The educational and health experience of the Escola Regional de Meriti: modernization and regionalism in a sertão next to the Capital (1921-1932)

Abstract

This article analyzes the first decade of the Escola Regional de Meriti, a private educational institution , created in the village of Meriti (currently Duque de Caxias/RJ) in 1921. The connections between the sanitary and educational movements of the 1920s in the capital made arise the idea of modernization of Brazil through the creation of a school, to take care of the body and spirit of children in the sertão. This enterprise, led by Armanda Álvaro Alberto, had the participation and support of intellectuals from the Federal Capital, such as Edgar Sussekind de Mendonça, Francisco Venâncio Filho, Belisário Penna, Antonio Pacheco Leão, Edgar Roquette Pinto and Alberto Rangel. The concept of regionalism present in the speeches of the School's participants highlighted the need to bring education and health to Brazilian backlands. Starting with the children, but also those responsible for them and, finally, all the men and women of the sertão. Thus, they could grow up strong, healthy and with the knowledge for the country to make progress. There was a perspective of keeping the sertanejo in their own place, without the need to seek a better life in the cities. And, at the same time, the interest in making each region develop according to its potential. The choice of the village of Meriti, a sertão next to the Capital, was the possibility of being in a place on the border between the interior and the big city and that the participating intellectuals of the school could build a school in the sertão and debate in the intellectual circles of the Capital.