The poet Cecília Meireles subscribed the Manifesto of the Pioneers of New Education, a historic document expressing the main principles of the Brazilian educational movement New School written in 1932 by Fernando de Azevedo and signed by 26 well known intellectuals. This article analyses the literature about Meireles and some of her texts published between 1930 and 1933 in the column "Comentário" of "Página de Educação", a section she directed in Diário de Notícias, a newspaper of Rio de Janeiro. The purpose of this study is to show that the poet expressed ideas of New School such as the relations school and family, and the meaning of arts for educational purposes in the early 1930s. Considering the peculiarity of the media used by Meireles, this analysis based on the rhetoric theory, suggests a new perspective for the research about the argumentative strategies of her pedagogical discourse.
Cecília Meireles; new school; pedagogical discourse; rhetoric