Education as a social question in Carneiro Leão Reform – Federal District 1922-1926

This article aims to discuss education as a social question in Carneiro Leão’s public instruction reform. Based on administrative reports and school programs published between 1923 and 1926, this text seeks to analyze the consolidation of instruments for social intervention in schools of Rio de Janeiro, pointing at possible connections between Carneiro Leão and the educational project of the Brazilian Association of Education.


Introduction
Among the many texts written about public instruction reforms and reformers in the 1920's, just recently historiography has turned to the period when Antônio Carneiro Leão led the General Direction of Public Instruction of the Federal District.The thesis of Zentgraf (1994) and the dissertations of Mendonça (1997), Luz (2004) and Silva (2006) were initial efforts towards that.To some extent, they develop the good hints that Nunes et al. (1984) and Nunes (2000) explore about the educational renewal in the city of Rio de Janeiro.They are also close to considerations of Ferreira (2002) about the motivations of educational reforms that preceded the initiatives of the 'new school' group headed by Fernando de Azevedo and Anísio Teixeira.This set of researches, mainly, allows the perception of something about the relations that Carneiro Leão, between 1922 and1926, sustained with the discussion on education at the center of the republican politics.
In the course of researches I conducted during my doctoral studies, I wondered about these relations as well.Instead of the return back to previous years done by Ferreira (2002) and Nunes et al. (1984), and as Nunes (2000) and Zentgraf (1994), I aimed at the articulations that Fernando de Azevedo and Anísio Teixeira could establish with Carneiro Leão's reform.I think I have found more differences of realization and doctrine than links and proximities themselves (PAULILO, 2007).In any way, and because this is common in this type of research, the answers that are sought shadow a good amount of other relevant questions.In this sense, this text addresses how Carneiro Leão, between 1922 and1926, leaded a reform of school services in the capital of the country, which widened the purposes of public instruction.To him, the importance of education had a lot to do with the range of social provisions configured in schools (CARNEIRO LEÃO, 1926a).The emphasis on the social purposes of the school is that which the main documents of the educational reform have registered more regularly from 1923.
In fact, throughout the administrative quadrennium of Carneiro Leão in the General Direction of Public Instruction of the Federal District there were successive references to efforts towards attracting to and maintaining children -seen as needyin the school for a longer time.Thus, in both discourses and projects, the care in making explicit the social dimensions of the public instruction reform appears in administrative reports, in school programs and in service norms over the period.The inventory of this recurrence founds this study of the social purposes that, back then, the proposal of educational reform made by the General Direction of Public Instruction of the Federal District articulated to the school.This article seeks, with this, to explore the vestiges of the pedagogical discourse of the early 20 th century used to solve conflicts in which Rio de Janeiro's school was debated in relation to the population's schooling.
Divided into two parts, the analysis attempts first to dimension the social purposes of the educational reform implemented by Carneiro Leão.In the other one, it approaches the type of social enhancement targeted by the Public Instruction Direction of the capital, shedding light on some actions employed for the expansion of the formative scope of the school.
The social dimension of the educational reform of the Federal District between 1922 and1926 Published in 1923, the Teaching programs for daytime primary schools were the first pedagogical orientations organized during the administration of Carneiro Leão in the Instruction Direction of the Federal District.They expressed the new education configuration, which went from 5 to 7 years, of which the four initial years comprehended the elementary course, and the last three, the complementary course 1 .The explicit concern of new school programs was with "[...] the orientation uniformity that was so necessary to the success of teaching" (DISTRITO FEDERAL, 1923, p. 349).In fact, observations about teaching procedures and methodology were all organized in a detailed manner and according to a monthly order of 1 The 7-year period for complete primary schooling admitted by Decree No 38 of May 9, 1893, which regulated teaching in the Federal District, was reduced to 6 years in 1911, in accordance with Decree No 838, of October 20.However, according to Carneiro Leão, since 1919, primary education was organized into 5 years.
contents for each school year.However, the comments that, in 1926, Carneiro Leão would publish in O ensino na capital do país [Teaching in the capital of the country] also allow understanding the extension of the period of offering of primary education as a maneuver to face a problem of civic and national nature.In this sense, the position of the public instruction director of the capital was made explicit with regard to the social meaning of the elevation of the population's school level: It is of little value a two or three-year teaching offered to the citizens of a capital like Rio de Janeiro, if thousands and thousands of sons of peoples come here, where the minimum popular culture corresponds to 7, 8 and 9 years of study and with a school work of 30 weekly hours, when we have 22 hours of such work in two-shift schools, and 25 in those with just one shift.We cannot have the pretension, in courses of 3 or 4 years and 22 hours on average of weekly work (today, because it used to be 20 only), of preparing our people to assimilate the foreigners that come to us, because the safest thing would be, on the contrary, us generalizing irreparably an absolutely inferior mental level in the Brazilian working mass (CARNEIRO LEÃO, 1926a, p. 8).
Under the aspect of the increased period of primary schooling, the idea of nationality construction appears as an education matter.Carneiro Leão observed the special relevance of school for the nations and nationalism in new countries like Brazil and in cosmopolitan capitals like Rio de Janeiro, with accountant skill.It was mainly about guaranteeing time for children to identify themselves with the civic culture and patriotism.For this purpose, school programs of 1923 were a core instrument.However, the "[...] insignificant number of enrollments in more advanced years" verified by Carneiro Leão (1926a, p. 9-10) remained as an obstacle to the effective increase in the schooling time of the population.According to data he gathered in the Instruction Direction in 1926, [...] when 31,180 children are enrolled in the 1 st grade, 15,799 in the 2 nd , and 9,945 in the 3 rd , we have only 5,782 in the 4 th , 2,686 in the 5 th , 1,665 in the 6 th , and 955 in the 7 th grade (CARNEIRO LEÃO, 1926a, p. 9-10).
As a remedy , Carneiro Leão (1926a) resorted to the provisions of social order he had been configuring in schools, in order to "[...] conquer definitively the child's willingness and love towards the school environment, guaranteeing attendance to further years of course" (CARNEIRO LEÃO, 1926a, p. 9-10).
The concern with social assistance, with health defense, with professional orientation and with attracting children to higher levels of primary education was particularly underlined at every new initiative of the reform.Carneiro Leão (1926a, p. 44) discussed "[...] the maintenance of the people's child for a longer time in the school [...]", observing that the school should respond to the claims of the social existence of that population.The examination of the main documentation about the educational reform implemented by Carneiro Leão is an opportunity to dimension solution proposals for an issue seen as of civic and national nature.
In 1923, the summer course for professorship formation carried out in the Federal District aimed to generalize the purposes of just-published school programs.The discourse pronounced by Carneiro Leão at the opening of that course insisted on that, showing that the objective was to constitute a unit of orientation around the social purpose of the school.In that occasion, the general director of public instruction shared with his assistance a new conception of popular and educative school that was also a clever observer of ordinary facts, a direct factor of the Brazilian civilization and culture.Above all, his speech treated of questions such as 'integrating the school into the reality of life', 'teaching to do by doing', 'forging the people for the fight for life' and 'accentuating the awareness of ordinary life'.Carneiro Leão advocated that ongoing school programs enabled a consistent analysis of these questions by teachers: When for the fight for life we clarify our will and our knowledge, when we take advantage of math in daily occurrences, when through manual work we can educate the spirit, guided towards national matters, and when in geography, in history and in hygiene we clearly determine a region, its configuration, its chronicle and its influence on human life, we will have formed, even though we do not leave primary school, a man to overcome in existence, with a clear vision of things.The method of direct observation in arithmetic, as well as in geometry, in geography, as in history, in hygiene and in manual work, as in physical education and civic culture, will give the generations with such a formation another national feeling and another value as a people.In a country shaped by a sharing of all races, there is nothing more urgent than the constant and immediate view of ambient environments for the formation of a defined type (CARNEIRO LEÃO, 1942, p. 79).
Thus, when addressing to teachers, Carneiro Leão showed that popular education was more than alphabetization and teaching the four basic operations, it was about forming 'another national feeling' and 'another value as a people'.According to his understanding, this task depended on the establishment of reality as a culture motive, and of observation and action as work methods, because "[...] our educational problem is not only to prepare a people of action, but it is to give the latter personality".In the pronouncement of Carneiro Leão (1942, p. 78) during the opening of the summer course, the idea of social life as a result of the 'nationality vigor' is illustrated with an emphasis on "[...] the immediate contact with realities [...]", the "[...] ambient realities [...]", "[...] the perception of the everyday life".In this sense, the main concern of Carneiro Leão (1942, p. 79) before professorship was suggesting that the awareness about reality would make the child "[...] a factor aware of the life and activity of his or her community".
Marta Carvalho (2002) remembers that the formula 'educating for life' is polysemous and elliptical.As she assesses, the expression [...] condenses a pedagogical program organized under the imperative of ruling a child's activity, imposing limits to his or her freedom (CARVALHO, 2002, p. 392).This expression has not only served to the way Catholics found to adjust the child to religious precepts but has also been evoked by those who perceived and proposed new life conditions and values.In part, the reflections of Marta Carvalho (1989) point to the fact that, in any of the cases, the formula 'educating for life' contained political answers rehearsed by sectors of the Brazilian intellectuality in the redefinition of domination schemes in vigor.From this perspective, the expression also helps explain the justification of the educational reform presented by Carneiro Leão, in 1924, to the mayor of the Federal District, as a plan to reorganize the social purposes of the public school.The conception of an education aimed at 'preparing the people for the fight for life', with which the instruction director of the capital oriented the teaching activity in the 1923-1924 summer course, was followed by a reorganization proposal of the institutions in charge of carrying it out.
In the Justification of a reform plan presented to Mr. Mayor, Carneiro Leão's focus was the professional orientation performed by the school.The public instruction director of the capital understood the concern with making the life of children happy in the school, letting their individuality rise spontaneously, without forgeries or tyrannies, as a sociological fact (CARNEIRO LEÃO, 1926a).According to his understanding, the contact of the school with the life reality, based on physiology and  1926a, p. 223).
Even more important, Carneiro Leão (1926a, p. 224) understood that [...] the action of the school and of primary school, where the child's psychology is known, intelligence is not forced, and the spirit is not misrepresented by the bookish culture, can have a powerful influence on the determination of individual aptitudes.
Thus, for the Instruction General Direction of the Federal District, the professional orientation promoted by the school, through an orientation cabinet, would be a representative institution of the social and economic range of popular education: The purpose of professional education promoted by the school is to meet the economic needs of the environment and give everyone the chance to live and work according to their skills, discovering and guiding vocations, determined in children, examined and known (CARNEIRO LEÃO, 1926a, p. 224).
Around the scientific effort to solve, by the school, the issue of professional orientation, Carneiro Leão (1926a) pointed the formidable sum of energy and the substantial resources of which one can take advantage with the formation of individuals capable of counting with the value of time and saving workforce to perform a job.As an argument, this conception of the role of the school in the organization of the free labor market in the capital of the country emphasized the social benefit of the school action in the formation of the worker, of the artist or of the intellectual.It was not about determining, but discovering, through physical, mental and moral knowledge of children, the individual skills that better qualified them for a career.According to Carneiro Leão (1926a, p. 223), this was "[...] actually the biggest problem the school had to solve".
Even so, the school medical inspection was a current topic of interest and discussion in Carneiro Leão's Justification.According to what he wrote to the mayor, the health services of the Direction should reach the "[...] accurate knowledge of the sanitary and even economic situation of the environment where students lived outside the class, in family [...]" and the "[...] careful organization of files, capable of showing the health conditions of children, their predispositions, their physical skills" (CARNEIRO LEÃO, 1926a, p. 227).
In this sphere, the remodeling of the schoolmedical service proposed by Carneiro Leão saw the need for a chief physician to direct inspection works, and visiting nurses serving as assistants and intermediary agents between the physician, the teacher and the family.Another proposal justified in the scope of the public instruction reform suggested the establishment and generalization, in all poor neighborhoods, of the free distribution of a glass of milk and bread with butter to all children.Along with the reorganization of the school medical service, the distribution of meals in schools, dental assistance and the construction of centers for tuberculosis prevention for students with their health threatened, in addition to the organization of school medical clinics, composed the protection network planned by Carneiro Leão.The aim of the enterprise was described by the public instruction director to the mayor of the Federal District in the following terms: When we observe our students, especially in certain neighborhoods, and see how many children there are there, suffering chronic starvation, malnutrition, growing weak day after day, in a straight and fatal march towards tuberculosis, we become restless so that public authorities can help a significant percentage of the generation of children in decay.However, all these people, that will later crowd hospitals and make themselves an infection element, a dead weight to society, could save themselves in the school, where the problem is relatively easy (CARNEIRO LEÃO, 1926a, p. 228) On the other side, boarding schools and boarding houses for poor students contemplated the resources proposed to support the school formation of 'needy and humble' children.The creation of new men and women's boarding schools was seen by Carneiro Leão as a way to provide an answer to the 'requests of indigent parents and of despaired protectors'.In his view, new boarding schools could open new assistance fronts to the many "[...] miserable children we find wandering down the streets, selling tickets or newspapers, explored in domestic occupations, and even indigent".As for boarding houses , Carneiro Leão (1926a, p. 231) aimed at rewarding poor children whose "[...] talent, performance and character clearly put them among superior beings".With the theme of the boarding houses, the attention was turned to the social focus of the instruction reform proposed by Carneiro Leão (1926a, p. 232): "[...] to provide the society with excellent elements [...]", which, without an assistance-oriented and financial protection network, would be lost.
In the Justification of a reform plan, Carneiro Leão's positions suggest that the possibilities of social ascension would be open to a talent competition and the primary school and the technical-professional education would be the means to assessing skills and aptitudes.With no intention to engage in a criticism of an ideology of this type, it is worth highlighting that scientific notions that determine measurement and assessment criteria have much to do with the representations, at that time dominant, about what could be considered an indication of the 'capacity' of performing a given social role.
Nevertheless, the core point is that the concern with 'providing society with excellent elements' indicates that Carneiro Leão understood public education as an investment in the future.Although this is another idea embraced in the midst of the regeneration campaigns the Old Republic knew, the considerations around the questions expressed a strong political appeal (HANSEN, 2007).The administrative report that Carneiro Leão presented to the mayor in 1925 is a bruising example of said appeal: I also do not understand how the men of this government can fear the future of their people when they have at hand the school, where they can organize an education with energy to build, based on work and order.If, instead of doing so, they let the budgets grow everywhere but the education area, decreasing day by day the people's possibilities, in this case, they can and must really fear the inevitable social disorganization of their country, especially at a time of universal dissatisfaction and contagious disorder all over the world.The generation that is in our hands will be what we make of it.Its possibility will directly derive from our greater or lesser generosity in preparing it to the fight for life.Therefore, ours is the duty of seeking all means, making all sacrifices, cutting everywhere, so that we do not compromise the future of the children of today, of those who depend exclusively on us.The tomorrow's Nation, made by them, will be less of their own work, of their intrinsic value, and more of the capacity and possibilities we give for them to build it (CARNEIRO LEÃO, 1926a, p. 214).
Mainly in Carneiro Leão's formulation, the political appeal of the idea of having the school as the builder of 'Tomorrow's nation' seemed to be of social order and range.Understood as an alternative to the formation carried out in the streets, the public school was seen as an instrument of social organization, the possibility of preparing new generations to a society with energy to build, based work and order.
As a textual genre, an administrative report is not an efficient mean of diffusion of political ideas.Actually, it better satisfies the need for detailing of initiatives and the rendering of accounts of administrative functions.Due to this, it is also convenient to explore the 'functional' sense of this document of Carneiro Leão.The emphatic criticism of the fear of government men brought with it the recognition of the 'sympathetic collaboration' of school and medical inspections and of the 'unchangeable good will, if not sacrifice' of teachers.When concluding his administrative report, in 1925, Carneiro Leão was careful to associate the results of the educational reform of the capital with everything that depended on personal effort, censoring the lack of assistance of material order to what had been attempted, decidedly and enthusiastically: A conclusion, I think, of the long exposition already done can be drawn: before the difficulties, as big as they could be, and they were huge, arms were never crossed.Whatever thing that depended on personal effort, or that could come to a result, though minimum, was tried, or is being tried, decidedly and enthusiastically.For this reason, it is never too much to acknowledge the sympathetic collaboration of the inspections -school and medical -and to praise the unchangeable good will, if not sacrifice, of a big portion of our teachers.It is, however, urgent that the administration makes use of this effort under the penalty of limiting it and disabling it many times for lack of an assistance of material order, frequently very small (CARNEIRO LEÃO, 1926a, p. 214).
Even so, a quick analysis of the law that regulated promotions by merit and classification lists of teachers show that in the 'unchangeable good will of the teachers' there was a noticeable amount of incentive from the Instruction Direction.From 1924, by means of Decree no.2.008, of August 12 (DISTRITO FEDERAL, 1924), Carneiro Leão changed the form of evaluating a teacher's merit.Fundamentally, he organized the evaluation process into four elements of appreciation: pedagogical aptitude; assiduity, taking into account punctuality; zeal for education and for the school; exercise in rural areas.At the same time these criteria manifested the administration's interest in the good order of education and in a better performance of children, they ascertained the type of dedication to teaching that was convenient to the exercise of public professorship.This is what was verified in classification tables of 1926.According to article 11 of Decree no.2.008, the discrimination of commissions in which teachers had participated without compromising the teaching activity gave preference to promotion by merit.In 1925, in a universe of 258 first-class adjunct teachers, 25 had exercised a commissioned job in functions considered of some social range in ongoing school programs at that time.A total of 7 1 st class adjunct teachers taught chants, 2 taught chants and gymnastics, 1 taught only gymnastics, 5 taught sloyd, 2 taught sloyd and molding, 1 taught molding, 1 taught work with flowers, 3 taught drawing and manual work, 1 taught only drawing, 1 taught manual work and physical culture, and 1 taught a class for free.This accounts for nearly 10% of all 1 st class adjunct teachers.
In a mere quantification of the appointments inscribed in the classification by merit of 1926, it is not possible to indicate the 'abnegation of a group of teachers' in the distribution of some type of meal to the children from Morro do Pinto, from Ilha do Governador, in Olaria, Areia Branca and Guaratiba, from Zumbi, from Matadouro, from Magarça and from Curral Falso.However, circular letters of November 23 and 28, 1924, oriented that these initiatives, of social type as well, should compose the note on zeal for teaching and for the school.In this sense, even though it is unfeasible to measure the degree of compliance of teachers with the new social outlines that were being configured in the school, it is possible to perceive, in the reorganization of criteria of classification by merit of teachers, a strong appeal to the practice of educational or assistance and auxiliary services to teaching.Without a specialized and stable staff, the teaching of chants, gymnastics, sloyd, molding, drawing, manual work and physical culture depended on the initiative and effort of teachers.Likewise, the distribution of food to students and the organization of school funds were done through 'the effort and abnegation of a group of teachers'.The acknowledgement of and appreciation for these actions constituted the first sign of the regulation of extraordinary services of professorship by the public power, and an attempt to generalize practices of effective social range in the schools of the capital.
The programmatic structuration of the social orientation of the educative action of public instruction came in 1926, with the publishing of the new Teaching programs for daytime primary schools.Published after the 1923-1924 summer courses and the Thursday courses of 1925, it was a detailed review of 1923 programs.In 1926, the social purposes of public education were made explicit in the general orientations and in the indication of each disciplinary part of school programs.Presented by Carneiro Leão as a response to current social needs, the document synthetized the proposal of educational reform of the General Direction of Public Instruction of the Federal District: Responding to social needs, the programs will conduct the formation of children and youths to make the life of the country more balanced, more prosperous and happier.Hence the increasing urgency in approximating the school to the real life, making the classroom a space where one learns to live, so that the everyday life is the material with which the school will work.No abstract things, no dead texts, which are more or less comprehended and are slavishly recited.The school becomes something more than a place where one learns only to read, write and count; it turns into the laboratory of physical education, watching over health; of professional education, towards a job; of moral and civic culture, setting the duties in relation to the Motherland and the Humankind.It prepares, from an early age, the individual to participate actively in the life of his or her community, awakening in children the feeling of responsibility.Thus, when we transmit through the program the appreciation for health, for healthy habits, horror towards diseases, and encouragement to other defenses established in a meticulous hygiene education, completed by a rational physical culture; when we seek to teach one to act, loving the activity done in manual work, and to act usefully, being the school the one to choose the profession that is adequate to everyone and to every environment; when we seek to orient the civic and moral education towards the duties of a democracy and the fraternization between men; when we want to adopt methods that are more active, more practical and more accessible to the preparation of new generations, we are contributing to making the school a factor of social balance (CARNEIRO LEÃO, 1926b, p. 182).
The school is the domain that, more explicitly, was addressed in the Teaching programs for daytime primary schools.The main artifact of the objectives of school programs published in 1926 concentrates on the association between school and ordinary life, seeming that Carneiro Leão saw the terms as interchangeable when it comes to preparing the people's mentality: We do not treat of great abstractions, or of knowledge that demands an exceptional culture, or an exceptional work from the teacher, but, rather, of abandoning the pure intellectualism, opening the door of the schools to the everyday life, without seeing in the notions of the books an immutable thing to be taught in its entirety, everywhere and to all environments.In every subject, we want individuals to take advantage of everything that, in relation to ordinary needs, can guide the intelligence and the vocation.I do not think this is hard.When it comes to the study of natural sciences, i.e. cotton, the teacher can show the value of this raw material, talking about the spinning and weaving industry, stressing the conditions in which it develops, the possibilities for its workers, and the education necessary for those who want to work in it successfully.Not to mention the objective processes, teaching to observe in movies, during visits to factories, etc.Such a teaching method is a source of pleasure for students, due to the fascination of said lessons; for parents, as they comprehend the practical range, the immediate usefulness of their children's studies; for teachers, because they always have at hand an exhaustible spring of initiatives, capable of making their classes lively and attractive.The new programs, opening the school entirely to the ordinary life, bring some action into all subjects.The student will learn, as quickly as possible, by observing, experimenting and doing.The original knowledge will increase, the only one that matters (CARNEIRO LEÃO, 1926b, p. 182).
Considering school programs not only as a social construction of knowledge but, as Goodson (1995) perceives, as an expression of the way certain questions are defined as social problems, their analysis allows comprehending something about the forces that shape and determine a public instruction reform.Thus, more than laws and regulations, instructions, norms and curricular guidelines, it becomes central to the approach to investigate the informal and interactive processes of structuration of school contents.In the case put by school programs of 1926, the social utility of education emphasized the interest that teaching would arise when touching practical matters.However, together, such programs positioned the Instruction Direction according to expectations referring to the school's formative action, nourished in the circle of the Brazilian Association of Education (ABE).Carneiro Leão's approach in relation to the ABE offers a historical example of the social and political processes that have justified the structuration of the public school as a 'factor of social balance'.This participation means a little less than half of the 14 members that participated in the Commission that produced the teaching programs 2 .The representativeness of the ABE members in the Commission of the Instruction Direction allows recontextualizing the social enhancement actions intended by Carneiro Leão.

Carneiro Leão's social enhancement program and the educational reform in the capital
The project of the ABE was well analyzed by Marta Carvalho.The study presented in Molde nacional e fôrma cívica [National mold and civic form] shows that, in the ABE, health, moral and work were the three pillars that supported the conviction in respect to the importance of education (CARVALHO, 1998).The concern of Marta Carvalho with the 'reality' that is elaborated by the discourse and, then, constituted as an intervention object to a certain agent brings with it an essentially political interpretation of the educational movement in the period.Fundamentally, interested in working the period that culminated, in 1932, with the reorganization of the ABE and the inclusion of the so-called group of 'education professionals', Marta Carvalho treats before of the relative sedimentation of a land of understanding.In this sense, she first comprehended that in the period between the foundation of the association, in 1924, and the emergence of divergences in its Directing Council, in 1927, the civic discourse had constituted and articulated the action program of the ABE.
As shown by Marta Carvalho, the civic discourse and the propaganda of education were the main resources to organize a large movement of public opinion for education matters.On the other hand, there was 'innumerous civic-commemorative practices' aiming to guarantee the Association's cohesion.In spite of the several civisms impregnating the propaganda work of the educational cause that aggregated the intellectuals of the ABE, questions of health, of moral and relative to the work organization consolidated a unique social action program, which Marta Carvalho (1998, p. 150) well outlines: The civic education, widely forged by rituals of constitution of healthy bodies and of disciplined minds and hearts, was a resource to guarantee that education, 'powerful weapon', did not come to constitute a factor of social destabilization.The power of the mastery over the codes appropriated by the school's clientele should be controlled and instrumentalized in the cultural project of the social reformers of the ABE.The care for the civic formation appeared as a guarantee of the 'methodic, adequate, remunerating and salutary work', of a 'conscious and voluntary discipline and not only automatic and terrified', as well as 'of order without the need for the employment of force and of restrictive or suppressive measures to freedom' (CARVALHO, 1998, p. 150, grifo do autor) It was about structuring control mechanisms that were more capable of producing a moralization of customs and a body discipline compatible with the labor world.Referring to the school, social service, benefactor action, the increasing technical character of teaching, professional orientation, application of aptitude tests and maximization of results were measures defended in this sense.In this point, the education proposals for the people that synthetized expectations of 'social enhancement' was a priority theme of studies and debates in the Brazilian Association of Education between 1924and 1927(CARVALHO, 1988;1998).
Mostly, this period coincides with Carneiro Leão's administration in the Instruction General Direction of the Federal District, and has to do with the public instruction reform of that time.The domain, in which the appropriation of popular education proposals of the ABE is, in particular, visible, is the 1926 school programs.Around hygiene, professional orientation and moral and civic education, there were methodological indications and didactic orientations that were already nourished in the social circle of the ABE about the formative action of the school.The 1926 school programs focused the question of comprehensive education for life according to the triple basis of health, of moral and of work, sedimented in the ABE.
In the orientation established by the new programs, hygiene teaching was correlated to that of physical and natural sciences, and aimed at creating, in new generations, an "[…] exact awareness about the value of health" (DISTRITO FEDERAL, 1926, p. 189).It recommended the association of the first notions of natural, physical and chemical history with hygiene in order to "[...] soften the teacher's work [...]" and "[...] amaze the child" with lessons, whenever possible, given "[...] in face of the object that serves as theme" (DISTRITO FEDERAL, 1926, p. 200).For such a purpose, it suggested activities outside the classroom, "[...] at the school, at public gardens, at museums, at the countryside, at the seashore, in short, wherever the child can learn by seeing, observing and doing" (DISTRITO FEDERAL, 1926, p. 201).
Since the beginning of the first grade, the programs encouraged the initiation of children in the "[...] capital habits for the normality of the human body", and, for this reason, they were presented as part of the "[...] Health Code" (DISTRITO FEDERAL, 1926, p. 202)  3 .This work should continue throughout the schooling time of the child in order to 'be able to form and consolidate the students' good hygienic behavior' .The school programs of 1926, to make hygiene education regular, recommended the organization of health squads, a group of fifteen to twenty children subjected to a daily verification of hygiene duties, and of school museums, a collection of objects of which the teacher would make use to teach basic notions of hygiene and health.There was also a strong concern with stressing to the teacher the importance of promoting lectures to show the class the need to avoid "[...] unhealthy contacts [...]" and the "[...] terrors of a morbid hereditariness".In this sense, school programs underlined the meaning of showing the importance of living apart from "[...] ill creatures [...]" and warning about the need everyone had to know their own health situation (DISTRITO FEDERAL, 1926, p. 202-203).
The "[...] education of the character and of the heart [...]", which in the ABE was claimed as a means "[...] to transform each individual into a useful social factor [...]", circumscribed the orientations of the moral and civic education program of 1926 (CARVALHO, 1998, p. 150).Producing the general effect of a norm of social excellence, this was the part of the program whose aim was more to form the feeling than to teach culture.Above all, it sought 'to create pure habits' through 'beautiful examples' that could be obtained from the subjects that would be worked.From this perspective, the moral education should be carried out for every purpose, [...] in the occurrence of any daily event, in face of any fact or of any opportune notion, the moral lesson must be given: With geography we will be able to show how the man, very small on the earth, infinitely tiny in relation to the dimension of the worlds, has learned how to become, for his intelligence, energy and work, almost the reason for existence here.But at the same time, if we show that this earth, which we claim to be the center of the immovable world, is a 3 1 st -Take showers with soap every day and wash hands with water and soap frequently, especially before eating; 2 nd -Brush your teeth after waking up and before going to bed; 3 rd -Drink as much milk as possible and eat fruits and vegetables every day; 4th -Drink, at least, five glasses of water every day; 5 th -Perform bowel movement every morning and then wash hands with soap; 6 thº -Wear light, fresh and loose clothes; 7 º -Play outside some hours of the day, always sleep with open windows, or leave only blinds closed in case of houses with only one floor; 8 thº -Keep an erect position as much as possible whether standing or sitting; 9 th -Be calm, confident and glad as much as possible; 10 th -Do not throw droplets of saliva at other people and avoid receive them; 11 º -Do not shake anybody's hand, and do not kiss or let someone kiss you; 12 th -Do not use glasses, towels or other objects that have been recently maculated with somebody else's saliva.
grain of sand lost the immensity of all worlds that incessantly move around the sun, we evidence that today's truths may be tomorrow's errors, and, therefore, we should be modest and tolerant.Math, for whose problems we need persistent effort, can be a source of moral lessons.Just as in history, as long as we know how to apply the beautiful examples and let go of the bad ones.The example of teacher itself is already the most meaningful and beautiful moral lesson (DISTRITO FEDERAL, 1926, p. 199).
The 1926 school programs also oriented the development in children of order, economy and social insurance habits.The interest in life trivial problems served to the elaboration of a popular civism, with labor and methodical traits, which aimed at providing means of education and social preservation.Part of this view of moral and civism referred to the family.According to the new Teaching programs for daytime primary schools, "[...] a good educator does not miss the chance to orient the family, to make it interested in what is done in the school" (DISTRITO FEDERAL, 1926, p. 200).In this sense, teachers were encouraged to organize parents associations in the school as a way to contribute to a 'greater development of education' and 'social well-being'.Above all, the set of indications of the moral and civic program supported the teaching of civic, social and human duties of the individual as an operation of idealization of spaces such as home, family and work.
In the school programs of 1926, the idea of professional orientation by the school was taken as far as the strategies to favor the children's hygienic, moral and civic education.Then, the teacher was stimulated to [...] take advantage of every opportunity to attract the attention of the students to the value of work, mainly to ordinary professions of our social environment (DISTRITO FEDERAL, 1926, p. 205).
It was not about therefore, a new subject, or notions to be retained or special exercises to write or recite, but about preparing children "[...] to face the future seriously [...]" and "[...] to discern among the professions studied and known the advantages of this or that one" (DISTRITO FEDERAL, 1926, p. 205).The teachers were instructed act as follows whenever opportune: Make manual work in class appealing; Resort to spontaneous activity; Perform the rehabilitation of the work, particularly of manual work; Talk to students about the professions of the region, of the Federal District and of the country Provoke enthusiasm towards more promising professions; Avoid the increasing valuation of trendy professions, every time they do not have a future; Make as many children as possible be interested in learning a craft, sending them to professional schools; Provoke the contact of the class with professional means -visits to workshops, factories, farms, etc.; Indicate certain delicate and light professions appropriate for women, such as jewellery, watchmaking, etc., which are exclusively exercised by men today; Make evident the inconvenience of making somebody a mere worker without a qualified craft and whose value is more in brute force than in intellectual preparation and in intelligence; Take advantage of the teaching of the many subjects to draw attention to the several careers and life and future conditions of the respective proletariat.Stress the importance of a well-chosen career; Stimulate children to think seriously about their future; Lead them, especially in language and from the fourth grade, to prepare compositions, lectures, short conferences about the most common professions, required physical and intellectual aptitudes, economic value, possibilities, inconvenience, etc (DISTRITO FEDERAL, 1926, p. 192).
According to the orientation of school programs, it was inside the plan and by taking advantage of the opportunity of a lesson of this or that subject that the teacher would develop, before the class, his or her considerations and teachings about professions.The Teaching programs for daytime primary schools configured professional orientation around the conviction that the school could already count with modern methods of study of children, being able [...] to direct education, with more or less accuracy, so that students are oriented from the beginning, with resolution and fruition, towards the profession that is more adequate to their individual dispositions (DISTRITO FEDERAL, 1926, p. 192).
Thus, the careful preparation of medical and pedagogical files and the application of tests by the Instruction General Direction would serve as a guide for the candidates, after the primary course, to professional schools of the municipality or to other crafts and professions.Above all, it was important to make of the primary school a means for learning the mental value of children and carrying out the new organizing principles of the industrial work.
In many ways, the Teaching programs for daytime primary schools were committed with the educational project of the ABE, supported, openly or latently, on the very same triple basis of its action: moral, hygienic and economic.Similarly to the modus operandi of that association, it publicized behaviors that fell upon family life, work relations and selfcare.Thus, close to educational proposals that circulated at the department of the ABE in Rio de Janeiro, the school programs of 1926 equally emphasized the 'quality' of the education carried out to the detriment of projects of diffusion of a type of school that was limited to instruct by means of quick alphabetization.In this sense, not so much because there was an importance presence of ABE associates in the Commission that elaborated this document, but more for being the expression of a policy of expansion of the formative scope of the school, the school programs edited in 1926 can be seen as a response to alphabetization campaigns that were being promoted by civic-nationalist organizations during the First Republic.The volume Teaching in the capital of the country also shows the proximity between the project of the ABE and Carneiro Leão's positions before the questions of organization of popular education.The main action guidelines employed by the ABE -the Salvationist discourse, the provision of assistance and the commemorative practices -were used in the educational reform promoted at that time by the General Direction of Public Instruction.The concern with these resources is one of the characteristics of Carneiro Leão's report.For instance, his discourse about the redeeming intentions of the school is similar to those that, in the ABE, disqualified Brazilian populations with images of disease and addiction.The representation of education as a social question, which Carneiro Leão's discourse about the educational reform privileges, corresponds to the images of malnutrition and health decay of children, of the low mental level of the 'Brazilian working mass' and of school dropouts of poor children.Above all, the idea that the public school could 'save a number of malnourished little kids, fatal candidates to tuberculosis' produced the large amount of actions of food distribution, of social assistance and of school-medical inspection so highlighted in the report by Carneiro Leão (1926a).
In fact, what Carneiro Leão (1926a, p. 52) defined as "[...] the defense of health in the school [...]" was organized around the idea that the school should be "[...] a fertile health laboratory of the race".For the benefit of children's health, the fight work against endemic diseases and the preparation of sanitary files undertaken by the school-medical inspection were justified, as well as the social assistance initiatives, in special.Thus, the distribution of the 'glass of milk' or of the 'plate of soup' and the increase in the number of school funds and Kindness Leagues aiming to assist the needy were practices encouraged by the Instruction Direction in schools.According to Carneiro Leão (1926a, p. 69), the school assistance that teachers managed to developed helped powerfully in the creation of meal services, in the distribution of clothes and in the installation and maintenance of 21 Dental Cabinets.According to data of the Instruction Direction, in 1926 there were 50 school funds in operation, 20 general, of district, and 30 special; in the last three years of administration 30 were created.As for the Kindness Leagues, Carneiro Leão (1926a) reported the existence of 40, of which 38 were installed from 1923 until 1926.About the range of such institutions, the instruction director counted, from early 1925, the creation and regular maintenance of 20 glasses of milk institutions in 20 schools, and school soup in 10, besides the installation of 20 Dental Cabinets between 1924 and 1926.
Mainly the incentive that Carneiro Leão admittedly conferred to school solemnities had the same goal of commemorative practices elaborated in the sphere of the ABE and whose meaning Marta Carvalho (1998, p. 178) defined as the occasion for "[...] celebration of ideal conducts in the school".In this very same sense, Carneiro Leão (1926a) manifested the opinion that the many commemorative practices of the school could serve "[...] to attract the attention of the public, to show everyone the strength, the value and the moral situation of the primary school" (CARNEIRO LEÃO, 1926a, p. 49).On one hand, the social sanction that school solemnities promoted to children was taken as a factor of influence on their mental and moral formation.To Carneiro Leão, the influence of the social environment in the school established the educative range of public education.Thus, the creation of Circles of mothers, of Associations of parents and teachers and of Post-school action associations also contributed to a greater efficiency of the school work, as long as they enabled a greater contact between the school and the family.
On the other hand, just as in the intellectual circles of the ABE, school solemnities were seen by Carneiro Leão (1926a, p. 10) as "[...] a means to create and feed the public interest in the school".Under this aspect, all solemnities of social or national character contributed to attract to the school a strong sympathy, serving to show the prestige that the school already had in the society of the capital.To some extent, it was expected that civic or social celebrations performed in the school also had an influence on parents, if not "[...] influencing the preparation of an environment favorable to the normal development of children", at least "[...] elevating the school and the role of the teacher" (CARNEIRO LEÃO, 1926a, p. 52).Fundamentally, in this last sense, school solemnities developed as a response to the little esteem the public school had in the Federal District.

Final considerations
The comparison of the practices and conceptions of the ABE and of the Instruction Direction, between 1924 and 1926, shows how the public instruction reform was articulated to the educational debate of the 1920's in the federal capital.In 1925, the presence of the general director of public instruction in the directing council of the ABE made evident his concern with education as a social question.In the proposal and in the action, it is possible to distinguish in the Instruction Direction the relevance of the project that made viable the ABE itself, being constituted as a civic entity turned to the education cause.According to the school programs edited in 1926 and as shown in the report published subsequently in the Teaching in the capital of Brazil, the valuation of 'comprehensive education', the nationality molding character that was conferred to the educative action, and the rational organization of work were the current topics of the educational reform in the Federal District.Significantly, the organizing role the civic discourse played in the ABE, relativizing divergences and opening spaces of consensual action, can also be noticed in the discourse of the redeeming intentions with which Carneiro Leão described the implementation of his public teaching reform.The emphasis on the resources referred to as necessary to the definition of the 'national type' circumscribed new domains to the molding work of nationality in the school.In this scope, the conception that Carneiro Leão had of the school as a 'savior refuge' for poor children illustrates well the 'metaphorization' of the educational action as a sanitary work, as Marta Carvalho perceived in the expectations nourished by intellectuals engaged in the ABE.
The similarity of the educational campaign promoted by the ABE and of the reform of school services implemented by the General Direction of Public Instruction shows that education, then, condensed expectations of social, political and economic control and organization.In the way that Carneiro Leão perceived the public school and the purposes of its teaching, the construction of nationality through the formation of a methodical and productive worker is evidenced as an educational problem.The retrospective summary that the work Teaching in the capital of Brazil was treated of the possibilities of action of the public authority that were established with the educational reform: assistance, subvention, equipping and administrative control.They confirmed the option for an excluding political model, in which social transformation was taken as, [...] compliance with the dictates of order and progress just as they were established by the elites that invested themselves with authority to promote them (CARVALHO, 1998, p. 147).
The instruction reform in 1926 transformed into public policies the constant and obstinate intervention of prophylaxis, compliance and assistance, putting into motion a pedagogical apparatus that was both formative and preventive.
Among the members of the commission that organized the school programs of 1926, five were part of the ABE direction between 1924 and 1926.As specialists, the collaborators listed are Heitor Lyra da Silva, Delgado de Carvalho, Edgar Sussekind de Mendonça and Fernando Nereo Sampaio.Member of the Directing Council of the ABE, inducted in 1925, Pedro Deodato de Morais was a school inspector by the time of the organization of the 1926 school programs.Carneiro Leão himself was part of theABE Directing Council between 1925 and1926.

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The teaching programs of 1926 for daytime primary schools were elaborated by a commission headed by the Instruction General Director and composed of the school inspectors Paulo Maranhão and Deodato de Morais and of professors Eulina de Nazareth, Floripes Anglada Lucas and Isabel da Costa Pereira Mendes.The Commission also counted with the collaboration of Heitor Lyra da Silva, J. P. Fontenelle, Delgado de Carvalho, Carlos Porto Carrero, Theophilo Moreira da Costa, Nereu Sampaio, Edgar Mendonça and Arhur Joviano.PauliloActa Scientiarum.Education Maringá, v. 37, n. 2, p. 129-140, Apr.-June, 2015