A educação primária e o Grupo Escolar Almino Afonso em Martins-RN (1909-1926)

Abstract

This work focuses on the history of school institutions, focusing on a school group located in the interior of Rio Grande do Norte. The starting point was the question of what changes did the implementation of the Almino Afonso School Group cause in primary public education in the city of Martins-RN, at the beginning of the 20th century? From this, the objective was to understand the process of implementation and operation of the Almino Afonso School Group in the first decades of the 20th century and to analyze the changes that occurred in primary education in the city of Martins-RN as a result of the implementation of the said Group. To this end and based on the concept of school culture (Julia, 2001), bibliographic and documentary research was carried out from a historical perspective. Documents such as: messages from governors (1890-1930) were analyzed; reports from the State Government Secretariat (1895-1905); reports from directors of Public Instruction (1893-1926); bookkeeping books for isolated schools in Martins-RN and the former Grupo Escolar Almino Afonso (1897-1926); laws, decrees, teaching codes and regulations for school groups (1908- 1925); images of educational institutions in Martins-RN (1920s); and the newspaper “A Republica” (1911-1925). Considered a model of a modern school, school groups should provide improvements in public primary education. In view of this, we sought to demonstrate that the Almino Afonso Group provided advances in the primary school organization in Martins-RN. But the investigation demonstrated limits in the functioning of the institution as a graduated school as well as other aspects such as: lack of school materials and inadequacy of school furniture, inconsistent with the principles of hygiene and pedagogical modernity discussed in the period by intellectuals and public administrators. With reduced enrollment and attendance in the initial years of its operation, not only did it not universalize primary education, it also had a lower audience reach than the former state isolated schools that had a larger enrollment than the Group that replaced them. The changes brought about by the installation of the Group refer to the establishment of the public primary school as a specific place under the responsibility of the State, as well as the construction of a new school culture disseminated throughout the city through, mainly, school festivals. . In addition to being pedagogical, the celebrations had political purposes to give visibility to the republican project of schooling and the construction of a new society.