A educação do corpo da criança pequena como um projeto civilizador: ressonâncias no debate educacional brasileiro (Minas Gerais, décadas de 1920 e 1930)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the prescriptions for body education in early childhood understanding them as important disciplinary devices produced in modernity. As a cultural bid, the art of educating childhood was addressed as a political project established by successive layers and guided by different interests and systems put in relationship. The study presents a discussion about the cultural construction of childhood and of the body as a significant pair in the civilizing process and in the education of the subjects, raising reflections on the incorporation and (re)configuration of the meanings attributed the children’s body education by school institution. The work On the Civility of Children’s Behavior written by Erasmus of Rotterdam in the 16th Century was taken as an initial landmark ―and as a metaphor― for the analysis of social representations constructed, on the long run, for a pedagogy of good manners. In a historical perspective, we intended to highlight the circulation of ideas and prescriptions for early childhood education, which after being implemented firstly in Western Europe, would spread throughout the diverse parts of the world, carrying, usually, an imperious truth effect. Aiming at the identification of resonances and appropriations in the Brazilian educational debate of the 20th Century, we set the scale of observation to a local spot and we emphasized the scholar practices carried out in the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil, in the decades of 1920 and 1930. In the analyzed sources, we identified elements of connection between the modern preschool and the complex system of representations that, in the last centuries, modified sensitivities and experiences in relation to childhood and its body education.