O Sínodo de Missouri e a educação pomerana em Pelotas e São Lourenço do Sul nas primeiras décadas do século XX: identidade e cultura escolar.

Abstract

In the meridional region of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in the countryside of Pelotas and São Lourenço do Sul , descendents of Low Germans settled down in the middle of the nineteenth century. These immigrants tried to organize a communitarian life in their quotidian by organizing schools and churches in their communities. However, in the beginning of the twentieth century, the Synod of Missouri, a confessional Lutheran church original from the United States settled down among these communities. The Synod of Missouri tried to implant a different scholar and religious project, with an orthodox Lutheran doctrinaire formation. It is tried here to analyze the formation of the identity of the communities inserted in the Synod. The work explicits the concepts of identity, not by understanding them as something given, but built and reinvented in the conflictive processes of acceptance of the Synod in the Low German education. In order to understand the identity formation, the research approaches the historical origins and the doctrinaire basis of the Synod of Missouri, the beginning in Germany, with the discontentment of the rationalist influence in the Lutheran church, the migration to the United States, consolidating a Synod institution based on confessional basis of Lutheranism and the missionary spirit of Synod, with the expansion of his work in Brazil. The justifications for the installation of the Sydon are analyzed in the following aspects: the necessity to differ from other religious institutions and the demarcation of a religious field according to its principles, internalizing a habitus in the behaviors of the people educated in the institution. In the analysis of the course of Synod, characteristics that distinguish it are presented: the necessity to form pastors and teachers, qualifying them in the scholar and religious work. Thus, the arising of the first seminary in the countryside of São Lourenço do Sul among the Low Germans propitiated a study of the project of the Synod in the comprehension of the pedagogical-theological identity of the first students, who, later, acted in the Low German communities. With the intention to reveal aspects of the formation of an identity, the representation of Synod believed to be the “true Lutheran church” has been analyzed. This belief was legitimated through different practices of the other institutions considered Lutheran, the independent communities and the Riograndense Synod, as the necessity of the formation of pastors and teachers and the Lutheran doctrinaire education occupy special place in the scholar education. Through the scholar practices the present study proposed to understand the curriculum of these schools. The central point of its curriculum was the religious teaching and its relations with the rites of the church in an accentuated way, presenting the learning of the German language as essential for the participation in the religious life. This educational project of Synod also figured on the analysis of the didactic material in schools, and through this study it was possible to notice aspects that differed the production and constitution of this material from of the other institutions and the privileging of the fomentation of an orthodox doctrinaire education. Through the comparison between the didactic material of the Synod of Missouri and the Riograndense Synod, found in the Low German schools, it was possible to point out subtle differences in the project of education of this institution and understand the aspects of formation of the identification process of the Low German communities connected to the Synod of Missouri.