Cultura escolar, práticas e representações da Escola Normal Nossa Senhora do Horto de Dom Pedrito/RS (1947–1975)

Abstract

The present study aimed to understand the school culture, practices (educational and school), and representations of the Normal School Nossa Senhora do Horto de Dom Pedrito/RS in/for teacher training (1947 – 1975), as contributions to the writing of teacher education in the history of education. The criterion for the time frame was the beginning and end of the Primary Teacher Training Course at the institution. Documentary research was carried out using oral sources (5 testimonies from graduates), which resulted in 768 images, data from this study, collected from documents such as Photo Albums, Visiting Terms Book, Minutes, History, Diplomas, Graduation Cards, Newspapers , etc. From collections: - From the Institution; - Publics; and, - Personal. Vasconcelos (2014), reveals that research in educational institutions moves between memory and history, exposing contradictions and versions. The school and the teachers are historical constructions, perpetrating the formation of personal and collective identities. The collected collection seeks to favor the understanding of the particularities of the ongoing process of professionalization of the category and its dilemmas in the definition of professional identity, as pointed out by Xavier (2014). Based on the data analysis, it is possible to say that: - The Normal School of Horto de Dom Pedrito acted as a traditional instance of education, instituting habitus, with the power to dictate values, norms and conduct. - Aimed at the integral development of the student, with compulsory and optional educational disciplines and practices. It counted on a series of instruments, ranging from the School Choir, which operated sporadically since its foundation, on May 3, 1908, to the Centro de Tradições Gaúchas Flor dos Pampas, created in 1968. - In teacher training, it had a character, both maintaining and transforming the social and cultural representations of the time. - The motto expressed in the 1974 Graduation Invitation: “The Fatherland as a principle. As the child's norm. God is the end”, indicates that the secondary education, with a terminal and professional character in the Horto, was building a nation's soldier. - In 28 years of existence, this private, religious and Catholic institution, linked to the Daughters of Maria Santíssima do Horto Institute, (1st School of the Horto Network in Brazil), has graduated 854 Normalists. - There was character formation, moral dictates and discipline of conduct there, in a rigid, organized education system, complying with the requirements of the legislation of the Brazilian and state education system. - The apparatus for the practice of Didactics in the Garden, the Material Boxes, gave a certain security to the Normalist trained there – a distinction, because the teacher, when in the exercise of her teaching, was there with her boxes of wisdom, trying to solve the problems of a poorly literate population. The “how to teach” was in the view of that beginning teacher, somehow resolved. Newly graduated, as zealous as the Sisters, they went to teach the “petizada”, boys and girls, to read and write. – This school was chosen to represent the concepts of a progressive, modern and civilized city, its community group, established social representations and symbolic processes that intervened in the relations of society at the time – distributed a worldview and contributed to the municipality's social identity.