Psicologia e pedagogia nova no Brasil: saberes e práticas escolares nos rastros da criança

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyze and investigate a pioneering editorial project, the Education Library collection, directed towards Brazilian teacher formation, which was organized and headed by Lourenço Filho. Through this study it is hoped to understand better and in greater depth the contributions of psychology to education, which aimed at the formation of a pedagogical culture on the child, especially in the 1920s and 30s. By means of an analysis of two select works: Adolphe Ferriere s The Biogenetic law and the active school and Lourenço Filho s Testes ABC para verificação da maturidade necessária à aprendizagem da leitura e da escrita, an effort was made to focus on the theories and pedagogical formulations, arising out of a psychological knowledge which at that time very possibly contributed to sustaining, informing and producing a concept of the child. These studies indicate that the formulations proposed in this discussion present a perspective on learning which, as a rule, subordinates the child to a psychometric perspective, while highlighting the school as a socializing institution. Given this fact, there is evidence that the knowledge of experimental psychology, proposed in these studies, would favor the mechanisms for social advancement, legitimized by psycho-technical procedures, which, in the name of science, were spread and disseminated among Brazilian educators