONCELOS, 1909}, p. 115). The ontological indistinctness of the physical-psychic phenomena stemmed from the unity of the 'psychic dynamism', which diversified into a multiplicity of functions. In other words, the function of the organism, in terms of the explanation of psychology, biology or natural science of the psychic functions, determined: the psychophysical continuity which differentiated physical and psychic phenomena in the degree of development, intensity and complexity, differentiated expressions of the evolutionary process as stated by Faria de ^{Vasconcelos (1909}, p.115):

There are no affective phenomena that are only affective or representative phenomena that are the only representative. Any psychic phenomenon is at the same time practical, representative and active; what distinguishes an affective phenomenon is the predominance of the affective element in the dosage of the combination in which the other elements enter.

The anthropological assumptions of psychophysical continuity and solidarity were realised in the pedagogical intention that teaching one psychic function acted upon others since the "activity of the senses constitutes the basis of psychic activity" (^{VASCONCELOS, 1909}, p. 119), as well as the relevance of sensorial education in that development. Therefore, in school terms, manual work acquired a value of training for citizenship in the curriculum, not being the means, but as a pedagogical purpose to contribute to this desired psychic and moral development of the child/youth. The 'integral culture' itself underlies these assumptions of the continuity and solidarity of the psychic functions and the organic activity, implying a questioning, at that time, in the light of biology, physiology and experimental psychology that these acquisitions constituted a unit, since as we know the brain thinks. The whole body acts and feels (VASCONCELOS, 1925).

The Portuguese scholastic innovator highlights physical and sensory education in academic education, following the Piagetian genetic psychology, because for him, "the senses are the first instruments of knowledge" (^{VASCONCELOS, 1909}, p. 137), which determines the pedagogical imperative of culture and sensory education, the need for medical and physical examinations, which were critical aspects for the teacher/educator. Likewise, the teacher should know the type of memory and its complexity in acquiring knowledge and adapting teaching to the child's nature because all of them have repercussions on the child's global development. We know from Herbart's formal steps theory that the association of ideas is crucial in teaching. Faria de Vasconcelos criticises the theories of James and Stuart Mill, Bain, Bell and Spencer, based on the principle of psychological attraction, since it is not only the representative phenomena that are associated, but also the effective ones, and because the perceptive facts do not corroborate the originality of the sensations since these are the product of analysis. Hence it is of prime importance that teachers organise teaching and education through a system of associations in conformity with the psychic reality of child life.

Using several theories on attention in children/infants (Kulpe, Binet, Lange, Muller, Wundt, Ribot, James, Baldwin, Marrillier, Rignano, Rageot, for example), the Portuguese scholastic considered it as the "primordial factor of psychic operations" (^{VASCONCELOS, 1909}, p. 209), because it considers the interdependence of physical, intellectual and moral development. In fact, "the attention is first of all the direction of thought" because the "attention is the waiting" (expectant attention) which has as conditions the interests and tendencies of the individual (VASCONCELOS, 1925. p. 14). The factors of attention (interest, play, activities) alert to the nature of the child and the attraction that the knowledge taught, the methods and the means exert on the child (VASCOCNELOS, 1925, p. 11-13). Scholascanovists organise activities according to the interests and the nature of the child and, therefore, the attention, as a specific function obeys the same principles of unity and solidarity of all psychic functions, which implies the relational connection between the physical, sensory and intellectual development with the attention (^{MARQUES, 1986}, p. 499). Stimulating curiosity and interest in the child, appropriate to the nature of the child and the type of knowledge taught, using sensory and perceptual activities, constitutes the principle and method of attention education. ^{Vasconcelos (1909}, p. 241) distinguishes the pedagogy of effort from the pedagogy of interest, because for him:

It is not the effort that educates the effort. Education through effort tires, fatigues, and bores the child, and it is this system that is habitually used. It is not by fatiguing the child that his attention is fixed and maintained by imposing on him exercises unsuitable for his age.

On the other hand, the alternative to effort in the child would be the interest and motivation (direct or indirect), which constitute the mode of fixation and duration of attention. Thus, based on the child's autonomy and the unity and solidarity of the psychic functions, Vasconcelos conceives intelligence's psychic function (^{MARQUES, 1986}, p. 322). It was imposed on the school a pedagogical imperative to examine the students (anatomical, physiological, psychological examinations) and adapt the curriculum to their level of psychophysical development; that is, in the Piagetian sense, the psychogenetic knowledge would be the necessary condition of this curricular organisation. All teaching would follow the expected evolution of physical-psychic life.

Regarding the education of affectivity, which today would be the affective-emotional dimension of the human being, in relation to the other psychic functions (memory, attention, intelligence), the attitude of the educator/teacher would be to favour the child's development. Starting from the classification of psychic phenomena (intellectual, affective, active) reveals the role of affectivity that in his perspective is "indispensable to carry out under the best conditions the intellectual education. The idea and the will draw their strength from emotion and feeling. The prodigies of the intelligence and the miracles of the will it is the sensibility that arouses and creates them" (^{VASCONCELOS, 1909}, p. 332). We recall that ^{Vygotsky (1979}, p. 188) associated affectivity to thought, since "to understand the speech of another, it is not enough to understand his words - we must understand his thought. Nevertheless, even that is not enough -it is also necessary that we know his motivation".

Now, knowing the nature of the child/infant, overcoming adult pre-judgement and creating a favourable environment for its development were determining imperatives proposed by the New School. From the union of this amalgam of conditions obeyed the option to favour persuasion, reward and positive reinforcement, coercion, intimidation, terror, punishment, knowing that the child's behavioural deficit did not stem from his evil will, but from precarious organic conditions, the family environment and insufficient intellectual and affective development (^{MARQUES, 1986}, p. 353). Thus, the pedagogical solution for ^{Vasconcelos (1909}, p. 331) would be to "encourage the child in his struggle of patience for the discovery of the world".

In this follow-up of knowing the child's development, the child's activity would emerge, according to the active education proposed in the strand of the New School movement. Faria de ^{Vasconcelos (1909}, p. 335) relates it to the referred principle of unity and solidarity of the psychic functions, considering that "the activity is a phenomenon inseparable from the other psychic phenomena", in a connection that in general "all the state of consciousness is at the same time effective, intellectual and active", residing the difference in the proportionality of the intervening elements. In the activity, the reflexes, instincts, and habits are overweight, but for him, the will was privileged (educate the will), which was connected with the character (^{MARQUES, 1986}, p. 634-637).

The Portuguese scholasticovist differentiated the natural (innate) primitive background of will, which came from the specific and individual inheritance and the behavioural structure acquired by exogenous influences (social, physical or moral) to which the child would be subjected. This complex psychic function, when conditioned by a range of elements (instincts, psychological automatism and habits), education could do little. In the differentiation of abnormalities in the development of the child, that pedagogist, under the influence of the ideas of French-speaking pedagogues at the time of his formative stay in Belgium and Switzerland (Decroly, Schuyten, Claparède), distinguishes the pathological state of fatigue ('surmenage'), in the disparate manifestations of its symptoms (eyesight, brain congestion, headaches, nosebleeds, vertigo, boredom, difficult digestions, weakness, nervousness and boredom), which was caused by the disinterested or demotivating work of the child at school (^{MARQUES, 1986}, p. 660-668). The physical aetiology of fatigue was due to malnutrition, lack of physical exercise, immobility, heredity and family upbringing, social conditions, and the excess of teaching subjects. It was up to the teacher, on the scientific basis of the New School (genetic psychology), to know what the child could do "conforming to the prescriptions of a careful and scientific physical, moral and intellectual hygiene" (^{VASCONCELOS, 1909}, p. 400) and adapting the teaching to the level of her development in order to progress healthily and integrally.

Therefore, the pedagogical genius of our pedagogist lay in his critical analysis of some ideas and theories in vogue at the time, for example, the biogenetic law which for A. ^{Ferrière (1955}) was an absolute whilst for Vasconcelos it was relative, as well as the relevance of the law of the autonomy of the child and the complementary laws of unity and solidarity of the psychic functions. The continuity versus discontinuity in the child's evolutionary process elucidates the continuity of many changes in the gradual development, despite some discontinuities, but tending to an improvement coming from the education and the teachers' action. This teaching action should be scientifically organised and related to the needs of learning, being essential that the teacher knew this relationship 'teaching development, based on appropriate activities for each stage of child development (^{MARQUES, 2012}).

2.4 The basic assumption of pedagogical/anthropological humanism

Vasconcelos' pedagogical-anthropological humanism is very clear in his ideology of participation, intervention and publication, for instance, in the Seara Nova Magazine, in which he does not exhaust his scientific, idealist and "regenerating" inclination, since this ideology had an illuminist, rationalist and critical inclination. He defends an integral humanism evident in his pedagogical thought since the "integral culture" arising from the Vasconcelosian system is related to the (curricular) training of the regular teachers and the apology to the pedagogical and anthropological virtues essential to the exercise of the teaching profession as of accomplishment of a life ideal and practice of civic-social virtues. His action and praxis's epistemological and pedagogical matrix constitutes an influx of pedagogical naturalism (influx of Rousseau and Pestalozzi) (^{MARTINS, 2019b}). For him, the child is conceived as a fragment of Nature and regulated by the law of growth or physical, intellectual, social, moral, sexual, aesthetic development, that is, by an integral development of all these dimensions present in the act of educating (^{SANTOS, 1919}). This open naturalism coincided with some keynotes of the official republican pedagogical discourse, which defended the idea of the child being reintegrated into nature (^{FIGUEIRA, 2004}).

Vasconcelos clearly shows the primacy he gives to the physical element in the growth and development of the human being, both in his work and in his experience at the New School of Bierges (^{VASCONCELOS, 1915}, 2015). This is also true of his activity at IOP and in the educational worldview of João Camoesas' Reform Proposal in 1923, that is, in-depth he gives to the psychology/biology of intuition or in themes related to school problems (VASCONCELOS, 1921a). In the Preface of the work 'Lessons in General Psychology,' he states that the theoretical construction of what these lessons express "is previously based on the realisation of the experiments and observations that it is possible to make for a better understanding of the phenomena" (VASCONCELOS, 1925, p.7). Concerning psychic functions (attention, habitus, memory, association, consciousness and the unconscious ), there are several explanatory theories and their relations with consciousness (Janet, Jastrow, Freud, de Bazaillas, Binet). In this sense, of the conception of the unconscious, as in the case of the consciousness, the Portuguese scholasticovist denies the substantive character of existing reality 'per se', considering this construct as a qualifier of specific psychic processes, just as consciousness is a quality of another modality of phenomena (^{MARQUES, 1986}).

In effect, Vasconcelos defends the existence of the same psychic activity, which manifests itself in the circumstances of life, under the form of conscious or unconscious activity, both having the same resources, memories, recollections, images, ideas, experiences and functions (^{VASCONCELOS, 1925}, p. 408). Starting from the principles of the unity and solidarity of the psychic functions or phenomena, he considers that the unconscious or subconscious are not reduced to simple cognitive, affective, motor processes, since it was better to consider them as a 'capital' of affective, motor and intellectual forces/energies. In other words, these two psychic instances (unconscious, subconscious) could explain the invention, creative imagination, intuition or spontaneous discoveries in an active way, since both are conceived, not purely affective, but as a 'current of ideation', flow for the formation of ideas, the dynamism of possibilities and intellectual virtualities.

We recall that, at the time of Faria de Vasconcelos, the 'heredity environment dichotomy, which provoked many discussions and publications up to the present day, gave rise to several theories on child development, such as the psychoanalytic theory of S. Freud's psychoanalytic theory; Anna Freud's theory of recapitulation; E. Erikson's psychosocial theory; J. Piaget's genetic epistemology; L. S. Vygotski's cultural-historical psychology; H. Wallon's genetic psychology. All these theories have implied a conceptual framework that refers us to growth, change, continuity, stages/phases, interactions, knowledge, action, among many other terms, to understand this human development and hence the different conceptions about the detachable factors in this process. Take, for example, innatism (events occurring after birth are not relevant); empiricism or environmentalism (the strength of the environment as an intervening factor); interactionism (there are multiple constituent factors), understanding the individual as an active and interactive being in the world under various influences in its trajectory. The other controversy in child/infant development, which equally deserved scientific discussion was the conceptualisation of 'abnormal' and 'abnormal' or pathological (^{MARTINS, 2017}), which in the case of 'abnormality', with the influence of medical discourses served as an instrument of social control to behaviours (thoughts, feelings) of situations of certain childhood/adolescence, coming from specific layers of society.

Therefore, the pedagogical/anthropological representation is much wider of openness than the enunciation of the principles we have dealt with above, and it is not exhausted in the phenomenal manifestations of psychophysical dynamism. We know that the purposes of education and the human being, the values (axiological dimension) and the ideals defined and characterised by Vasconcelos, under the psycho-pedagogical influx, were manifested in his action and intervention in his life in Latin American lands (in defence of the indigenous population in Bolivia in favour of solidarity multiculturalism) and then in Portugal, from 1920 onwards (^{MARTINS, 2019b}).