Um paíz de poucas lettras? Experiências de educabilidade, instrução obrigatória e analfabetismo na Cidade Maravilhosa (1900-1922)

Abstract

If in the attempt of evoking the school memories, if light is shed on the historical questioning of relations with time, with the right tools, instilling a back and forth between the present and the past, it is possible to be surprised at the revealed narratives. In the plots of discourses around the history of education, we can notice the constitution of historical processes that have been broken or have remained permanent in the present day. These are the cases of the three main pillars that structure this research: the experiences of educability, compulsory education and illiteracy; issues found in the guidelines of different contexts. Supported by the perspective of Cultural History, this study brings to the reflection the speeches found in some printed material, with emphasis on the newspapers O Tico-Tico, A Eschola, O Imparcial, O Malho, O Paíz, O Correio da Manhã, from the city of Rio de Janeiro during the period analyzed from 1900 to 1922, seeking to give visibility to the part of the educational debate that involved the identification of the obligation of primary education as the solution to the problem of illiteracy, registered as a "social evil". With the arrival of the Republic`s First Centenary celebrations, the analysis of the ruptures and permanences of the discourses around the implementation of the obligatoriness in the national capital allows us to think of the idea of the republican modernity like a forged representation, and it also reveals a dispute of distinct forces for the education that used strategies of power and were able to insert themselves in a political, social, economic game in favor of a national ideology. The main reason for this research is to show the importance of understanding the problem of illiteracy and the supposed "solution" of compulsory education through the registration of different educational experiences, both formal and non-formal. This observation allows us to analyze the political and social process of each of the researched realities, the way in which the educational policy in question was discussed and dealt with by public and private agencies involved in a project of society. Indicating such experiences and highlighting the different discourses on compulsory education makes it possible to understand the issue of dissemination of popular teaching as a widely debated measure, either by different forces, but also, in varied spaces, concluding that the "modern school" was not constituted in a unique way. It was plural and composed from the responsibility of different forces that defined its structure, its role and even who would be part of it