A Escola Nova e as prescrições destinadas ao ensino da disciplina de Geografia da escola primária em São Paulo no início do século XX

Abstract

This study investigates the precepts in the beginning of the 20th century, in São Paulo, for the teaching of an elementary course in Geography. The main books written at that time were taken as object of analysis. Those books were addressed to elementary school educators, responsible for the rules followed by Geography practitioners teaching at elementary school. The works selected were: Methodology of Geographic Teaching, by Delgado de Carvalho, How to teach Geography, by Antônio Firmino de Proença and Didactics, by João Toledo, authors who had stated to have based their ideas on the principles of New School (Escola Nova) and who had published these works between 1925 and 1930. We have also investigated the journals specialized in Education, particularly in Educação, texts about the teaching of Geography in elementary school as well as texts about the books we analyse here. During the early years of Republic, Geography was established as a branch of instruction responsible for patriotic upbringing. The debates about nationalism and patriotism increased during the 1910 and 1920´s decades when new values were attached to the nationalism-patriotism, values considered by intellectuals and politicians at that time, as the ones which would lead the country to the progress. Education was considered a way to equal Brazil to the civilized nations. Thus, Geography increasingly became a privileged branch of instruction which should communicate to the future citizen, the patriotic values and the devotion to nation and thus, to regenerate the country. The principles of New School were introduced in Brazil by that time. The authors investigated here, called themselves representatives of this new way to conceive education. The New School supported the apprenticeship through student´s practical actions. This new idea was based on the fact that the student would learn mainly by acting and not only reading, watching, seeing. The perspective of cultural history is used as a guidance to the analysis of pedagogic models imposed to elementary school´s teachers in what concerns to Geography. We turn to Chartier searching for concepts of discursive strategies which are found in the printed papers. To Chartier, the school practice is ruled by models created by precepts. The printed paper is taken here as an object of investigation to understand the strategy of determinating methodologies and knowledge imposed to the practice of the elementary school teacher.