Normal students, public school education and elite culture: the context of the Escola Normal Catharinense of 1892

Abstract

The movement for the diffusion of education that took shape in Europe since the 17th century, which was strengthened in the 18th century and enthroned in American societies in the 19th century, announcing the purposes of national states as liberal intensifiers of culture, civility and morality through the teacher training or teaching of first letters in the so-called Normal Schools. In Brazil, and in the particular case here, in Santa Catarina the Escola Normal moved, in the context of the provinces and then the states, between precarious and high hopes manifested in the positions of the intellectual elites and administrative progress and their aspirations for public order. The objective of this work is, from the study that resulted from the Master's Dissertation entitled A Escola Normal Catharinense de 1892: profession and ornament, the school has some characteristics of its organization, as well as aspects of the context of its creation. Two distinctive features are highlighted: the formative elements of the course with specificities for the teaching of first letters and the attachment to general knowledge as an ornament of the culture of the elites and for the elites offered by the same school. The revisit to the text of the dissertation comprises the resumption of the readings of the bibliographic reference that served as a source for the articulation with the documentary material raised in the Public Archive of the State of Santa Catarina about the Normal and Public School in the Province and in the State. It also includes the re-reading of excerpts from the reports and their comparison with new bibliographic references.