Entre a tiramnya cruel e a pedra fundamental : a obrigatoriedade do ensino primário como uma técnica de governo de Minas Gerais

Abstract

The educational policy discourses about institutionalization of elementary education in Minas Gerais crossed the entire nineteenth century pointing out also as a Republican worry, noticeable through the discourse of impracticability and injury of civil rights, and either the defense of their state-owned character and the argumentation of population s civilizing and disciplinarian functions. In this sense, think compulsoriness education demands an understanding of its social function, the knowledge of agents involved and their interests around that government s measure. According to the advocates of compulsory education in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the aim of education was to constitute civilized and educated citizens. This perspective was related to a project of society, included the idea of Brazilian nation, for which was essential to form, since childhood, a disciplined people, a well governed people. Our objective was to analyze the theme of compulsory education from the Foucault concept of governmentality. Questioning the idea that universal access to education represented only an initiative to guarantee rights, we defend the hypothesis that compulsory education may have been viewed as a government strategy of others, as a strategy to control subjects. Based on this presupposition, as expected effect, would be possible obtain new subjects with new attitudes, derived from coercion promoted by the school. By legitimizing the school, the obligatoriness apparatus would work as a strategy and would produce positivities. Through the school and its compulsory character, it was to reach and manage the population of small, so that to equip it with the minimum code of the civilized world, with the related disciplinary effects. For this purpose, we analyze the legislation of Minas Gerais, printed journals (Correio de Minas, Jornal do Commercio, Minas Livre, O Granbery) and the literature on the compulsory primary education in order to identify traces of the debate on empire and the transition to the Republic, which were problematized in the light of that concept. From this discussion, we conclude that compulsory education is better understood if analyzed in another record that is not purely juridical. This inference points to the enlargement of the analytical framework of this compulsory policy and state interests around it.