Grupo Escolar Gonçalves Chaves: cultura escolar e organização de tempos e espaços (1909-1938)

Abstract

The dissertation discusses the school culture and the organizing processes of primary public instruction, with Gonçalves Chaves School Group as its locus. It is a historiographical research with an approach to Cultural History. The study aims to reconstruct aspects of Gonçalves Chaves School Group history, discussing challenges, difficulties, processes and practices that contributed to the formation of school culture in the first institution in Montes Claros with a new format for organizing times and spaces in primary public education. The time frame is situated in the early decades of the 20th century, covering the period from 1909 to 1938. The problem was structured around the following question: How did the Gonçalves Chaves School Group establish its school culture and organize its times and spaces to discipline and civilize its students, contributing to the progress and development of the city of Montes Claros? The methodological procedures consist of mapping and cataloging documentary sources, reading and transcribing information, creating tables, reality analisys, and wrote historiography. Among the accessed documentary sources are: reports from Education Inspectors of Public Instruction; Gazeta do Norte newspaper and A Palavra newspaper; Education legislations; Iconographic sources and thematic interviews. The Document analysis followed a systematic process of reading information, and dialogue with other historians and education researchers helped capture the synchronic and diachronic movement that shaped the reality of the early school groups, with their challenges and achievements. In this process, analytical categories emerged and guided the structure of the articles that make up the dissertation, organized in a multipaper format. The following categories were constructed: modernity in primary education, school times and spaces, civilization and development, educational reforms, literacy culture. We conclude that the Gonçalves Chaves School Group was the first institution established in the city of Montes Claros to offer public and free education, experiencing difficulties with student attendance, adherence to the school program, and the inadequacy of physical infrastructure. The group is inscribed in tradition and is part of the social imagination of the people of Montes Claros as a quality school. The school culture of the institution was developed over time, adopting the global method for literacy and establishing various events that promoted the civilization and development of students.