Condições culturais de inserção da história natural na instrução pública do Pará (1851-1891)

Abstract

This thesis intends to contribute for historiography about the process of institutionalization of science in schools and your main objective is to analyze the process of insertion of the Natural History in public education in Pará, the characteristics it assumed and the cultural conditions that made possible. The thesis covers a period between 1851 and the initial period of the first Republic, 1891. This initial period of analysis is justified by the fact of the Botany was included in the curriculum of Liceu Paraense, with the creation of the subject Elements of Physics, Chemistry and general principles of Botany, in 1851. The subject Natural History would only be introduced in 1873, when it became part of the curriculum of the Curso Normal, attached to the Liceu Paraense, integrating the subject General Notions of Physics, Chemistry, Natural History and Agriculture, being withdrawn shortly afterwards, 1874. After the advent of the Republic, in 1889, disciplines from the field of Natural History were introduced into the curriculum of Liceu Paraense and Escola Normal, with other disciplines such as Biology, Hygiene and School Hygiene appearing in both schools. The three moments that stand out above constitute the chapters of this thesis, which is based on theorizations of the fields of study of curriculum history, history of school subjects and Cultural Studies. In order to analyze the characteristics, representations and meanings attributed to Natural History in each of these contexts, we rescued the teaching plans and other documents that indicate the specificities that this science assumed in the Pará school curriculum. With regard to the conditions that made it possible, we will investigate, above all, the speeches of the time, printed, above all, in newspapers and government reports of the time. We found, firstly, the presence of activities linked to the field of Natural History, such as those of naturalists and research in Botany at context of the local culture, were important factors for the insertion, at first, of Botany among the Sciences, which constituted the first scientific subject in the curriculum of public education in Pará. Posteriorly, we saw that although there were people with thoughts focused on the insertion of such knowledge in education, proposing its insertion, they did not remain for cultural reasons alleged in the speeches conveyed in the newspapers of the time as being of disinterest. In the last period, that of the Republic, there are indications that this knowledge may have been introduced and consolidated in the culture and in local school system, bearing in mind that there were reforms in order to adapt to a new regime in which science became more valued.