Presentation

This dossier is anchored in results organized by the research project Ensino Secundário no Brasil em Perspectiva Histórica e Comparada (1942-1961) [Secondary Education in Brazil in a Historical and Comparative Perspective (1942-1961)], whose results were gained through focusing on the implantation, expansion, and organization processes of Secondary Education in public and private institutions, distributed by Brazilian states, in the period from 1931 (Francisco Campos Reform) to 1971 (Law 5692 of 1971). It is also based on projections guided by the research project Por Uma Outra Historiografia do Ensino Secundário (1931 to 1961) [For Another Historiography of Secondary Education (1931 to 1961)], using comparative studies as a tool for construction. Both projects are guided by the perspective of other writings regarding the perceptions of displacements, transformations, and construction of models and typologies, as well as the identification of continuities and discontinuities and similarities and differences in the history of different “regionalized or state-based” secondary education realities.

Between this anchoring and the projections, we are directed by (re)conciliation of a localized (regionalized or state-based) secondary education with an already consolidated historiography of this education, and by comparison in an effort of problematizing the visible and the explicit, both as a part of the reality recognized regarding reciprocal examination of two periods of time and spaces of production and consumption of analyses.

Exercising this comparison is grasping its return, in part based on the “idea of practice”, grounded on identification not only of differences and similarities but entering through reciprocal examination of two or more periods of time and space of production and consumption of educational realities in an intranational sphere in the perspective of writing the history of education. In addition, it is based on the “idea of socio-historical knowledge” that runs through the reconstruction and revisitation of rationales as a result of the need to understand the history of education and, thus, that the comparison results in knowledge different from that produced by other sciences.

Thus, we find the purposes for regionalized comparison of Brazilian secondary education, even though they are dependent on spaces and times, carriers of historical and historiographic analyses considered classical¹, but they do not impede the observation that “regionalization” contains only the social, political, and national/federal effects desired.

In this context, we suggest the comparison intended by the Brazilian regional spaces (North, South, Southeast, and Central-West) in the period from 1942 to 1961. To do so, we draw near the Diálogos sobre o Ensino Secundário: história comparada dos estados da Bahia, Maranhão, Pará, Piauí, Rio Grande do Norte e Sergipe (1942-1961) [Dialogues on Secondary Education: comparative history of the states of Bahia, Maranhão, Pará, Rio Grande do Norte, and Sergipe (1942-1961)], written by Antônio Pádua de Carvalho Lopes (UFPI), João Paulo Gama Oliveira (UFS), and Maria do Perpétuo Socorro Gomes de Souza Avelino de França (UEPA), who communicate that the expansion in this level of education is marked by inequality of access to Junior High and High School studies, as well as by selectivity, in spite of the expansion of enrollments and school openings in the period under analysis.

Furthermore, within this aim of drawing nearer to regionalization, Daniel Ferraz Chiozzini (PUC/SP), Giseli Cristina do Vale Gatti (Uniube), and Patrícia Coelho da Costa (PUC/RJ) in O Ensino Secundário em perspectiva comparada em São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro e no Distrito Federal: estatísticas, legislação e historiografia (1942-1961) [Secondary Education in a comparative perspective in São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, and the Distrito Federal: statistics, legislation, and historiography (1942-1961)] use statistical yearbooks of the IBGE, Internet portals of theses and dissertations, scientific periodicals, and public collections, in dialogue with the reference bibliography to register the meaning of state legislation related to Secondary Education, with some autonomy in relation to national legislation, at least until 1930, given the central control imposed by the Estado Novo government. At the same time, historiography concentrates on the theme of History of School Institutions in these states and the Distrito Federal.

In addition to these analyses is the expansion of secondary education in Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul, analyzed by Kevin Lino de Oliveira (UFPR) and Sergio Roberto Chaves Junior (UFPR) in As marcas da expansão do Ensino Secundário: Paraná, Santa Catarina e Rio Grande do Sul (1942-1961) [The features of expansion of Secondary Education: Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul (1942-1961)]. These authors establish similarities (and contrasts) in the processes of expansion of secondary education in these states, especially in relation to population growth and growth outside the capital cities as vectors of the expansion of secondary education, the investments of public authorities in creating/expanding a network of establishments, and the actions of the private and/or religious denominational institutions.

In the same vein, A expansão do Ensino Secundário na região Centro-Oeste do Brasil: estados de Mato Grosso e Goiás (1942-1961) [The expansion of Secondary Education in the Central-West region of Brazil: states of Mato Grosso and Goiás (1942-1961)], by Silvia Helena Andrade de Brito (UFMS), Fernanda Barros (UFG), and Stella Sanches de Oliveira (UFMS), engages us in analyses anchored in documentary sources of historiography and history. These analyses refer to the relationship between social development of the region and the expansion of the network in the two states, as well as the typologies of the schools, enrollments, and regions served, providing information on similarities and differences in the expansion process in these states.

In addition, maintaining our ability to problematize the range of renewal in research and in educational historiography of Brazilian secondary education and, here in a regionalized sense, including the fact of expansion, its specificities, the paths of comparison, the transitions, the massifications, and up to the translations, we finally face paradoxes and challenges that secondary education confronts internationally in the post-war period, as shown in the works Novas realidades socioeconómicas emergentes do pós-guerra (1945-1968) e o Ensino Liceal [New socio-economic realities emerging from the post-war period (1945-1968) and High School Education] and Instruments of Power: the affective power of sound design in American music education. The first, by António Gomes Ferreira (FPCE-UC-PT) and Luís Mota (IPC-UC-PT), analyzes the geostrategic repositioning of Portugal in the post-war world and the transformations in social arrangements brought about by changes in educational policy. This educational policy was forged in a concern with the training of qualified human resources for economic growth, placing value on school capital and promoting educational planning, aiming at entry in Western economic dynamics. The second, by Noah Karelis (UW-Madison / USA) and Thomaz Popkewitz (UW-Madison / USA) is immersed in the reasoning system incorporated in the curriculum as generative principles regarding the desired type of people in a stable and secure future related to narratives of salvation - principles that are different in the Weimar Republic and in the USA. People and futures are objectified in a secondary education whose changeable design of people for the learning of sound are practices in control of body and soul. In this context, it traces the ways in which such ideas were connected to notions of creativity, put into operation through cognitive science in post-war USA.

In combination, the texts published here not only portrayed the increase in bibliographic production on the history of Secondary Education, but also entered into the characterization of a historical and historiographical universe. The texts represent the different positions of the authors according to an unequal distribution of material and symbolic resources, and they support a set of symbolic schemas that take the form of dispositions or potential manners that are socially acquired and tacitly activated to interpret, classify, and evaluate the implementation and expansion of this educational stage.

Finally, we understand that this Dossier indicates a comparative history of secondary education in a unique way upon recognizing that the historiographical tensions between the regional, state, and national levels need to recover the critique of the center-periphery binomial in favor of examining the fluidity of the borders that are established between the federal government, the states, the educational policies, and the teaching networks as expressions of resistance, permeability, malleability, and intersection.