A REPERTOIRE OF ACTIONS AND EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES

INTELLECTUALS AND PROJECTS IN DISPUTE FOR EDUCATIONAL MODERNITY (1920S BRAZIL)

Abstract

This text, in the field of educational history, uses a focus on intellectual and cultural history to understand five educational conferences held in Brazil in the 1920s – the Interstate Conference on Primary Education (Rio de Janeiro, 1921); the Congress of Primary and Normal[Teacher] Education (Paraná, 1926); the First Congress of Primary Instruction (Minas Gerais, 1927); the First State Conference of Primary Education (Santa Catarina, 1927); and the First National Education Conference, which was promoted by the Brazilian Association of Education (ABE) (Curitiba, 1927). The conferences are considered as part of a repertoire shared by five intellectuals:  Orestes de Oliveira Guimarães, Antonio de Sampaio Dória, Lysimaco Ferreira da Costa, Antonio de Arruda Carneiro Leão, Francisco Luís da Silva Campos, and Manoel Bergström Lourenço Filho, who are understood as representatives of projects in dispute for educational modernity, highlighted by the expansion of, and mandatory and free characteristics of primary education. The following question is presented:  How can the conferences be considered as part of a repertoire that mobilized intellectuals in defense and dispute of concepts and projects, in an effort to establish the meanings that would guide educational modernity in Brazil in the 1920s? The theoretical methodological approach and the analyses conducted involve the concepts of modern and modernity, repertoire, intellectuals and representation. Efforts to attain educational modernity in Brazil in the period required articulations and actions, including the expansion, and mandatory and free character of primary education.