Os deveres do pequeno cidadão em Alma Infantil: versos para uso das escolas (1912)

Abstract

In this research, Alma Infantil (1912) was selected as source and subject matter: this book was written by the poet Francisca Júlia and her brother, who was also a poet, Júlio César da Silva. The research aims to evoke the school literary scenery, considering the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the 20th centuries, and also their particularities, coordinating the pedagogical and political project which oriented schools during the period with the themes, authors and texts in the classrooms, specially in São Paulo, where there are the largest occurrences of pedagogical plans and actions. Our goal is to express the relations between Alma Infantil and some nation projects proposed by the government during the First Republic in Brazil (1889-1930). Alma Infantil, published by Livraria Editora Magalhães in the beginning of the 20th century, is a scholar book, more specifically, a complementary reading book. This material, along with its contemporaries, was also commited to moral and civic order from the fisrt years of the new regime, dedicating its content with the glorification of animals and natural assets, as the poems analysis indicate. The Silva´s brothers book, in its 48 poems and 4 hymns, presents accessible and suitable language for children, one of easy comprehension, in accordance to the moral concept notoriously verified. In the major part of the poems there are references to a soft language, unconcerned with the hardness and art for art´s sake feature, different from the literary school which the book is considered to be. Moreover, the hymns in Alma Infantil emphasize even more this patriotic unity which Brazil proposed itself to perform in the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the 20th centuries. Their themes the study, the school, the labor and the homeland bring into line the concepts of order, labor and progress, prevailed in Brazil in that moment. Therefore, throughout historical research from which this text is the result, we may affirm through textual and documentary analysies that Alma Infantil is a material designed for scholar use, as its cover mentions, and beyond that, it is a legitimate sample of the political and educational structure of the First Republic first years.