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80 years of the Manifesto of the Pioneers of Educação Nova: questions for the debate

The article, prepared in the context of the celebrations marking the 80 years of the publication of the Manifesto of the Pioneers of Educação Nova, inquiries into the current value of this charter. For that, it explores the historical conditions of the emergence of this document, the meanings attributed to the Escola Nova in the 1930s Brazil, and the disputes that occurred in the educational arena during that period. Additionally, the text investigates the specificities of the Brazilian Escola Nova movement, attempting to demonstrate that the Escola Nova constituted itself in this country as a formula with multiple meanings and distinct appropriations produced at the intersection of three streams: the pedagogical, the ideological, and the political. With respect to the first aspect, the lack of definition of conceptual borders allowed the phrase Escola Nova to congregate different educators, catholic as well as liberals, around the pedagogical principles of active teaching. In the second case, the formula appeared as a means to the transformation of society, helping to fulfill the conflicting objectives of warring factions. Under the third trend, it became a political banner, converted into a hallmark of renovation of the educational system by the Manifesto and by its signatories. The document therefore emerged as part of a political game for the control of the State and of its dynamics and, thus, as an element of cohesion of a group of educators which, in spite of their differences, articulated itself around common objectives, such as the laity, gratuity and mandatoriness of education. Furthermore, the document also represented a group of intellectuals that sponsored the same project of nation, albeit with internal divergences.

Educational policy; History of education; 1932 Manifesto; Escola Nova; Pioneers of education; Public education


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