Debates doutrinários sobre a Educação Física no Município da Côrte (1879–1884)

Abstract

The aim of this work is to revisit and analyze the debates on physical education between the years 1879 and 1884, after its mandatory reform in primary and secondary education in the city of Côrte and higher education throughout the Empire, was declared by the Minister and Secretary of State for the Empire Business, Carlos Leôncio de Carvalho, in 1879. The period chosen for the research intends to verify the movements in relation to physical education, in the opinions and projects written by the Instruction Commission of the House of Representatives, in 1882, until the publication of the Acts of the Instruction Congress (1884). We sought to analyze the representations regarding physical education in Decree no. 7 247, of April 19, 1879, in the aforementioned opinions on this educational reform, in theses of a Congress that would take place in 1883, as well as in four printed materials available in the database of the Digital Hemeroteca of the National Library from this period. Regarding the specific event, the Actas do Congresso de Instrucção do Rio de Janeiro were analyzed, published by the National Typography in 1884. As for the legislative debate, we considered the opinions of the Commission de Instructor Public presented to the Câmara dos Deputados in April and September 1882, with their publication completed in 1883. The newspapers Jornal do Commercio, Diário do Brazil, A Instructor Public and A Mãi de familia, were approached in order to observe how the public debate on physical education took place in a wider environment. Alongside this investment, a bibliographic review was also carried out, covering articles, dissertations, and thesis related to physical education in the period, in order to understand the markers of the debates related to this knowledge and how it should be schooled. With this exercise, we tried to work with elements of the history of school subjects, as postulated by Andre Chervel, focusing on the doctrinal element, the focus of this research. However, it was possible to observe that the debate regarding the schooling of physical education did not begin with the Decree of 1879, and it is possible to notice the appearance of new amercements to outline and legitimate the rationalization of knowledge about the physical dimension in the schools of the capital of the Brazilian Empire.