Os professores e as elites locais na defesa da educação: as lideranças e as atividades da Associação Brasileira de Educação e da Associação Sul-Rio-Grandense de Professores em Pelotas (1926-1945)

Abstract

Former President Getúlio Vargas’ political regime considered Education as an essential resource for society’s modernization and progress. In this sense, the government established severe Nationalization Laws, especially, in the realm of educational policy. Throughout the period of New State, heavier police repression was directed toward those teachers and faculty who would not adjust to the new conjuncture. By presenting frequent inspections at public and private schools to evaluate methodology, general knowledge, and ideals, that had been taught at such institutions, inspectors verified whether such ideas supported Vargas’ governmental ideology or not. Simultaneously to this governmental movement, teachers did not present an apathetic behavior. In fact, it was quite the opposite since they had been gathering in meetings at class associations to debate about the new political and educational conjuncture since the 1920s. The Brazilian Association of Education (BAE) was founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1925 to broaden the discussion. BAE’s president, Levi Carneiro, encouraged the foundation of affiliated branches in Brazil and the town of Pelotas. This proposition was highly effective in 1926 when it conceived the Pelotense Section of the Brazilian Association of Education (PSBAE). In 1928, the Sul Rio-Grandense Teachers Association (SRGTA) was created with the objective of establishing an association that would actively work as a department of defense, valorization, and improvement of the teaching class. This proposal showed itself to be extremely efficient in the town of Pelotas. By using the prosopographic method, it was possible to perceive that the PSBAE’s and SRGTA’s leadership gathered a highly heterogenous group of professionals, particularly, the members of a traditional elite in the county and the teachers from the basic education system as well as from the tertiary education. In this sense, this research explores the fields of activities of the PSBAE’s and SRGTA’s teaching leadership since its foundation in 1926 and1928 up to the period of Vargas’ governments (1930-1945) through the perspective of the Social History of Education by analyzing who those members were, how those associations operated in favor of the local faculties, and how they could have served as a space of sociability for some members of the local elite to influence the educational guidelines of the county and to project themselves socially among local intellectuals.