Conhecimento, linguagem e ensino : a educação em saúde na história da ciência (1940-1971)

Abstract

The goal of this thesis is to analyze the changes that took place in health education between 1940 and 1971. These changes are hypothesized to have resulted from two correlated processes. The first is the epistemological inflexion driven by the notion divulged by the WHO in 1948 that "health is the most complex state of physical, mental and social well-being and not just the absence of disease". This change in “thought style” brought about new public health demands and required mobilization for the crystallization of this notion at the same time that it catalyzed the configuration of health education personnel. This change occurred through a peculiar form of specialization with the introduction of different subjects in Biomedicine, Nutrition, Psychology, Social Communication and in other areas in a process of autonomization after World War II. Chapter 1 presents an analysis of the changes regarding material and historical circumstances in the health education area with a focus on the relationships between sanitary education and the development projects set forth for the state of Minas Gerais. In Chapter 2, the interaction between the analyses of the discourse and of the history of science and the intersections with language are investigated through almanacs, newspaper articles, films and other productions in the field of sanitary education. Chapter 3 deals with the dialogue between the fields of health and education, more specifically with how elementary education teachers were mobilized through courses in the New School movement and the new configurations that took shape around a "scientific pedagogy". Three approaches are followed regarding the sources: the dynamics that led both to the resignification of hygiene and its continuance in treatises, compendiums and collections designed for the training of health professionals and teachers, the creation of institutions such as the Minas Gerais Public Health School, the Sanitary Education Division of the Special Public Health Service and the National Service of Sanitary Education, and finally, the international dialogues of validation, such as the International Union for the Sanitary Education of the Population (Union Internationale pour l’Éducation Sanitaire de la Population, founded in France, 1951) and the First Latin American Seminar on Sanitary Education (Primer Seminario Latinoamericano de Educación Sanitaria, Argentina, 1960). The creation of the Commission for Education and Health of the State of Minas Gerais and the start of the mandatory teaching of health education in elementary and secondary schools pursuant to the Law of Directives and Basis for National Education (LDB), both of which took place in 1971, are also taken into consideration. Chapter 4 analyzes how “thought collectives”, such as from the field of Parasitology and researchers of schistosomiasis contributed to their mutual legitimization in a dialogue with health education.