Aprender e apreender no Jardim-Escola (Caicó, Rio Grande do Norte, 1960-1993)

Abstract

The Primary School's Educational Center's Kindergarten from Caicó (Rio Grande do Norte) was created during the government lead by Dinarte de Medeiros and José Augusto Varela (1956-1961). Built for children whose age varied between four and six years old, this "School-garden" did start its activities on April 4, 1960, based on the active pedagogies and oriented by the authorized knowledge obtained through objective studies targeting children. As it was articulated with the Application School and the Normal School, two teacher training pedagogical models contributed to its institutional and pedagogical organization: the "utensils box" and the "library science" models. Based on documentary sources (educational legislation, lesson plan archives, built sources, iconographic sources, pedagogical manuals and magazines, among others), this doctoral work is placed inside the "Kindergarten and Pedagogy" thematic. Considering the object of study of this work is about the ways of teaching and educating on the School-garden, its goal is to investigate the inter relation between the early childhood education under this institution and the active pedagogical principles theorized by Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel, Jean-Ovide Decroly e Maria Tecla Artemesia Montessori, and the New Pedagogy guidelines, founded by John Dewey e Anísio Teixeira as well. The work is based on the school model theory, and the school way of socialization, systematized by social historians Guy Vincent, Bernard Lahire e Daniel Thin (2001), due to its capability of pointing out the relations between the school and the written pedagogical rationalization. Structured in six chapters following a historical sociogenetic approach, the thesis advocates the idea that the Caicó's Kindergarten's ways of teaching and educating, oriented by authorized knowledge disseminated in the Scholastic pedagogical literature, are related to a children scientific education; to develop their natural and individual skills needed to successfully build their personality towards the subsequent schooling, as well as the fundamental habits and attitudes to the coexistence and integration in the social life. As final considerations, the work recognizes that the Educational Center's Kindergarten is actually defined as a Decrolyano garden, where the child is becoming prepared to the social life at the same time is schooled. The fidelity to the Decroly's ways of teaching and educating did allow the intersection between the two formation models.