Introduction

In this article, we revisit sources collected during the Scientific Initiation Program’s development research, between 2016 and 2020, inserted in a larger project entitled "Educational Policies, Teacher Training, and School Education", in the research area of "History and Policies of Education", from the Graduate Program in Education at PUCPR, in which we researched educational policies and the way teacher training occurred in Parana, during the period from 1946 to 1971. The project was approved by CNPq, Universal Call, under No. 25/2015. The collection of teachers' statements was authorized, No. 2.993.123/2018, by the Research Ethics Committee (PUCPR and Plataforma Brasil).

Resuming the data from these investigations, in this work, means considering the historical value of documentary and testimonial sources, because they contribute with quantitative and qualitative subsidies that reveal historical information about the researched schools, feed the history and memory of these institutions, and assist in the understanding of the History of Education in Parana. It also represents the difficulties of the research path because the results found do not always meet the initially proposed goal but contribute significantly to the field of knowledge and feed new questions for the investigation.

To value the sources collected from the school archive of one of these institutions, and to preserve its history and memory, we established the general objective: to analyze the social role that Dom Orione State School played in the State of Parana, during the period from 1967 to 1971. The specific objectives were: (i) to assess the history and memory of Dom Orione State School from 1967 to 1971; (ii) to identify the educational policies for primary or elementray education and teacher training at the national and state levels; and (iii) to relate the educational policies (national and state) to the social role of Dom Orione State School.

Dom Orione State School (1967), considering the date on which it was founded, presents a historical contribution to the educational process of Parana and to the educational training of the residents of the Santa Quiteria neighborhood. The importance of mapping its institutional background and its social role occurs when we take into account that during the administration of Beto Richa (PSDB/PR), between 2011 and 2018 in the government of the State of Parana, in 2015 it was announced that this institution would compose a set of other schools for the program of cessation of vacancies; in other terms, this would mean the gradual closure of classes and consequently the closure of the activities of the educational establishment.

The methodology used to develop the study was the historical-documentary one, subsidized by the collection of official and school documents, researched in the legislation collection of the Civil House of the State of Parana and in the library of the Dom Orione State School. We consider that each type of document offers different contributions to understand the same theme, with relevant information for the research according to its source of origin. In this sense, it is worth stating that:

It would be a great illusion to imagine that for every historical problem, there is a unique type of document, specific to such a task. On the contrary, the more research strives to reach the profound facts, the less it is allowed to expect light, except the converging rays of testimonies very different in their nature. (^{BLOCH, 2001}, p. 80).

The article is structured in two parts: first, we contextualize the dimension of educational policies and, second, we present the history of the Dom Orione State School.

Educational policies, teacher training and Primary Education (1946 to 1961)

The primary teachers' training was guided by the Organic Law of Normal Education No. 8.530, of January 2, 1946. According to the legislation, the training of teachers was done through Normal Education, organized in two cycles: (i) Regional Normal Course and (ii) Normal Course. Three types of educational establishments were defined to promote this training, the (1) Regional Normal Course, the (2) Normal School and the (3) Institute of Education. The first cycle of Normal Education was referred to as the Regional Normal Course, lasting four years, which prepared teachers to be regents of primary or elementary education, a program that was articulated to the Primary Course. This training could only be provided by establishments that offered the Regional Normal Course, for teachers who would work in rural regions.

The second cycle was the Normal Course itself. The course lasted three years and prepared elementary school teachers, and offered the qualification for elementary school administrators, a program which was articulated to Gymnasium Course. The establishments which could offer this course were the Normal School and the Institute of Education. Besides this second cycle of Normal Education, the Normal School also offered the second cycle of Gymnasium Course. The Institute of Education, besides offering the same courses as the Normal School, also offered specialization in teaching and qualification for primary school administrators. The Organic Law of Normal Education also granted the right to enroll in courses at the School of Philosophy, subject to the peculiarities of the enrollment of each course, to students who had graduated from the second cycle of Normal Education.

Primary education, meanwhile, was organized by the Organic Law for Primary Education No. 8.529, of January 2, 1946. The legislation established two categories of education: a) basic elementary education - for children between the ages of seven and twelve; b) additional elementary education - for those who had not attended school in due course, that is, adolescents and adults.

As observed, these legislations tried to articulate the themes that involve the levels of education given in the national territory, trying to integrate the national education in a common sense, which only happened with the publication of the Law of Directives and Bases of National Education no. 4.024, on December 20th, 1961, after a long period of debates. The LDB (1961) confirmed many of the guidelines present in the Organic Laws, although it presents in its wording different nomenclatures about the levels of education. Contextually, the events that occurred in the economic and political dimensions in the 1960s in Brazil were characterized by national developmentalism, explained by ^{Saviani (2007}) as follows:

While the Superior Institute of Brazilian Studies (ISEB), on one hand, elaborated the ideology of nationalist developmentalism, and the ESG, on the other hand, formulated the doctrine of interdependence, the industrialization process followed its course, driven by the Kubitschek Government [...] while stimulating the nationalist political ideology, it gave sequence to the country's industrialization project, through a progressive de-nationalization of the economy. [In fact, in 1960, the model had completed its two stages: the first corresponded to the substitution of non-durable consumer goods, such as textiles and food industries, which, as they did not require large amounts of capital, could be installed more quickly; and the second, referring to the substitution of durable consumer goods (automobile, electronic and household appliances industries), whose large sums of capital required the assistance of international companies (^{SAVIANI, 2007}, p. 359-360).

Still, according to Saviani, this movement brought together different sectors of society around a common banner for the production model, industrialization. Although there was a political rupture in 1964, the Civil-Military Dictatorship (1964-1985), the developmental socioeconomic base prevailed, reflected in educational reforms of a technicist nature. Regarding the LDB, although the guidelines and bases to be followed were not revoked, the organizational bases were changed "[...] in order to adjust education to the demands of the economic model of dependent associated market capitalism, articulated with the doctrine of interdependence" (^{SAVIANI, 2007}, p. 362).

The developmentalist tendency, as it occurred at a national level, was also present in the state of Paraná, as pointed out in the work of ^{Gonçalves and Gonçalves (2008}), entitled "Developmentalism and Education in Parana (1960s and 1970s)", which used as a source the speeches of the governors sent to the Legislative Assembly of Paraná (ALEP). This work reveals how the efforts of the governors of Parana, in the 1960s and 1970s, were in the direction of techniques to develop the State Apparatus, once established the need to project nationally, especially in the economic sense, a state recognized as an agriculture producer, at a time when the coffee culture was facing an accelerated decline (PADIS, 1981).

Associated to these factors, it was necessary to expand the offer of public and free education, a condition established by the State Educational System - law no. 4.978 of December 5th, 1964, which was in line with LDB no. 4.024/61. Compliance with the law, however, was a strategy to leverage the living standards of Parana society, as well expressed in the Government's speech at the time:

The primary objective of the Government program for the period 1966/70, is based on the conception of development as a continuous process of raising the standards of living of the entire population, resulting from the increase in the labor productivity of this population, obtained by the successive introduction of new production techniques. But this conception is not enough in itself. It is necessary that the development process integrates all layers of the population, all industries, all regions of the state, and all manifestations of human existence. This is what we call the integrated development that informed our candidate platform and has become our philosophy of government (PIMENTEL, Paulo, In Parana, 1966, p. XVII apud. ^{GONÇALVES & GONÇALVES, 2008}, p. 13).

Governor Paulo Pimentel's speech (1966-1971), when he took office in the State Government, was embodied in efforts to modernize the public machine in order to carry out the implementation of educational reforms that should, on a broader level, form citizens endowed with better production techniques to enter the job market and promote the State of Parana, under this productive logic, to the levels of expected industrialization. Each year in relation to this discourse, the government sent reports to ALEP, whose main theme was education.

The demand for schools, in this context, was also justified by the significant increase in the population index. According to data from the Parana Institute of Economic and Social Development (IPARDES), this was the period in which Parana society presented the highest annual rates of vegetative population, which consists of a comparison between births and deaths, as shown in the following graph:

Source: IPARDES².

Chart 1 increase of population in Parana: 1940 to 2007 

The visual reading of the graph above allows us to conclude that, between 1940 and 1970, the largest number of children were born in Parana until the first decade of the 2000s. The objectives proposed in the State Government plan, expressed in the speech addressed to the ALEP, during the time when the laws were enacted, i.e., the 1960's, were aimed at the forming of a significant contingent of children in the population of Parana.

Adding to this data, we see that the age pyramid for the 1970s, shown below in graph 2, has a wide base, with a high birth rate, indicating that the population was predominantly young. However, the top of the pyramid is significantly narrower, indicating that the life expectancy of the aging population was not high. When considering the contrast between the younger population and the adult population, we conclude that families were likely to be large. The overall set of this data, in the context of this research, represents the labor force of Parana.

Source: IPARDES³

Graph 2 Population’s age pyramid - Paraná (1970)  

We have approached the relationship between these data and the determinations of the educational legislations of the period, articulating them to the sociopolitical and economic context of Brazil and Paraná, to approach the wider dimensions in which the Dom Orione State School was situated. Next, we present the sources collected from the institution's archives and the teachers' testimonies.

Dom Orione State School - Elementary Education

Dom Orione State School (1967) was founded by the Orionite Fathers, who were religious members of the Congregation of the Sons of Divine Providence. At that time, the initiative to create this school emerged from the Archbishop of Curitiba's concern on establishing a school in the poorest region of the city. At that time, the neighborhood of Santa Quiteria was indicated to him. The Normative Acts that gave origin to the institution were the Decree No. 4.086 of February 15, 1967, and the Decree of Denomination No. 8.274 of December 29, 1967. We present the information about the place where the school was inserted, to better understand the social function attributed to it.

When the Orionite priests offered to do some work in the city, they made a point of asking the archbishop for the poorest neighborhood in the city. There is no poorer neighborhood in Curitiba than Santa Quiteria, so that is where I need you! And behold, the mission was accepted (ORIONITA, in Curitiba: always together with the people. s/a. s/p).

Santa Quiteria, now a residential and commercial district of Curitiba, relatively close to the city's central region, was initially "[...] an extensive cultivation of corn, beans, rice and other cereals and its residents from the most varied origins: Germans, Poles, Italians" (IPPUC, 2015, p. 3). This region presented a great economic development disparity in relation to the neighboring regions of Campo Comprido, Vila Izabel, and Portao. According to the historical records of the Institute for Research and Urban Planning of Curitiba (IPPUC), the region was also known by its residents as "Carmela Dutra", in honor of the wife of former President of the Republic, Eurico Gaspar Dutra (1946-1951). However, the name Santa Quitéria prevailed in the name of the region; this name refers to the image of the saint donated to the neighborhood chapel (later, Santa Quitéria Parish, where Dom Orione School is located) by Ms. Maria Bitana - one of the residents.

The neighborhood started to develop due to the population increase, a fact that began to occur, among other reasons, through the Popular Housing Bank program, later replaced by the National Housing Bank (BNH) in 1965, which encouraged the construction of hundreds of houses that were largely purchased by civil servants. Additionally, "[...] another factor of the progress of the neighborhood was the union and the sense of community life of its population" (IPPUC, 2015, p. 3) through which institutions and regional associations were built, such as the founding of the Beneficent and Recreational Society of Santa Quiteria, in 1949. The Parish of the neighborhood focused on social services for the population, as it congregated the religious life and helped in the community life of its people. Besides this, next to the Parish, the Dom Orione School was built, where it remains today. Later, in 1971, the first warehouse of the Pequeno Cotolengo of Parana was installed, also connected to the Parish of Santa Quiteria.

The educational mission set forth by the Orionine Fathers showed the understanding they had of the projection of the productive model and the economic movement that occurred in that period in Parana, which sought to become industrialized. This mission led the Congregation of the Sons of Divine Providence to create a school with the purpose of preparing the students for the workforce, by raising the level of education of the children of the workers in the region. The education was anchored on the moral principles of the founder of the Orionine Congregation, Dom Luigi Orione.

Besides these factors, this was also the reflection of a movement that had been going on since the discussions about the elaboration of the LDB of 1961, when the political-ideological and pedagogical clashes of various sectors of society were heated up, in the context of the predominance of the New School Pedagogy. This process implied to the Church the need to keep its schools attractive, so it was necessary to update the teaching methods and techniques offered by its schools considering the new pedagogy.

One can see that, as the new pedagogy was expanding its influence, its relationship with Catholic pedagogy was also being modified. In fact, the vision of Catholics did not consist in a pure and exclusive confrontation, entirely irreducible, with new pedagogy. Even the harshest critics of the New School did not fail to recognize points of convergence. [...] In the same way, he recognized the value of the new methods, affirming the convenience that Catholic educators should carefully study all the new methods introduced by the new pedagogy, as well as the contributions of experimental psychology in the perspective, of course, of what he considered the 'truly Catholic philosophy of life' (^{SAVIANI, 2007}, p. 299).

If during the elaboration of the LDB of 1961, the apogee and the crisis of the new pedagogy were conceived (^{SAVIANI, 2007}), when the Don Orione School was founded, the decline of this pedagogy was a fact, "Therefore, in the 1960s, we saw in Brazil the apogee and the decline of the new pedagogy" (SAVIANI, 2007, p. 340). This conjuncture opened space for the technicist pedagogy, which, beyond the educational plan, was articulated to the economic, political, and social model, implying the educational process articulation to the demands of the labor market production techniques.

Source: Dom Orione State School's school archives.

Image 1 Dom Orione School Sports Court - Centralized in the background of the image is the Santa Quiteria Parish and to the right of the image, attached to the Parish, is the Dom Orione School. 

As it was a private religious initiative and due to the physical proximity to the Church, the operation of the institution was initially set up as a Catholic Seminary. However, the financial difficulties encountered by the Orionites in the first year of its operation (1967) limited the course of the institution, which started to be managed by the Government of the State of Parana, at the end of 1967, becoming a public school; the school building, however, remained the property of the priests. To this day, the State of Parana is the maintainer of the school building, in a leasing regime, whose property belongs to the Congregation.

When the transition from Catholic Seminary to public educational institution occurred, the school started to function as Dom Orione State School, that is, an institution that "[...] would have the purpose of professional training grounded in the principles of the Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education (1961): an industrial education with work-oriented education" (Political and Pedagogical Project, 2012, p. 6). The LDB (1961) established the functioning of the industrial education as follows:

Art. 47 Secondary technical education comprises the following courses:

(a) industrial; (b) agricultural; (c) commercial.

Art. 49 Industrial, agricultural, and commercial courses will be taught in two cycles: gymnasium course, lasting four years, and the high school, for at least three years.

§4º In technical and industrial schools, there may be a one-year pre-technical course between the first and second cycles, where the five secondary school subjects will be taught.

§5º Industrial teaching establishments may, in addition to the courses referred to in the previous article, maintain basic or technical apprenticeship courses, as well as craftsmanship and mastery course.

Art. 51 §1º Industrial and commercial apprenticeship courses will have one to three yearly series of studies.

Art. 106 The industrial and commercial apprenticeship courses, administered by industrial and commercial entities, under the terms of the legislation in effect, will be submitted to the state education councils, and those of the territories to the Federal Education Council. Sole Paragraph. Annually, the entities responsible for teaching industrial and commercial learning will present to the competent State Council, and to the Federal Council of Education in the case of the territories, the report of their activities, accompanied by their report of accounts (LDB No. 4.024, 1961, art. 47; 49; 51; 106).

The teaching program of Dom Orione State School, elaborated during the validity and under the determinations established by LDB No. 4.024 (1961), needed, later on, to meet the orientations of LDB No. 5.692 (1971) and the consequent adjustments of the educational policies of Parana. Thus, the school opened a third shift to attend the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th grades of elementary school, when it started receiving students from nearby schools in the Santa Quiteria neighborhood. In addition, the school reorganization established by Resolution No. 3.061/75 (PARANÁ), caused the Presidente Kennedy, Marechal Cândido Rondon, and Dom Orione schools to become the Dom Orione School Complex, on December 21, 1975.

With the arrival of the military regime, the positivist motto 'Order and Progress' inscribed in the Brazilian flag metamorphosed into 'security and development'. Guided by this motto, the major objective pursued by the so-called revolutionary government was economic development with security. In view of this objective, the low productivity of the educational system, identified in the low attendance rate of the school-age population and the high dropout and failure rates, was considered an obstacle that needed to be removed. [Then, ideas related to the rational organization of work (Taylorism, Fordism), the systemic approach and the control of behavior (behaviorism) spread. In the educational field, these ideas configured a pedagogical orientation that we can synthesize in the expression 'technical education' (^{SAVIANI, 2007}, p. 369).

We consulted the school records preserved in the school archive, referring to the 1960s and 1970s, which provided information about the institution's trajectory, since "[...] the knowledge of all human facts in the past, of most of them in the present, must be, [according to the happy expression of François Simiand,] some knowledge through traces (^{BLOCH, 2001}, p. 73). In them, we found iconographic sources that indicate the permanence of religious items present in the school's daily life, even after the passage from a Catholic Seminary to a public educational institution. These items refer to: (1) image of Jesus Christ on the classroom wall and the (2) presence of the sacred Bible in a space dedicated to the school's founder, Dom Luís Orione - although this photographic record makes mention of a commemorative date. We emphasize, however, that the school building is in the Parish of Santa Quiteria.

Source: Dom Orione State School's school archives

Image 2 Classroom with Religious Items 

Image (2) refers to religious items in the classroom, with the image of Jesus Christ on the left wall, as well as a crucifix above the blackboard (although the visualization of this element is not entirely clear). These records were found in the school library's file folder that gathers documents estimated between the years 1970 and 1975. Image (3) is between 1975 and 1985.

Source: Dom Orione State School's school archives

Image 3 Area dedicated to the honor of Dom Orione 

We found three teachers who worked and experienced the educational policies at Dom Orione State School from 1967 to 1971. We conducted semi-structured interviews with these participants. Their statements indicated that the school had nun teachers in its teaching staff. Due to the relationship of these teachers with the Church and religious customs, the interviewees informed that the nun teachers would make pilgrimages so that their students would perform well at school during specific times, so it was common to see them climbing the school stairs on their knees during exam periods.

The accounts also revealed a sort of school program, established by the administration - unofficially - in which the teachers sponsored the less economically privileged students, helping them with their study materials. The idea was that the teachers would sponsor three students, following them during the school year and giving them assistance in their studies.

Considering the social role and the importance of the work offered by the school for the population of the Santa Quiteria region, the religious values and the social commitment which defined the institutional mission since its creation remained present through symbols, and attitudes and were objects of the school management. The school adopted some strategies to consolidate the educational and formative commitment of the Dom Orione School, to facilitate the absorption of the teachers who would take the competitive exam and were already teaching in the institution, to enable these teachers to assimilate the school culture and identity and give sustainability to the sponsorship program, creating relationships with the school community. According to the statement of participant A:

The school principal [...] welcomed us very well and later, when the competitive exams came out, she gave twenty classes to each teacher, to create a bond, because no one would go there for five classes, ten classes. So, she [the principal] gave as much as she could. When the competitive exams came out, I graduated in '69, I think the exam was between '70 and '71, and she had many teachers who would take the exam. So, she sat down and made us a deal: if we put the standard there, which was 10 classes; if we put the standard there, she would give us the extra classes which we could take up to a total of 30 (participant A).

The teacher's account expresses the sensitivity of the principal in creating an attractive context for teachers, showing that the geographical conditions of the school made it difficult to access, especially on rainy days when "[...] it was just a swamp" (participant A). The proximity between the teaching staff and the school community was evident in the iconographic records found in the school archives and in the documents collected. These sources record moments of get-togethers, outings, and events that brought professionals together, inside and outside the school context, suggesting a harmonious and united environment in the face of common goals, as in image 4.

Source: Dom Orione State School's school archives

Image 4 Lunch for the 20th anniversary of the school's foundation 

The teachers' statements showed admiration for the management composed of the triad State, Family, and Church, although they did not specify how this relationship occurred According to the sources, this was one of the reasons why the institution functioned well and the students' school performances were good, because this organizational model allowed the school to assist the students in a differentiated way. The interviewed teachers pointed to one of the pedagogical resources used by Dom Orione School: school trips. These were taken with the students to the industries close to the school and, with some emphasis, to the Electrical Power Company of Parana (COPEL). Regarding the importance of school trips for the educational process, we consider:

First, the school trip was a school activity, a means, an opportunity, and one more alternative to promote child development and transmit knowledge, norms, and values to children. Thus, it justified the requirement of observation protocols, the disciplining of the look, and the interest of children - what to see, what to investigate, and what to discover (^{SOUZA, 2009}, p. 238).

The school trip, in this perspective, became an important complementary tool to the teaching received in the institution, contributing to the development of knowledge in the students' education. The objective of providing educational and formative attendance to the children of workers from the Santa Quiteria region, as the Orionine Fathers had initially projected, finds correspondences in the collected sources and in the testimony of the teachers, because a great part of the students who concluded their studies in the school, were directed to formal jobs or continued their studies in the Federal Center of Technological Education (CEFET) so that they would be prepared to work with production techniques, which had expressive importance from the 1970s on. This is the understanding that resulted from the study we undertook in this school, from the historical perspective We argue, however, that "The past is, by definition, a certainty that nothing else will change. But knowledge of the past is a thing in progress, which ceaselessly transforms and perfects itself" (^{BLOCH, 2001}, p. 75)

Final Considerations

Analyzing the social role of an institution through the statements of the teachers who experienced the context, and consulting school and official documents, was an exercise to better understand what the sources must reveal. The institution, first founded by a private and religious initiative, soon fell under the administration of the State of Parana. However, the Church remained present in the school by means of symbols, statements from some teachers, in the management philosophy, and in educational and formative assistance to students.

The work proposed by the Orionine Fathers was developed in the context of the national-developmentalism which marked the 1960s and 1970s, nationally, and was assimilated by the context of Parana. In the historical process, this political and economic movement, when implemented in the Brazilian reality, demanded from the educational field a formation destined for the acquisition of production techniques linked to the labor market whose main expression, in educational policy, was the publication of LDB n. 5.692/71.

From the social point of view, the school played a fundamental role in forming generations of sons and daughters of workers in the Santa Quiteria neighborhood and we can say that it also helped this region to develop through its services to the population, in the communitarian sense. In summary, if the sources indicate that the students when they finished their study cycle at school, were directed to formal jobs or else continued to the next level of education, we conclude that the education received at Dom Orione State School enabled the students to have better standards of material life. Through the activities developed, the school fulfilled its social function.