A tradição (re) visitada: a experiência do Centro Regional de Pesquisas Educacionais de Minas Gerais CRPEMG

Abstract

Established in Belo Horizonte in 1956, the Educational Research Regional Center of Minas Gerais (CRPEMG) was the result of an agreement between the National Institute of Pedagogical Studies (INEP) and the Education Secretariat of Minas Gerais. It shared in the project of the Educational Research Brazilian Center (CBPE) created within the structure of the Education and Culture Ministry (MEC), the main office of which is in Rio de Janeiro and is linked to five Regional Centers installed in the cities of Belo Horizonte, São Paulo, Porto Alegre, Salvador and Recife. These institutions were responsible for the research production on the cultural and school conditions of the several Brazilian regions in order to provide the authorities with educational politics tuned with the development trends of not only each region in particular but also of the country as a whole. Moreover, they should develop experimental, investigative and technical methodological procedures that would contribute to the reorganization of the educational public politics planning and promote training actions for teachers, school managers and other specialists in the education field aiming at less empirical and more scientific teaching skills. The CBPE project is the outcome of a flow of ideas that in the 1950´s spread the hypothesis that the overcoming of the Brazilian underdevelopment required the nation´s educational reconstruction, and it is acknowledged as a chapter of the Brazilian literature on social perception upon which a new knowledge pattern for the educational issue treatment in Brazil is grounded. This thesis looks into the scientific experience of the CRPEMG, and inte r r o g a t e t h e p r o d u c t i o n o f me a n i n g o f t h i s undertaking to the guys that were envolved with its organization.. Supported by studies on the regional economy and taking the standpoint of the linguistic environment for theoretical reference, this thesis discusses the particularity of the Minas Gerais case, and explains the plot from which the political and intellectual elite departed to produce an explanatory standard for the setback and development which deeply affected the political choice and the acting perspective of the Educational Research Regional Center of Minas Gerais.