The conditioning elements of school difficulties, according to Revista de Educação

The first issue of the new phase of Revista Educação - volume IV, August-September 1931, issues 1 and 2 - has eight texts, in the section meant for experts and educators, five of which refer to the relationship between family and school¹⁸. The five texts were gathered in category 1 and emphasize the importance of bringing the two institutions closer so that the school can properly do its job.

The text by Cesar Prieto Martinez, former principal of the Pirassununga Normal School [Escola Normal de Pirassununga], and former General Education Inspector of Paraná, entitled ‘Home and School’ [O lar e a escola], explains the school’s failure in achieving educational goals, assigning families ‘a good portion’ of this failure for their lack of involvement in the educational process of their own children.

It is common to hold the school accountable for the failure of education. [...], but the blame does not belong to it. It must be shared, with a large portion being assigned to the family, which exempts itself from the most serious commitments. [...] The concern of parents with their children’s education consisted only of finding a school. [...] the teacher did what they could. However, lacking the indispensable intervention of the home, the school’s initiative failed, as a consequence (^{Martinez, 1931}, p. 16-17).

Strictly, the author does not ‘share the blame’ since, in his understanding, the school, through the teacher, did what was in its power.

In the June 1934 volume, we found converging assessments in the text ‘Early Childhood Education. Could Primary School Respond Conveniently to its Multiple Intelligence When It Lacks Early Childhood Education?’ [Educação Infantil. Poderá a escola primária responder convenientemente à sua múltipla inteligência, quando lhe falte a educação infantil?], grouped in category 6. The author is Octavio da Costa Silveira, Head of Service of the Superintendence of Professional and Domestic Education [Superintendência de Educação Profissional e Doméstica], of the São Paulo Education Board. His main argument, to defend pre-primary education, is that this school stage can reduce the effects of educational errors that children bring from home when they enter primary school.

Has anyone ever asked: ‘Can elementary school respond conveniently to its multiple demands when it lacks early childhood education?’ Difficult answer. But everyone who can speak with knowledge of cause [...] knows that primary education, though quite widespread, does not solve its educational mission. Children are taken to school at the age of seven. What do they do before that age? And when they are taken to the primary classes, can the teacher, though an apostle, a philosopher, a psychologist, cancel out the traces of that first wrong education received in a corrupt or otherwise inappropriate environment? The school/teacher always tries, but will not reap the desired success, because the first impressions received by the children, outside the school environment, are creased in their brain mass, and these creased impressions do not vanish easily (^{Silveira, 1934}, p. 34-35, author’s emphasis).

This is yet another reinforcement of the perception that the teacher is powerless in the face of a reality pointed out as adverse.

In volume VIII, of December 1934, there is the text ‘School Discipline’ [Disciplina escolar] (category 3), by Paulo Novaes de Carvalho, principal of the Grupo Escolar de Brotas [Brotas School Group]. It discusses the factors associated with indiscipline and, to this end, takes into account three aspects: school discipline and its relationship with the material conditions of classrooms or work; school discipline and its relationship with the opportunities that the school offers for physical and social activities; school discipline and its relationship with children’s health.

With regard to the first aspect, the author points out the influence of poor material conditions of schools (inadequate, small classrooms, and lack of teaching material).

[...] we see in primary classes, in our own capital, tiny, improvised rooms, with no space for teachers and students to move freely, not to mention their poor ventilation and almost no light. [...] loose desks are powerful factors of indiscipline and, nailed to the floors, make it difficult to wash [...] solve the problem by joining the desks in groups of two, attached by means of slats nailed to the feet [...]. Regarding consumable material, [...] provision, in the classroom, of loose sheets for those students who, due to whatever reason, do not have notebooks [...], as the continuous occupation of students is an easy beginning for a good discipline (^{Carvalho, 1934}, p. 212-213).

As for the second aspect, he writes about the lack of preparation of teachers to carry out certain activities, such as physical ones, but he uses part of the text to describe the influence of families that spoil children.

[...] Most Brazilian children, very spoiled at home by their parents, need more respect for authority than the exercise of it. Those who are familiar with the customs of certain fathers and especially of mothers, not only in the capital but in the state, mainly, are aware of the weak or null cooperation they give to the educational work of teachers when it comes to the disciplinary regime. [...] And this number of ‘difficult’ students who only take and give nothing is not small (^{Carvalho, 1934}, p. 218-219, author’s emphasis).

On the third aspect, the author draws attention to the indiscipline of sick children.

A sick child is a negative element in school discipline and progress. Whether this disease is of a physical or nervous nature [...]. Among common diseases, we must mention the deficiency, also called avitaminosis, that causes rickets and generalized weakness, ancylostomiasis, which impairs visibility, tonsillitis, which destabilizes attention, etc., not forgetting the vast array of parasites in general. [...] Regarding diseases of a nervous nature, deviations from normality are countless, hence the concern with the organization of classes, which must be as homogeneous as possible, subjecting abnormal students to an adequate educational regime [...]. It is necessary not to confuse these abnormal students with abnormal hospital patients affected by profound anomalies [...]. Abnormal students can be unstable - those attacked by epilepsy, hysteria, or anything else that causes the torment of teachers, due to the instability of their attention, and who, due to their typically wandering, fickle actions, sometimes moody, quarrelsome and disobedient, are considered quite undisciplined.

Asthenic, abulic, people, on the contrary, is the despair of the educator because of the apathy in which they live, indifferent to everything and everyone in an involuntary, sick laziness, with all psychic faculties nullified by an invincible inactivity (^{Carvalho, 1934}, p. 220-221).

Thus, despite pointing out the poor material conditions of schools and, at times, the lack of preparation of teachers, the author highlights the ‘weak or null cooperation of the parents’ of ‘difficult’ students and the existence of ‘abnormal’ and ‘sick’ students among the undisciplined.

In the article ‘Failures - Their Origin and Causes’ [Reprovações - Sua origem e causas] (category 3), by Francisco Alves Brisolla, Principal of the 1^st School Group of Bauru [1º Grupo Escolar de Bauru], published in 1936, in volumes XIII and XIV, the first sentence of the text is: “[...] the neglect and lack of interest on the part of certain parents towards the fate of their children, while students, are, as a rule, important factors that seriously contribute to the existence of failures” (^{Brisolla, 1936}, p. 115). In these cases, the author points out,

[...] it would be useful if the teacher could lead the student to fulfill their duties by other means, after the persuasive ones are no longer. The intention is not to preach violence, but just to consider the use of energetic measures completely convenient to compel the student to change their route (^{Brisolla, 1936}, p. 115).

He also points out the absenteeism of teachers, who frequently graduate, and the impossibility of removing or dismissing professionals who reveal themselves incapable. The author dedicates 4 items of the article to these two reasons, but it is significant that the other ten items deal with aspects such as the importance of having greater rigor in the classification of students, in the initial enrollment, with the use of ABC tests; need to relocate students throughout the year with partial exams so that classes are ‘very homogeneous’; importance of teachers teaching the principles of good nutrition based on hygiene, essential for mental development; importance of teaching practical knowledge of childcare, useful for ‘running the house’; need for peri-school institutions and children’s libraries (^{Brisolla, 1936}).

The insistence on organizing homogeneous classes is present in several articles as a solution considered scientific to the problem of poor performance, a common belief at the time, enhanced by the increasing acceptance and use of pedagogical and psychological tests. From the perspective of the principal of the Faxina Normal School [Escola Normal de Faxina], Benedicto de Assis, expressed in his article ‘The Homogenization of Classes’ [A homogeneização das classes] (category 2), published in December 1934, heterogeneous classes hinder the work of teachers, who need to know the “[...] human material that is delivered to them, flowing from it the justice that the humble apostles of teaching have been lacking so much” (^{Assis, 1934}, p. 72).

The text ‘School Performance’ [O rendimento escolar] (category 3), by Teacher José Pousa de Toledo, principal of the Pau Queimado School Group [Grupo Escolar de Pau Queimado] (Piracicaba), published in Sept-Dec 1937 (p. 147-155), volumes XIX and XX, is one more to recall the need to ‘share with parents’ the results of education, specifically school attendance. This text was not published in the authors section, but in the ‘Through the Journals’ [Através das Revistas] section, which we exceptionally considered due to the emphases it contains.

The problem is known to be complex, and the elements that affect it, countless. We do not intend to solve it, but rather contribute with our opinion that [...] not only teachers should be assigned shares of responsibility for the results of little satisfactory teaching in several schools, as it is certain that one can find counterproductive elements in the school environment [...]. The practice of three lustra of exercise has shown us the absolute need to share with parents, at least them, the heaviest elements of the bulky burden that saddles teachers while carrying out their duties - school attendance. It cannot continue to depend only on the teacher (^{Toledo, 1937}, p. 148).

The articles gathered in category 6 address teaching methods referring to various school subjects, ways and contents to teach them, and their importance in school programs. They target teachers, aiming to provide them with a repertoire of strategies for a teaching considered more effective and, in general, follow the methodological news related to the New School movement. Analyzing them, as already stated, we find several of them warning about the fact that the good results of methodological innovations depend on children being healthy, physiologically fit, and, once again, relativizing the action of teachers.

For instance, Abel de Faria Sodré, principal of the São Carlos School Group [Grupo Escolar de São Carlos], writes the text ‘Quick Literacy’ [Alfabetização rápida], published in volume VIII, Jun-Jul 1932 (p. 33-39), in which he proposes a methodological alternative for literacy, considering that, “[...] as a general rule, a large number of students repeat first grade” (p. 33). The author treats his proposal as ‘our method’ and finds that he obtained “[...] a faster, more perfect and less effortful result” (p. 34). According to him, the method presented was effective, and only illness or abnormality, which would lead to a lack of attendance, would justify the permanence of illiterate children at the end of the semester. Thus, to validate the method, he associates poor performance with ill or abnormal children.

From what I have observed in nine years of teaching, the teaching of reading and writing in our school groups and isolated schools still seems very lengthy to me. As a general rule, a large number of students repeat first grade. This is what we need to avoid. Every year, 1^st grade classes should be left almost entirely vacant for new enrollments. Reading and writing can be taught in the first three months of the school year. In the remaining months, teachers will be able to dedicate themselves with the improvement and literacy of students enrolled late. At the end of the year, only lack of attendance due to illness or abnormalities can justify the fact that a child enrolled in the first semester is still illiterate (^{Sodré, 1932}, p. 33-34).

This emphasis on learning, as long as they are children without abnormalities, is also in the translated article by Ovide ^{Decroly, published in Jan-Mar 1932}, in vol. VI (p. 135-139), entitled ‘Initiation in Reading and Writing’. The author says:

Now, in these recent years, and in harmony with the predictions extracted from the theory of globalization in the acquisition of spoken language, essays on the ‘Ermitage’ school by Mlles. Hamaïde and Fontaine, by Mr. Segers in a public school in Sant-Gilles-Brussels - ‘have proof that, among normal children, it is perfectly possible to obtain reading without going through systematic exercises on decomposition into syllables and letters’; that there are even - at least for French - advantages for the ulterior spelling in preventing this decomposition, when children resort to it spontaneously, or their parents urge them to do so by untimely interventions (^{Decroly, 1932}, p. 136, author’s emphasis).

Assigning non-learning to a condition of abnormality is a commonplace in the journal. Norberto de Souza Pinto, teacher who studied the education of ‘abnormal children’, in the text ‘The Education of Abnormal and Mentally Retarded Children’ [A educação dos anormais e dos débeis mentais], published in Sep-Dec 1935, in volumes XI and XII (p. 30-31), included in category 4, emphasizes the ‘adoption of a rigorous scientific process’ to identify and classify ‘abnormal’ children and provide them a ‘special education’, as these children could not attend ‘ordinary educational establishments’ intended for the normal ones.

They did not escape naturally in school life; the need for classifying the intellectuality of students and the NOOLOGY that constitutes the department of concrete psychology, classify and even explain the main groups of mentality. Therefore, it is no longer an isolated problem in the contemporary life of teaching; modern education demands that we work for the formation of the human and normal type (^{Pinto, 1935}, p. 30).

Distinguishing the normal from the abnormal ones becomes a way to mitigate ‘school collapse’. Among the texts included in category 5, there is the report by Noemy Silveira, then head of the Service of Education-Applied Psychology, linked to the Improvement Course of the Caetano de Campos Education Institute [Instituto de Educação Caetano de Campos]. Published in Oct-Dec 1933 in volume IV (p. 84-116), this report, referring to the activities of the first half of that same year, assigns the school’s failure to educate, apparently, to the school itself. Silveira, with New School arguments that the school has to ‘adjust itself to the student and society’, explains that the “[...] collapse of education at school oftentimes resides in the inadequacy of educational establishments in meeting the needs of students, on the one hand, and of the social group, on the other” (^{Silveira, 1933}, p. 85).

Meeting the needs of students, however, would depend on knowing how the student ‘learns, acts and thinks’, identifying ‘their skills, tendencies, aspirations - reasons, habits and deficiencies’, and, to this end, pedagogical and psychological tests would be the means for diagnosis. The knowledge of students, in its turn, would reveal “[...] the exceptional ones, including those mentally subnormal, gifted, advanced, physically disabled, nervous, delinquent”. Thus, to be able to offer each one the best methods, the Psychology Service would investigate these ‘exceptional’ students and equip the school to face “[...] individual adjustment problems” (^{Silveira, 1933}, p. 85-86).

From this perspective, children with difficulties, the so-called ‘exceptional’, those who do not fit into ordinary school life, even in a text that intends to be critical towards the school, are treated as a problem to be investigated. As the head of the Service states in the report:

It indeed seems to become indispensable to have a psychology service wherever any improvement in teaching and in the adjustment of the student to the school is performed. The scientific study of children becomes a function of paramount importance (^{Silveira, 1933}, p. 84).

This recurrence of discourses that point out children’s physical, intellectual and emotional limits is an important element for the construction and maintenance of a pedagogical ethos that regulates educational behaviors and practices, minimizing the school’s responsibility for any of these children’s difficulties. Likewise, the discourses against the family in an official publication, distributed to all schools in São Paulo, contribute to this same end.

The concept of ethos, as already indicated in note 5 of this text, is explained by ^{Geertz (2013}), when he states that the term ethos is associated with moral (and aesthetic) aspects, the evaluative and normative elements of a given culture. Such a conception seems appropriate when one wants to understand the values ​​and norms that underlie certain knowledge and pedagogical practices. In this case, an ethos that locates the origin of learning difficulties, preferably in the child and in their family and social surroundings.

In the period discussed here, as it was possible to see from excerpts of the articles presented, the responsibility of the school or teachers for poor performance or school indiscipline, when found, was usually lessened by the action of the family and/or by the limitations of the children themselves. We will discuss this aspect in the next item.

The ethos that holds the school unaccountable for the difficulties of children

On conflicts between school and family, ^{Cunha (1997}) draws attention to the persistence of this condition and locates, in Brazil, in the 1930s, in the renovating educational discourse, in the discourse of the New School advocates, the constitution of an ideal that stresses the incapacity of family to educate their children and that establishes how to face such conflicts at school.

There seems to be, in many cases, a conflict between the desires of school education and the possibilities of the family. The crisis is not recent and has been long discussed by educators. Solutions have already been sought in the context of various pedagogical approaches, particularly among those that became known as supporters of the ‘renewed education’ or ‘New School’ (^{Cunha, 1997}, p. 47, author’s emphasis).

The author analyzes a context in which Brazilian representatives of the New School, such as Fernando de Azevedo, Lourenço Filho, Almeida Júnior, or foreigner ones, such as Adolphe Ferrière, though with different emphases and principles, pointed out the loss of capacity of families to educate their children and situations in which parents could even exert bad influences on children, hindering formal education, especially because their length of stay at school was much shorter than their time with their families. Everyone recognized, however, that the exchange with parents could not be ignored, also because the parents themselves should be normalized as well. The point in these strategies was to establish a harmony between the educational guidelines and the parents so as not to hinder the school’s work and, additionally, to exert an educational action on the parents. The strategies mentioned include those aimed at health education.

^{Faria Filho (2000}), similarly, and for a period a little earlier than that studied by Cunha, between 1925 and 1930, brings back discussions on the relationship between school and family, conducted by teachers, teaching technicians and principals, who called themselves New School advocates, on the pages of Revista do Ensino, official body of the Minas Gerais State Board of Public Instruction [Diretoria de Instrução Pública do Estado de Minas Gerais].

This author notes that, within the texts, dealing with various subjects, ‘there is a clear awareness of the importance of family in education’, but its competence is questioned.

The action of the family is, however, one that supports that of the school and subordinate to it, because the family’s competence to educate well is distrusted; in fact, more often than not, it is said that the family is no longer able to educate their children. In this regard, the main problem, detected on the pages of the journal, is that parents are not interested in participating in the school, for they are detached from it (^{Faria Filho, 2000}, p. 46).

Among the authors of Revista do Ensino, there was also an insistence on “[...] the need for parental education [...]”, as well as the importance “[...] of using the student themself as an intermediary between school and family” (^{Faria Filho, 2000}, p. 46-48).

In a later text, ^{Cunha (2003}) resumes the arguments of the normalizing character of the New School thinking concerning the educational role of the family. However, he broadens his own understanding and no longer places in the New School movement the constitution of the discourse against families. He states that “[...] the school was never guided by the same educational principles in force at home [...]”, and as the school institution “[...] incorporated scientific knowledge in opposition to traditional domestic knowledge [ ...]”, conflicts intensified and persist today. He concludes that “[...] it is in the course of this process that we will be able to understand more clearly the role of the school as an instance of power, as a normalizing device of the family cluster” (^{Cunha, 2003}, p. 450).

With this perspective, he assigns the origin of the conflict, therefore, to the sciences and to the scientific discourse.

The history of modern education offers several indicators that school procedures have always had scientific knowledge as main reference. The science discourse, in its turn, is characterized by disqualifying the family with regard to the education of the body and of the spirit.

Psychologists, pediatricians, social workers and teachers know more than parents, grandparents, aunts... This is what has been sustained throughout the history of the school, and it is the mentality that is in force nowadays. [...]

In Brazil, the history of the scientificization of school had an important milestone in the 19^th century, which coincided with the campaign carried out by hygienist doctors to modernize the Brazilian family (^{Cunha, 2003}, p. 450).

Certainly, this perception by ^{Cunha (2003}) that the tensions between family and school are permanent is plausible, as they result from the fact that the school institution operates on the basis of scientific knowledge that is not mistaken for and even collides with the educational perspectives of the family. However, studies such as those by ^{Goodson (1997}, ²⁰⁰⁸), ^{Chervel (1990}), ^{Chevallard (1991}, ²⁰¹³) and ^{Viñao (2012}), despite their specificities, laid the foundations for the understanding that school knowledge is constituted in a process complex that is not exempt from conflicts with the sciences themselves, with knowledge deemed culturally valid.

This means that, in the multiplicity of sorts of knowledge that circulate in the school, there are those that diverge and converge with the formative intentions of families and, as ^{Vincent, Lahire The Thin (2001}) point out, the families whose socializing practices do not contradict the mode of school socialization will have fewer conflicts, or a more participative relationship. By the way, the works of ^{Cunha (1997}, ²⁰⁰³) themselves do not ignore this understanding by arguing that the school has even more conflicts with poor families.

In any case, in this discussion, there is an undeniable finding that, due to the nature and purposes of both institutions - school and family -, there is a persistent conflict, but one which is taken or perceived by the schools themselves and by the families as circumstantial, and at different times, the explanatory reasons for the accusations that the school has against the family can be updated depending on the context.

The conflict became visible in the articles published in Revista de Educação and addressed in the previous item of this text. School principals want to ‘share with parents the results of ‘little satisfactory’ teaching, with the families that ‘did not notice their children’s deficiencies’, that, at home, ‘spoil’ children, who thus become ‘difficult’ students’. A technician from the Education Board defends pre-primary early childhood education, since primary school teachers have not and will not ‘reap the desired success’ with children who reach seven years of age having had, until then, an ‘improper education’ outside the school environment.

These discourses are not strange in today’s school, which reinforces the conviction of the persistence of a framework of values that blame the individual who learns and/or their family for school difficulties.

For several decades, educational studies, not only in Brazil, have discussed the so-called ‘school failure’ and, giving a voice to the school, reveal how persistent and strong, among the educators who work in the school, are the arguments that blame the child, their family and/or their surroundings, their poverty for the difficulties they experience at school.¹⁹

This does not mean that other explanations for children’s difficulties cannot be found, such as those that assign the responsibility for failure to teachers themselves and their training, to the working conditions in the school, to educational management, just as, by the way, they also appeared, with the inks of the time, in the texts of Revista de Educação. But what matters to understand is the domain and persistence of a framework of values that blame the individual who learns and their family. A framework of values that, analyzing the texts of the journal, was clearly present in the school environment, since most authors whose discourses are representative of this ethos work at a school - as principals of school groups or normal schools.

An interpretative possibility would be to consider that the modern school institution, for structural reasons, works with homogenizations, that is, homogenization of purposes, curriculum, organizations of spaces and times, of values and behaviors (^{Vincent et al., 2001}). This school, which provides simultaneous teaching, prepares and organizes itself in a way that, in the classroom, a privileged place for the teacher’s action, all children, due to the intended homogenization of age and skills, have the expected average performance. In other words, it is the school of the industrial society and, somehow, it is an industrial school. It is as though there were an assembly line in which those who demand more artisanal treatment will be harmed and, probably, excluded. Therefore, the mass school has and will have difficulties in dealing with children who do not fit perfectly into the norms and expectations established for each schooling moment.

Difficulties that inevitably reveal themselves in ‘collective learning’ situations, as highlighted by ^{Paulilo and Gil (2017}, p. 36):

[...] the difficulties in conducting collective learning without resigning to ‘the failure of some, because of the sufficient success of others’, underlined by ^{Chartier (2013}, p. 435), did not have the social visibility of public examinations or of the promotion lists of school groups from the early days of the graded school. On the contrary, they subsumed as part of the ordinary attributions of the school of the time: to select, to distinguish.²⁰

Not by chance, the alleged quality and reputation of the school were, for more than half of the 20^th century, linked as a value to this capacity to select and distinguish, “[...] a value of the school culture implemented with the graded and compulsory school” (^{Paulilo & Gil, 2017}, p. 53).

This quality and reputation began to be questioned as of the second half of the 20^th century, as the authors themselves also point out when stating that it is at this time that “[...] school retention appears in educational debates and on the public agenda as a serious problem of the Brazilian school, of great proportions [...]” (^{Paulilo & Gil, 2017}, p. 36).

In this article, which covers an arc of time between 1910 and 1940, the authors analyze the education statistics of the Federal District and São Paulo on school performance and reveal that, despite the existence of high retention rates, in the period, these data are not, in fact, used to examine the problem as such.

There is, however, an apparently dissonant voice, that of Anísio Teixeira, in the 1930s. During the educational reform that he led, between 1931 and 1935, the authors state, Anísio intended to reverse “[...] the accountability for learning failure from the student to the school, from the individual to the institution [... ]”, but the solutions proposed to reverse the high retention and dropout rates accentuated the school’s actions of ‘selecting and distinguishing’. Thus, enrollment instructions required the organization of classes according to chronological age, “[...] normal, below normal, falling behind, retained [...]”, thus aiming to solve the problem of the heterogeneities of the ‘levels of intelligence’ and ‘children’s school performance’, identified by the statistical studies conducted by the Department of Education. The non-homogeneity of classes was an obstacle to the proper functioning of the graded school. (^{Paulilo & Gil, 2017}, p. 52-53).

In that decade, failure, retention and dropout could be explained by the child’s biological inheritance, which determined their abnormalities and heterogeneities, as ^{Lourenço Filho (1930}) and Fernando de ^{Azevedo (1931}) defend, but also by the mismatches in their families, capable of altering the psychological structure and behavior of children, of abnormalizing them, as stated by Arthur ^{Ramos (1939}).

In the 1940s and 1950s, however, according to ^{Bernstein (1985}), the United States became a machine for research about the education of ‘lower social class’ children, from which new categories of analysis were structured, such as that of the ‘culturally disadvantaged’, the ‘linguistically deficient’, the ‘socially impaired’ (^{Bernstein, 1985}). As a result, the correlation between social class and school success began to be established more and more frequently as the school opened up to increasing numbers of children from different socioeconomic strata.

This perspective also influenced the understanding of the problem in Brazil, over the same decades, as revealed by ^{Gouveia (1971}). Assessing educational research in Brazil, he identifies an ‘interesting fluctuation’ in the orientation of works produced ‘under the research label’, in official institutions, directly, or sponsored by them. He locates a first period, covered by the 1940s and a large portion of the 1950s, in which, according to his assessment, “[...] the studies are predominantly of a psychopedagogical nature [...]” and, by that, he means that they turn to “[...] the teaching processes and the instruments for evaluating learning and psychological development”. The second period starts in the mid-1950s, with the creation, in 1956, of the Brazilian Center [Centro Brasileiro] and the Regional Research Centers [Centros Regionais de Pesquisa], belonging to the National Institute of Pedagogical Studies [Instituto Nacional de Estudos Pedagógicos] (Inep), lasting until 1964. These centers were intended to promote, among other purposes, “[...] research on cultural and school conditions [...]” in each Brazilian region, and about which he concludes that “[...] the emphasis shifted, thus, to studies of a sociological nature” (^{Gouveia, 1971}, p. 2-3).

This multiplicity of causal explanations - biological, psychological, sociological - seems to us to be what the history of the modern school has highlighted through a persistent ethos that holds the school unaccountable for eventual shortcomings, especially those of children considered difficult or problematic. Such a historical process of unaccountability does not necessarily mean that the school is transferring to someone else its own problem, but, otherwise, it may represent a refusal to take responsibility for what collides with its mode of operating.

In short, what we propose as an interpretive possibility is that the pedagogical ethos - these evaluative elements that are expressed in the blaming of the individual who learns for their difficulties at school, and in the lesser institutional accountability for these difficulties -, when observed from a historical perspective, seems to result from the way in which the modern school organizes itself and operates. And this is what has to be questioned, whether the perspective for the 21^st century is schooling without losses or with few losses for everyone who attends the institution.