EDUCATION OF INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED PEOPLE IN THE PERIODICAL MENSAGEM DA APAE (1963–1973): A PEDAGOGY FOR MODELING AND SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT

Abstract

This article discusses how the education of intellectual disabled people was represented
and thematized, under the influence of Associação de Pais e Amigos dos Excepcionais (Apae), between
the 1960s and 1970s in Brazil. To this end, the printed periodical Mensagem da Apae is taken as the source
and object of research, in its first phase (1963-1973), from the perspective of the New Cultural History.
By the material and textual organization of the periodical, we can perceive the discursive investment as a
way to legitimize an institutional identity and justify Apae’s work to this public. In an institutional
pedagogical perspective that aimed to (re)habilitate, train, and adjust intellectually disabled people to
society, offering them semiprofessional, non-qualified, and repetitive jobs. Thus, the education offered
was not a consistent process of professionalization, much less schooling, but a form of social hygiene.
Thus the focus was not on forming citizens but rather to prevent the emergence of offenders, as well as
to free parents and caretakers to work and be productive, preventing the disruption of national progress
and foster an alleged harmony of the social fabric, in particular a context marked by political-educational
technicism and civil-military dictatorship.