Educando para a modernidade: infancia(s) e juventude(s) nos projetos de educação e sociedade para Feira de Santana (1930-1950)

Abstract

This research seeks to understand how modernizing ideals from Europe and the United States were appropriated in the debate on projects for society and education in Feira de Santana. In this sense, it aims to understand the projects for education and society expressed in articles in the Folha do Norte newspaper in the city of Feira de Santana from 1930 to 1950. This is documentary research, situated in the field of the History of Education, and its source is the digitized archives of the Folha do Norte newspaper that circulated in the city, available at the Casa do Sertão Museum of the State University of Feira de Santana-UEFS. The main results revealed that despite the ideas of renewal and progress in education, a link with traditional pedagogy remained. In addition, we are faced with evidence of a real endeavor for the ordering of bodies, which started since childhood, this was, therefore, a recurring theme, following a national tendency to have it as the focus of theorizing on education. However, the desire to educate was partial, and reached the different parts of the population differently. The educational differences between children in rural, poor and black areas, and those who inhabited the city center, children of the middle class and elites, were visible in the structure of schools, in the lack of furniture and teaching valorization. A differentiated offer to meet different objectives, for the son of the poor the little education and training for the least valued work, for the children of the elites the preparation to govern the future of the city. The relationship with work gained strength in youth, but again, there was the distinction of class, race and gender, for the poorest the control of bodies went through criminalization. Education, together with the local press and the elites of the time, played the role of articulating the speeches that circulated, printing customs and memories, defining who was entitled to education and what kind of education they could access and thus, drawing the directions of a modern and unequal city.