O mobiliário escolar na instrução pública primária do Pará na primeira república: entre as “vitrines do progresso” e o “estado de ruínas”

Abstract

The Republican educational emancipation project has awakened the need to embellish and equip educational institutions with the most modern and innovative teaching objects, since the state of Pará presented a moment that makes a dialectic of modernity with politics and economy, passing through the education projects materialized by the modernist triumph, symbolized by the so-called Belle Époque. The present study had as an investigative focus the materiality of primary education in Pará between 1889 and 1930, more specifically school furniture. The objective was to understand the cultural practices and representations constituted in the process of circulation and acquisition of school furniture in the primary school of Pará and its influences on legal devices. More specifically, to identify the material design of the school designed to organize the daily routine of primary education in Pará; verify the provenance and acquisition of school furniture; highlight the process of manufacturing and marketing of furniture for the Paraense primary education. Methodologically, the research was carried out from the survey of sources in the Public Archive of the State of Pará, Arthur Viana Public Library. The sources used were: Messages and Reports from governments, Crafts, Government albums, Decrees and Regulations and Catalogs of Universal Exhibitions, among other sources that present traces of school furniture and how they were inserted in school everyday.From a theoretical and methodological point of view, this study is based on the analysis of cultural history and Material School Culture, used here to understand the history of primary education in Paraense and the evidence found in materiality, as well as understandings of discourses and cultural practices in the inside the school. This procedure showed that, although the State tried to meet the expectations of modernizing policy by regulating the use of appropriate school materials for primary education, requiring and ordering from teachers and school principals, compliance with the laws governing primary public education in the state , the material conditions of space and objects did not satisfy the needs for the functioning of the teaching houses. As a result, it was found that the discursive statements of the analyzed documents pointed out that some institutions were equipped with the most modern to give visibility to the State as the "window of progress". In contrast to this elegant visual scenario, the reports of directors and teachers of the houses / schools and school groups in the interior denounced the "ruined state" of furniture and other objects. The discontent of the subjects, through reports of public instruction, newspapers of great circulation and official documents, denounced the lack of attendance to the requests of materials or even the repair of objects, more specifically of the school furniture, so that the functioning of the institutions could attend requirements laid down in legal provisions. It is hoped that this study will contribute to give visibility to the school material culture, especially the school furniture present in the History of Education in Pará, making it possible, at the same time, to advance in theories about the theme, as well as to re-read the documents that primary education in Pará.