Based on the analysis of the characteristics that culturalism took on when it was introduced among us in the thirties - a reflection on our development as a people which serves a policy of national integration - and of its repercussions on the educational project which was being formulated in the country, the text moves on to show the transformations which occurred in this area when the process of democratization, on one hand, and the process of development, on the other hand, both typical of the fifties, have put elementary school before our challenges.