Infância e memória: a educação da criança cearense nas primeiras décadas do século XX

Abstract

The objective of this research is to build up some knowledge on the childhood in Ceará during the first decades of the 20th century, when new ideas on children education had arisen in the educational milieu. These ideas had their origin in the international movement of the New Schools – beginning in Europe and the United States. This movement proposed the rupture of the traditional education whose characteristics were the intellectualism and teacher centered education. It defended a pedagogy grounded in scientific knowledge of a child, a teaching based in the student activity, which, on its turn should occupy the center of the educational process; In brief, an education which was based on a new conception of childhood. In Brazil, this set of pedagogical ideas was proposed in the first republican period, after it had been applied in several other parts of the world. The new attitudes in relation to children education were transmitted nationally by educators and scholars through scientific or pedagogic publications; through the teacher preparatory schools, as well as through the educational reform cycles in the Brazilian schools and the Federal District, occurred in the 1920´s, being Ceará one of the pioneers in its implantation. By acknowledging the importance of the arrival of these ideas and its effects in the cultural milieu of Ceará, our proposal was to try to rebuild the children routine that undergo formal education in schools, or even at home, during the early decades of the 20th century. It was our goal to investigate the influence of the new-school ideas in children education during that period. In the search of these objectives we set out for the methodological way of the oral history. We rely on the memory of interviewees to bring from the past a history which we can not retrieve in books. Therefore, we counted on the cooperation of seven interviewees aged 84 to 102 years old who were willing to relate the history of their lives with focus to their childhood. From the account of these ordinary people, we managed to trace back the image of a childhood whose scenery had rural characteristics, in which the child and the nature mingled, especially during leisure time. In the narratives, it is evident the lack of educational institutions, though the governmental promises for increase of vacancies in elementary schools were constant. In spite of this, other alternatives were encountered for the children education. In this field, a traditional pedagogy prevailed, even though features of newness were identified in the schools the interviewees went. We certified that those ideas that crossed oceans to reach us and bustled the cultural scene of Ceará, had little impact in the school routine and the daily life of our children. Despite this, we believe that the actions that occurred afterward were not in vain. They were very important for the definition of a new childhood, which is today the center of interest of several fields in science, as well as educational policies