ABSTRACT
Since 1927 the proposal of homogenization of school classes was included in the Regulation of Primary School of Minas Gerais, but its implementation only occurred with the arrival in Belo Horizonte of the psychologist Helena Antipoff. With the homogenization of the classes, special classes, existing in Europe since the end of the nineteenth century, were established. The objective is to analyze the special classes proposal using documentary analysis of the journalInfância Excepcional (Exceptional Childhood) edited in the bulletins of the Minas Gerais Board of Education and Public Health during the years 1930s and 1940s, along with other articles published on the subject. This article seeks to verify how the special classes were systematized in the Brazilian context under Helena Antipoff's supervision. Born in Russia, she lived in France where she did her internship in Binet's laboratory before moving to Geneva where she finished her studies at the Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute. The hypothesis is that Helena Antipoff's multicultural formation influenced how the special classes were set up in Minas Gerais and, subsequently, in Brazil, contributing to the treatment and education of disabled children in the country. The Minas Gerais special classes, mainly the ones at the Pestalozzi Institute, constituted places for applying a careful methodology. Current historiography of science has shown that knowledge must become local to function as knowledge. Although profoundly marked by her European trajectory, it is only through the knowledge of the Minas Gerais context and its specificities that Antipoff was able to reaffirm the importance of the concept of Civilized Intelligence.
KEYWORDS:
Special Education; Helena Antipoff; Special Classes.