A obra do padre Siqueira para a educação da pobreza: “a mais desvalida, a do sexo feminino” (1871-1881)

Abstract

Our Lady of Amparo Domestic School was founded in Petrópolis on January 22nd, 1871 by its creator, Father Siqueira, whose premise was to serve orphans and underprivileged girls. The present study aims to analyze what were his motivations, his perspectives, his aspirations and, also, his anguish, his sadness and his failures to the realization of the work focused on female education, through the documents left by Father Siqueira himself, both autobiographical and biographical belonging to his collection. On a more specific level, the study intends to show part of Father Siqueira's life; examine his ideas recorded in the documents; check how he corresponded; evidence how he put these ideas into practice; demonstrate who participated in the idealization and creation of his work; survey the collection of records on the creation and functioning of the school; investigate the material culture of the school; locate the first students and principals, as well as their pedagogical work; infer about the prospects for the duration of his work; and analyze his choice for female education, in addition to his conceptions about this education, through his documentary memory located in the Museum-Room. The methodological procedures refer to a qualitative research, essentially documentary, whose main source is the museological collection kept at Our Lady of Amparo Domestic School about its founder: Father Siqueira and the work. It is a museum collection that includes several documentary categories, from letters, notebooks, personal notes, objects, expense lists, to the architecture traced by the protagonist himself, the craftsman of the construction, from its idealization. As a theoretical-bibliographic reference, the writings of Heymann (2012) and Domínguez (2018) were taken to understand museums and archives; Cunha and Mignot (2002), Cunha (2015), Sartori (2019) and Castillo Gómez (2003) for the analysis and study of the letters; Vasconcelos (2015), Brito and Corradi (2018) and Camargo and Goulart (2007) for the concept of documents and ego-document; Hernández Díaz (2005, Barletta (2012) and Cunha (2005) for the analysis of school documents; Burke (2004) and Carvalho (2015) to analyze the photographs. Initially, the study presents an inventory of the sources about Father Siqueira belonging to the Museum-Room. Next, it focuses on the priest's trajectory of struggles and achievements. Further on, it’s discussed about Our Lady of Amparo Domestic School and its material culture. Finally, the legacy of Father Siqueira and the first students who had a Catholic female education within his work are shown.