União rio-grandina de estudantes secundários (URES) como agente de interação social entre secundaristas e a sociedade (1953- 1979)

Abstract

The present study presents the proposal that an organized student movement, throughout a representative entity, can promotes social interactions among its members and the local community. We advocate the idea that social interactions and relationships, and additionally the sociability among young people, may be achieved by different means, from informal conversations inside a group of friends to the enrollment in formally organized groups (SIMMEL,1983, 2004, 2006). The main goal is to find out how the social interactions among high schoolers in the city of Rio Grande, RS, impacted in the creation of URES and its activities. We especially focused on the URES creation context, the entity participation and promotions in civic, sports and cultural activities as well as its involvement among the local community aiming at creating a Higher Education Institution in Rio Grande, RS and the subsequent federalization of that Higher Education Institution. This study is justified due to the fact that the high schoolers movement is not being considered very often in academic studies. URES, despite its strong presence in the city during the years 1953-1979, it has never been elected a study object for the field of Education History. So, to understand the proposed research topic in the Cultural History context we went through not only the analysis of several different types of documents (CELLARD, 2012; COX, 2017) but also made use of Oral Stories as well (CHARTIER, 2014; FERREIRA E AMADO, 2006; THOMPSON, 1992; ALBERTI, 2007; HALBWACHS, 1990; NORA, 1993 and CANDAU, 2012). Both sources are frequently merged into each other, sometimes based more in documents and other times in the interviews being thus strongly interlaced. Historically, young people, who are viewed sometimes as essential to the achievement of proposed goals and occasionally viewed with some degree of concern for being more likely to rebellion, in the city of Rio Grande, during the considered period, those young boys and girls were encouraged to keep themselves busy and thus less likely to rebellion (BENEVIDES, 2006; CARRON 1994; FRAGA, 1996; DELLA VECHIA, 2011). Therefore, they were encouraged to take active part in civic, sports and cultural activities. During this study we found that activities like oratory contests, music festivals and even the establishment of a student theatre group with the participation of students of both sexes were very common. It was then possible to understand the close involvement of URES with the local community in the creation of a university at the city of Rio Grande and in its later federalization, what made it possible to local high school students and to other interested parties to enter a public, quality and free Higher Education Institution. Finally, we must emphasize that, throughout the analyses carried out in this study, using both oral and documentary sources, it was possible to verify that the movement created by the young high schoolers and materialized by organizing the entity URES, sought to influence the local society, legitimizing itself as a social group emerged from sociability practices.