Promoção da frequência escolar na instrução pública mineira: organização, implementação e representações da caixa escolar (1911-1913)

Abstract

This paper aims to reflect about the organization, implementation and representations built about School Cash in Minas Gerais in the two subsequent years to the implementation of Bueno Brandão Reform. The school cash was elaborated as a way to assure attendance and maintenance of poor children and children of republican education establishments. The regulation promoted by State and the prescription of assistance of population demonstrates the premises of a historical moment in which it was expected that society felt coresponsible for the dissemination of education in the lower classes of society. The regulation sought to focus on the main causes problems of low school attendance and school dropout. That way, we can infer that the law was constructed with the purpose of altering reality released acting on it. Thus, the State has developed a number of strategies to promote the organization of school cash in the state. With the objective to understand the parameters and guidelines of the organization of school cash in the state of Minas Gerais, I operated on a comparative analysis of the situation of school cash, verifying conflicting and common points, and identifying the appropriations made by those subjects, as well as the flexibility possible of the State in face to the adjustments made. With the intention to understand which senses were built regarding the school cash at the beginning of the twentieth century, I sought, based on the concept of representations produced, analyze some discourses about the institution, be by the State, either by state officials or by civil society. It is possible concluded that the movement of the state by provide school attendance of poor children is linked to a wider process, in which it sought to ensure the propagation of legitimate culture in public education establishments. In that way, the security of education is linked before to the question of public policy and construction of values based on the new historical period, than an attempt at emancipation of the popular classes, the main targets of the legislation. Thus, we can understand the school cash as a public policy, since it the state was highlight in its organization, incentive and supervision so that the law might be fulfilled. However, we can verify that both in discourses of the State and in the discourses of society, the school cash was represented as a mechanism of philanthropy and beneficence, and not as a right of children and poor children.