Educação estética e renovação pedagógica em Minas Gerais (décadas de 1920 e 1930)

Abstract

This thesis aims to analyze the debate on aesthetic education in Minas Gerais, in different areas, but mainly in the pedagogical field, in the 1920s and 1930s, when changes were taking place in Brazil in material life, in terms of culture, in addition to educational reforms and a pedagogical renovation proposed from the assumptions of the Escola Nova movement. In the context of industrial urban growth, the development of the global economy and the dissemination of bourgeois values, debates on aesthetic education had a polysemic character. Thus, the hypothesis of this research is that the appeals to aesthetic education were linked to the demands for a new education of the senses, for the formation of new sensibilities, in line with the ongoing social, cultural and economic transformations. The documentary sources used include printed matter, journals, legislation and period books, located in different collections, with emphasis on pedagogical and modernist magazines, in addition to newspapers in circulation by that time. Theoretical and conceptual studies were carried out, with an emphasis on the contributions of Jacques Rancière and Terry Eagleton, as well as other authors in the field of history and history of education. The thesis was organized into four chapters. In the first, a theoretical study was carried out on the different propositions of aesthetic education in profusion in the European context since the end of the 18th century. In the second chapter, we investigated the treatment of aesthetics, as a theme, in Brazil, specifically Minas Gerais, in the context of debates on Modernism in the 1920s and 1930s. The third chapter analyzed the polysemic dimension present in aesthetic education proposals, highlighting, on the one hand, their potential for the development of subjects and, on the other, the need to conform what is sensitive to pedagogical guidelines. In the fourth and last chapter, priority was given to the investigation of the links between aesthetic education and moral training developed in the context of Catholic values, conformation for work and the establishment of standards of beauty and conduct. As final considerations, it is noteworthy that the proposition of an aesthetic education involved the refinement and improvement of the senses and sensibilities aimed at a creative action in the world, but also simple aestheticism, that is, pure sensory stimulation, and also, the mere aestheticization of certain values. But these borders were not clearly demarcated, and, therefore, it is considered that analyze the polysemy of debates on aesthetic education is a way of recovering the revolutionary power contained in this proposition.