Da pedra ao amanhecer: a constituição do espaço educacional em Hulha Negra de 1944 a 1992

Abstract

The research investigated the constitution of the educational space in Hulha Negra between 1944 and 1992, a period in which the territory was a district of Bagé and was characterized by the exclusive presence of rural primary schools. Education emerged as a central factor for the emancipation of the municipality, consolidating itself as a structuring element in the social organization and local identity, even in the face of political, economic, and structural adversities. The study aims to understand the evolution of education in the context of the socioeconomic and cultural transformations of this period, analyzing the interaction between educational policies, municipal identity, and social structure. Based on Cultural History, the research employs a qualitative approach and historical-documentary method, guided by the categories of pedagogical municipality, pedagogical ruralism and school culture. To explain the time frame, the perspective of Glénisson (1986) is adopted, which emphasizes the need to make periodization criteria more flexible in order to capture the meaning of changes over time, showing that temporal segmentation does not eliminate previous characteristics, but integrates them into new contexts. School archives, legislation, regional newspapers and administrative records were analyzed to understand how political-administrative decisions shaped education and how local agents – managers, teachers and families – redefined pedagogical policies and practices. The results demonstrate that, despite the precarious infrastructure and the centralization of educational guidelines, education was a vector of social cohesion, promoting the construction of rural schools as spaces for socialization and cultural mediation. The research contributes to the historiography of education by highlighting the importance of rural schools in the constitution of educational practices and discourses, offering support for understanding the relationship between the State, territory and education in peripheral contexts, in addition to providing elements for the improvement of external educational policies for rural realities.