SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT AND EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCES IN CAMPINAS: part 2

The school is a dynamic place, shaped by interactions and memory disputes between multiples historical agents. The relationship between students and teachers falls within this complex universe of ruptures and permanences, materializing in objects, places, and experiences.

In the mission of forming republican citizens, teachers came to be considered “apostles of instruction” and because of that they are represented with austerity and seriousness. The Normal Schools, created in the Empire for the training of teachers for basic education, were being disseminated and reorganized as the demand for schooling grew.

The images of the teaching staff reflect the attempt by teachers and principals to form institutional identity and a tradition for school groups. The class albums, the photos of the founders, first teachers, and students who achieved social visibility are part of this construction of collective memory within the socio-political imaginary of the Republic.

Following the rationalization and scientification project, the didactic reference standard was the simultaneous and teacher-centered teaching, in which one teacher taught several students at once. These, in turn, were divided into classes according to their learning levels. Even school subjects have entered this process, being classified into curricular grades and standards according to scientific criteria.

Despite its search for a rupture image, the new republican education coexisted with the old models. In spite of the laicization principle, many reformist schools adhered to religious education and Catholic practices. The gender separation of classes is a permanence of the standards applied by Catholic educators.

The process of democratizing education was done asymmetrically. In many peripheral regions, the new models were almost impossible to be applied, so that home education with individual classes, often in precarious conditions, remained predominant. Even in urban schools, inequalities were manifested in different ways, such as the frequency disparity between black and white students in class photographs.

The accelerated massification of education, along with the unorganized urban growth of the 1940s and 1950s, made teachers' salaries targets for cuts. In a society strongly characterized by contempt for women's work, the feminization of teaching was seen as a means to realize this plan. Added to this was the prejudice of many academics towards basic education as if teaching were a mechanical and simplistic activity better suited to women.

Many of the historical agents who have integrated the network of memories and narratives of the schools are waiting to be discovered. The experiences, thoughts, and feelings of students and teachers are still gaps in the knowledge of school routine. Behind the monumental buildings, the cold furniture, the homogeneous uniforms and the organized class photos, there is the undisciplined, complex, and conflicting human spirit.

During political and educational reforms, medical hygienists took the lead in popular sanitation and proposed changes related to body hygiene and health, aiming at changing the habits of the population, with a strategic focus on childhood.

Mental well-being was directly associated with physical practices and the school environment was the ideal way for practices being developed. Detailed physical examinations were executed on the students to assess their development. As a consequence, the sport was linked to mental hygiene advertising, and children were seen as the country's future and progress, making physical education part of a pedagogical strategy.

The teams had individual personal data of the students in special enrollment books that could be used for future comparisons of results, bringing, in particular, the anthropometric measurement. These annually presented reports where they recorded the development of the classes and the performance of the students, whose results were generally satisfactory, with both physical and discipline benefits in the participants.

The classes were separated by gender. For the boys, the Gymnastics was focused on the work of strength, endurance, and virility. For the girls, on the other hand, it was intended to demonstrate grace, beauty, and flexibility in their movements.

Gymnastics in schools was also used recurrently for presentations to the local population, which usually occurred in football stadiums or in sports clubs. Furthermore, it was common the schools also participated in all civic celebrations in the city and region. Dressed in white uniforms and making simultaneous movements, the events become in spectacles of symmetry and beauty, captivating the viewer for what represent the patriotic ideal of progress and glory of the country.

Another activity promoted in Campinas was the Children's Olympiad, whose character was enjoyment. The children were very enthusiastic about participating in the event and all were awarded at the end of the modalities. The objective was to encourage young people through sports and gymnastics, both in the formation of values and in their physical formation.