Body education in the program of Integrated Centers for Public Education – CIEPs: an educational project written by modernity¹

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze how the project of the Integrated Centers of Public Education (CIEPs) presented a version of civilizational project that had the body of the child of the popular classes as object of pedagogical intervention. The question that mobilizes us is: how were corporal practices embedded in the CIEPs conception in order to validate the education of bodies in the school space? We have analyzed the administrative documents related to the Special Education Department of the Darcy Ribeiro Foundation. It was concluded that school times and spaces, prescribed in the documents, indicated a proposal of intervention in the body aiming: refinement of behavior, formation of new habits, production of new sociabilities and new relationship between school and community.

Keywords
history of education; educational politics; body education; school; modernity

Resumo

O objetivo deste artigo foi analisar como o projeto dos Centros Integrados de Educação Pública (CIEPs) apresentava preceitos civilizatórios que tinham os corpos dos alunos das camadas populares como objeto de intervenção pedagógica. A questão que nos mobilizou foi: como as práticas estavam inseridas na concepção dos CIEPs no sentido de balizar a educação do corpo no espaço escolar? As fontes utilizadas são documentos administrativos referentes à Secretaria Especial de Educação do acervo da Fundação Darcy Ribeiro. Concluiu-se que os tempos e espaços escolares, prescritos nos documentos, indicavam uma proposta de intervenção no corpo visando: refinamento do comportamento, formação de novos hábitos, produção de novas sociabilidades e nova relação entre escola e comunidade.

Palavras-chave
história da educação; políticas educacionais; educação do corpo; escola; modernidade

Introduction

In this article, the body is seen as an object of study of different fields of human sciences, especially History, Sociology, and Anthropology. This work is associated to Mauss’s (1934) project agenda to understand the cultural forms of body education. We understand that the body is the means through which we establish ourselves in the world. The body has its own way of communicating, exposing our needs, emotions, sensibilities, fears, and desires in a certain communicative and cultural context. This corporal communication is the result of the cultural agencies we are emerged, as it is through the transmission of certain corporal techniques that the social structure sets mark on individuals. Thus, the body is submitted to learning new forms of behavior and socially acceptable rules of conduct.

The notion of body education, problematized by Soares (2015), also helps us to understand how practices try to shape subjects’ behaviors, which can be translated into pedagogies, techniques, and policies guided towards the adequate ways of living in a given society. Therefore, it is a non-school education, present in different contexts, but also in school. To Oliveira and Vaz (2004), we need to recognize the relevance of accepting dispositives to consolidate schooling as one of the privileged formation systems in modern societies. Hence, to observe certain body education can show how a project of society, based on the tripod civilization/rationalization/schooling, is manifested by policies, pedagogies, and techniques when “creating new synthesis and premises on the historical processes that circumscribe, outline, and construct bodies in different school culture” (Oliveira & Vaz, 2004, p. 14).

We could add more descriptions on how bodies in our metropolises should be socialized to behave and move in different spaces in the city, be them public or private. Modern societies have systematic and intentional ways of body education and provide a repertoire of practical and/or symbolic solutions of corporal fruition or prohibition. We should remember that a good part of corporal agencies is experienced mundanely on social institutions and on everyday social life.

The notion of body education that moves us is, mainly, the one produced by Western modernity. As literature shows, the body became the object of scientific, medical, and pedagogical intervention since: the articulation of industrialization and the processes of work mechanization; the knowledge from medicine development and epidemiology in the 19^th and 20^th centuries; the urban leisure on metropolises focusing on the promotion of sports, dances, and corporal arts; and the schooling of the masses as a way to claim modernity and States. As affirmed by Courtine (2008, p. 11), “the 20th century theoretically invented the body”, recognizing it as an object of historical investigation and as the result of men’s sociocultural production. This synthetic argument marks the status earned by the body since Western modernity.

In Brazil, more specifically, the social reforms implemented by public policies in big cities, incentivized by intellectuals, promoted a series of changes regarding body practices in the first decades of the 20^th century. To Rago (2004), there was the establishment of new rules and ways of living, in which the standards of behavior and social living considered civilized progressively adopted by the elites should be exported to all social groups and, because of this, produced tensions and conflicts. Thus, it would be necessary to eradicate popular habits seen as underdeveloped and dangerous (Rago, 2004), looking for modern precepts of hygiene and body education, objectified by medical and intellectual discourses.

We should highlight that the medical-social-hygiene movement in its educational purposes, well studied in Brazil (Gondra, 2004; Rocha, 2003), had a symbolic efficiency supported by policies of various social sectors and profoundly marked the health and public education institutions.

Mainly from the 1920s and 30s in Brazil, an array of social actors identified by an intellectual elite that believed in the transformation of the country from the democratization of school, such as physicians, teachers, military, clergy, politicians, and writers of heterogeneous political positions, were active on the debate about how education could modernize the country. To Carvalho (1998), this group, connected to Associação Brasileira de Educação (ABE- Brazilian Education Association), created strategies to publicize the “educational cause” as the main national problem. Thus, the written press and the radio broadcasted the discourse of modernization through people’s education.

In 1932, a group of intellectuals led by one of the most influent educators of ABE, Fernando de Azevedo, produced a document that marked Brazilian history of education, the Manifesto dos Pioneiros da Educação Nova (Manifest of New Education Pioneers). Vidal (2013) explains that the document was simultaneously published in many vehicles of Brazilian press. She also highlights that the “pioneers” were a heterogenous group in terms of ideology but assembled in a collective character that created a fight strategy for the administrative and pedagogical control in a time of public-school system expansion. In this sense, the “pioneers”, at the same time defended the gratuity and laicity of Brazilian education, contraposing some religious allies of ABE, also aiming to establish a monopoly of authority on the definition of assumptions for a modern education, identified by the expression “Escola Nova” (New School).

In the country, throughout the 20th century, mass education continued as an important theme among intellectuals based on the auspices of modernity. In this direction, this research focuses on one of the most representative projects in terms of popular education in Brazil in the end of the 20^th century, the Centros Integrados de Educação Pública (CIEPs- Integrated Centers of Public Education). Particularly, we aim to analyze how the organization of CIEPs and their pedagogical proposal, shown in the documents, presented a version of a civilizing project that had the body of low-income children as the object of intervention, that is, the materialization of a body education. Despite the time distance from the debate on schooling held in the first decades of the 20^th century, the social-hygiene education agenda was kept and restructured on different discourses in the name of education for low-income groups. Such agenda was also explicitly present in the proposals of CIEPs and Darcy Ribeiro’s reflections. He was an anthropologist and intellectual with great participation in Brazilian political life. He was Minister of Education (1962-1963) and Chief of Staff (1963-1964), during João Goulart’s government. He was vice-governor of Rio de Janeiro (1983-1987) in the first government of Leonel Brizola. His last contribution on the educational field was the creation of Lei de Diretrizes e Bases (Law of Directives and Bases) in 1996, during his time as senator (1991-1997). When he was vice-governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, he presided over the Programa Especial de Educação (Special Program on Education) and led the organization of CIEPs.

The CIEPs represented one more attempt, beyond ideological and political party issues, to continue Fernando de Azevedo and the pioneers’ educational agenda, that is, to consolidate a quality public school for low-income classes. In these proposals to school the less privileged, we can observe that body education assumed a central role by encompassing the civilizing ideals of self-control which characterized Western modernity and the formation of States, beyond the more direct justifications for children’s organic development, health, and leisure. Elias (1994, p. 112) explains that civilizing ideals were marked, in a long-duration process, by the “creation of a given ritual of human relations on the course of social and psychological development” that aimed to reach a certain degree of impulse and emotional control, often justified by hygiene and health reasons.

In this sense, Bomeny (2001) believes that the educational project of CIEPs would also have a civilizing dimension, taking into consideration the differences of context between European and Brazilian modernity, as Darcy Ribeiro’s intention was to transform the CIEPs in an educational space that could civilize and emancipate the less privileged. He justifies the implementation of CIEPs, based on his perspective on the lack of health assistance, schooling opportunities, and access to cultural goods by this societal level. The proposal of universalization of quality education and health to this population was part of the arguments used by the “pioneers” in the 1930s in Brazil, which were still in Darcy Ribeiro’s agenda in the 1980s.

In the 1980s, Darcy Ribeiro fought for a public and democratic school that could offer all the necessary assistance towards a full-time education to low-income classes. Such education had as the main axes the teaching of standard Portuguese, school content, culture (as instruments of fight and expression), and health. According to Ribeiro (1986, p. 48), the main objective of CIEPs was to “introduce the child to the mastery of a cultured code but valuing the experiences and previously knowledge of each one. School should work as a bridge between students’ previous knowledge and the formal knowledge demanded by refined society”.

In Darcy Ribeiro’s words, in Livro dos CIEPs, we can perceive his diagnosis and proposal:

Instead of ignoring the harsh reality where most students, from the poorest social segments, live, CIEP is committed with them, so it can transform them. Is it impossible to educate malnourished children? So CIEP supplies students’ nutritional needs. Most students have no financial resources? So CIEP provides uniforms and school material needed for free. Are students exposed to infectious diseases, do they have dental problems, or have a visual or hearing impairment? So CIEP provides medical and dental assistance to all of them”

(1986, p. 48)

Darcy thought, beyond assistentialist policies, on instilling new behavior and habits considered civilized, for considering them instruments of fight and access to immaterial goods produced in society. In this sense, the prescribed curriculum planned a systematic education of the body and corporal behaviors considered healthy and civilized.

Aiming to capture the evidences on bodies in the proposal of CIEPs, we analyzed the curricular prescriptions and school spaces described in documents on the short experience of full-time school (1983-1987/1991-1994). Thus, we analyzed administrative and legal documents related to the Special Secretary of Education available in the archive of Fundação Darcy Ribeiro (Fundar), in the Memorial Darcy Ribeiro at Universidade de Brasília. The archive is composed by series, such as: personal documents, Indigienismo, João Goulart government, 1^st Brizola government (1983-1987), Newton Cardoso government, 2^nd Brizola government (1991-1994), Senate, political party, various institutions, general correspondence, and photos. The series selected for the analysis were: 1^st Brizola government (1983-1987), and 2^nd Brizola government (1991-1994), on a total of 88 documents⁴ referring to reports on the pedagogical, architectural, and curricular proposals of two Programas Especiais de Educação (PEE- Special Programs in Education), internal regulations, book manuscripts, interviews given by Darcy Ribeiro, reports written by the Pedagogical Consultantship in Education, photos of events and ceremonies held in the CIEPs. Besides this, we used the two main books produced by the government to disseminate the proposal, O livro dos CIEPs (Ribeiro, 1986) and O novo livro dos CIEPs (Ribeiro, 1995). Both with the collaboration of the PEE pedagogical staff. However, this problematization is not limited to the continuities between the representations guided by intellectuals’ modernity, such as Darcy Ribeiro, and the practices of body education, but also aims to interpret contradictions and conflicts.

The historiographic analysis here is based on the cultural history perspective because, as we observed in the sources, the practices obeyed certain criteria and were classified according to specific categories and objectives. These issues reveal a formality of practices, thus, one of the historiographic tasks would be to measure the distances, or the relations, between formalities of practices and representations (Certeau, 2011). Therefore, modern educational projects were involved in “ representation fights” (Chartier, 1991) on what was considered healthy and morally acceptable, in tune with the representations of modern education, what does not mean that they permeated homogeneously the school spaces of CIEPs. When dealing with the sources, the documents were organized in three categories: (i) school buildings architecture (Castro, 2009; Dórea, 2000, 2013); (ii) hygiene rules (Gondra, 2004; Vigarello, 1996); and (iii) time and space for body fruition in the curriculum (Oliveira & Linhales, 2011). From these dimensions, we defined new indicators for research and analysis. On the dimension of school building architecture, the indicators were: displacements allowed and prescribed, spaces for schoolwork, school furniture and infrastructure. The indicators on the second dimension, hygiene rules, were: corporal ablutions, students’ food and clothes. Finally, the time and space of body fruition in the curriculum have the following indicators: curriculum composition, division of learning times, breaks and recesses, places to learn.

The CIEPs on Darcy Ribeiro’s perspective

We should highlight that the inclusion of new projects (cultural, social, and medical) in the curricular proposal, the creation of new educational spaces, and the construction of architectural designed school buildings indicated significant changes at that moment on the care of low-income classes after the military dictatorship . It is important to notice that the name CIEP does not refer to the process of schooling alone but indicated that these units were integrated centers of public education, in a broader sense. According to Ribeiro (1986), “ CIEP is a true school-home, that provides multiple activities to the students, supplementing the work in the classrooms with leisure, sports, and cultural activities” (p. 47). In another part, Darcy reinforces these characteristics: “CIEPs act as true cultural and recreational centers in a perspective of effective integration with the community” (Ribeiro, 1986, p. 43). Even though schooling is the central mark of the program, CIEPs proposed to be an arm of the State, providing a cultural equipment to attend the children and the neighboring community with services of education, health, culture, sport, and leisure. In this sense, the school should be a center of cultural synergy and provide basic medical assistance to students. The category “school” was encompassed in the concept of CIEPs, as the ideal was to transform these spaces in cultural equipment fomenting an emancipation of low-income classes.

This new school model was focused towards low-income children, aiming to increase their educational opportunities and reduce the inequalities of access to cultural goods and health care, denied to these children and their families. The discourse that supported the policy base was that the government should create a school that offered opportunities for poor children to acquire “social capital” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 2014) as was privately offered to middle and high- class children (Ribeiro, 1986).

There needed to be a new structure to base an educational project that mainly aimed the distribution of “cultural capital”. Therefore, in CIEPs there were some changes in the pedagogical planning (organization of subject schedules, curriculum content, organization of teaching space) and teachers’ training to work in this proposal. The full-time schedules of CIEPs envisioned classes from a common core, recreation, arts, physical education, sessions of guided studies, cultural activities, medical and dental assistance, as well as reading time, full-board, and hygiene practices (shower and dental tooth brushing) (Ribeiro, 1986).

Darcy Ribeiro was inspired by Anísio Teixeira’s educational project, as he said: “Anísio had a great influence over me” (Ribeiro, 1990, p. 111). Teixeira (1977) defended, during a great part of his life, a full-time public school for low-income children that socialized knowledges and practices as a way to supply the need of those from low-cultural synergy environments, as school should offer “ full opportunities of life, including activities of study, work, social life, recreation, and games” (p. 129). Another common point between Darcy and Anisio’s project referred to full-time school with appropriate equipment to fulfill its mission ( school architecture) and the teacher’s role, as both believed that full-time school demanded well-trained teachers completely dedicated to the schools (Teixeira, 1977)⁵.

CIEPs were the materialization of this intellectual inspiration that by increasing school day aimed to implement educational innovations in Brazilian educational system. CIEPs tried to break free from the curricular tradition of the public educational system in the state of Rio de Janeiro. It was a proposal of full-time education, based on pedagogical and methodological ideals of active pedagogies that should build cultural and social projects aiming to strengthen the relationship between school and community. Darcy Ribeiro, the main creator of the program, aimed to construct times and spaces to offer life experiences, culture production, and students’ formation.

Darcy Ribeiro conceived an educational program that, in his perspective, had clear democratic objectives. This way, the liberal intellectual Darcy Ribeiro was surrounded in a project that had the institutional support of a center-left state government headed by Leonel Brizola. It was not an authoritarian, disciplining educational project, with pragmatic objectives to train a workforce for the interests of economic capital but, undoubtedly, it had its inherent contradictions of the representations of an intellectual elite about the educational needs of low-income classes. In other words, this intellectual elite was responsible for idealizing a democratic school guided towards the autonomy and/or emancipation of low-income classes.

CIEPs were planned as a mediation tool between the State and low-income classes to provide the necessary tools for organization and fight within a patrimonialist and unequal society that was starting to go through a process of redemocratization. This combination of socializing with the low-income classes the tools produced by the dominant culture and, at the same time, recognizing and valuing different cultural ways of existence, makes CIEPs a good example to think current school aporias. How do we socialize the tools and values of a bourgeois culture and, simultaneously, value the cultural knowledges and experiences brought to school by low-income classes?

The intellectuals’ schooling model in the project of CIEPs is founded in modernity, since the illuminist ideals, that believes in school as the central institution to fight against prejudice and tradition. This institution would have as an ideal the emancipation and autonomy of individuals, as the subject, by using reason, could free him/herself of dependence and immaturity (Lovisolo, 1989). Certainly this argument of universalization and legitimization of public education was present since the French Revolution and this argument was also in the defense of public education by Brazilian intellectuals who could be called, for the lack of a better label, “ equalitarian liberals” (Vita, 2002).

The justification of CIEPs does not ignore the enlightening and civilizing argument, because, for Darcy Ribeiro, the socialization of accumulated knowledge and standard Portuguese was to provide fighting tools and ways to emancipate low-income groups, as “a fundamental element of the pedagogical proposal of CIEP is the cultural respect towards students. Poor children know and do many things that guarantee their survival but, by themselves, have no conditions to learn what they need to participate in a cultured society” (Ribeiro, 1986, p. 48). According to Ribeiro (1986), the main task of CIEP was “to introduce the child to the mastery of a cultured code but valuing the experiences and previously knowledge of each one. School should work as a bridge between students’ previous knowledge and the formal knowledge demanded by refined society”. (p. 48).

In this ideal, Darcy Ribeiro conceived CIEPs as a space for popular culture expression, for the organization of community parties, and for the local community to organize itself within a democratic school. Thereby, he emphasized a romantic dimension when presenting his representation of school, as he introduces arguments indicating that the school would also allow the expression of people’s identities.

Darcy Ribeiro reproduces in CIEPs project the permanent and increasing aporia of school in modernity which tried to conciliate the historically irreconcilable matrices of Romantism and Enlightenment. As written in his political book produced in the second Brizola’s government, CIEP was “ a living bridge that would take the community inside the school and vice versa” (Ribeiro, 1986, p. 48).

This conciliation thesis was raised and debated by Lovisolo (1990) when analyzing Paulo Freire’s educational proposal. It is important here to delimit this aporia to show how Darcy’s project for body education also had a strong emphasis on self-control, on the care of the body, the ways of displacement, and oral expression in school. His project was expressively civilizing towards low-income children and, at the same time, created spaces of interlocution with popular culture.

Body education in the CIEPs

The program of CIEP can be, retrospectively, analyzed as an experience in one more chapter in the history of Brazilian education towards building a school aimed to overcome certain levels of educational opportunities inequalities. Therefore, the CIEPs could be analyzed from different aspects; our option was to focus on the body education expressed in the schooling project of CIEPs.

In this sense, CIEPs curriculum- understood here as disputed space, as one of the guidelines of school culture and/or school experiences⁶ – systematizes students’ body education beyond the times and spaces dedicated to sports, arts, and Physical Education.

Body education in the CIEPs had one of its pillars in school architecture. In the documents and interviews about the CIEPs were presented the rules to use school times and spaces and the project of mediation between school knowledge and the ways to express popular culture. The mediation would recover and value the expression of popular culture while aiming to civilize bodies as a right and as an instrument of low-income classes in an unfair and unequal society.

Following these precepts, CIEPs were designed by Oscar Niemeyer⁷ based on an architecture that should be functional for children to stay from 8am to 5 pm. Besides, the building should allow different school and cultural experiences. The buildings were composed of three blocks, in the main one there were the classrooms, the medical center, the kitchen, the cafeteria, bathrooms, and a large sheltered area. In the second block, there were the gymnasium with lockers, a court and bleachers for Physical Education classes, theatrical plays, concerts, community sports, etc. The third block had two stories: on the first there was the library, on the second there were accommodations for resident students with the family responsible⁸ for children’s resocialization.

In CIEPs, learning and knowledge would not be restricted to the classroom, therefore, school architecture was key to the proposal, as it should offer spaces for other experiences. According to the Plano de Estudo Básico of CIEPs,

the construction and systematization of knowledge does not take place only in the classroom, all spaces in the Unity- court, library, guided-study classrooms, video-education, and cultural spaces- should be pedagogically worked by teachers and all professional involved in students’ schooling process⁹.

The spaces were thought for events, such as exhibitions, concerts, films and video presentations, indicating that the use of spaces would go beyond school conventions, clearly intending to change school and community cultures.

On its turn, the main building was structured to receive the great number of students envisioned in the project. The CIEPs were thought to receive up to a thousand students, allowing the free circulation of classes in the whole unity, with broad central ramps that would connect the pavements and the long halls.

According to Monteiro (2009) ¹⁰, a teacher who participated in the management of CIEPs project during Brizola’s 2^nd government, the broad open spaces intended to allow students to “experience freedom and learn that rules were necessary to a respectful and solidary coexistence” (Monteiro, 2009, p. 37). Even if the intentions are not mechanically reproduced in the everyday life, we observed here that the belief was in educating the bodies to circulate in an ample school with different opportunities for expression and learning.

The architecture of CIEPs had low-wall classrooms, which would help the air circulation inside the building and would also limit the voice of teachers and students. Even though there are reports on the everyday life of CIEPs as a generalized chaos, with teachers’ and students’ shouts¹¹, its educational project prescribed that the school should teach new ways of communicating and behaving in the school space. CIEPs should educate the voices and transform school culture faced by learning challenges. However, the architecture on itself was not powerful enough to re-signify the uses of spaces by teachers and students, who had experienced other school contexts. In fact, school culture is not reproduced only through the normative representation of school working, as it is the result of the interaction between social actors in the space of the curriculum.

In CIEPs’ educational proposal, education should go much beyond only reading, writing, and counting. In this line of argument, Bomeny (2009) affirms that CIEPs were part of an education plan that wanted the development of the country and of part of the population, which lacked educational opportunities. Thus, CIEPs would be a key space supported by a civilizing ideal in which “public school, open to all, full-time, was the prescription to introduce sociability codes, how to treat and relate with others, and preparation for life in society” (Bomeny, 2009, p. 114).

The document on the human resources in CIEPs allows us to see how these sociability codes were part of the educational process.

The physical space of CIEPs/CAICs and the activities developed there demand that students notice that the behavior of each one determines the whole. It is the duty of the direction staff to guide this process, demanding that teachers take responsibility to educate their students to respect the preservation of school material, as well as the habits and attitudes without which we can not live in society. It is central that teachers instill in their students the habits and attitude of speaking in a low voce, walk calmly in the hallways, to participate, in their turn, of the several activities, and to take care of the material common to all¹².

Regarding the classroom architecture, in his educational project Darcy Ribeiro said that “ the low walls on the classrooms are recommended exactly because, contrary to what has been said¹³, they stop teachers from shouting. If they did so, they would be heard in the whole school. Tranquility is an important ingredient in school”¹⁴.

We can see that the educational issue of the voice was one mark that articulated architecture and the behavior in school space.

Figure 1
Oscar Niemeyer’s interview to newspaper O Globo, with the title “A class does not need to be shouted”

These particularities in CIEPs architecture, wide hallways and low walls, shed a light on the intention to intervene in the behaviors of school actors, through the notion a communication that would be done in a low voice. To Darcy Ribeiro, schools should intervene on children’s behavior to create a self-control on voice tone and the exited way to communicate, typical of popular culture.

In this sense, it is possible to observe the intention in providing spaces for students’ bodies fruition and, at the same time, teaching them to control gestures, voices, and movements in school spaces. Thus, we can affirm that the project of CIEPs indicated how teachers’ educational practices should act to build a school culture in those spaces.

The teacher can create behavioral codes with the students, making them establish coexistence rules. S/he can create visual or sound signs that children can identify as permitted or prohibited attitudes, can create an Ethics Council with the class to evaluate the attitudes of each one; promote campaigns on littering, classroom cleanliness, etc.

Finally, several activities and situation can be stimulated aiming to make the student a person capable of respecting the collective space and contributing to make it a place to live with dignity.

The pedagogical action is an everyday work of imposing limits, obviously respecting the child. We do not want individuals who are uncapable of daring because they have only obeyed. However, we also do not want people uncapable of respecting their colleagues as they were never demanded obedience and rules.

The teacher should stimulate behaviors considered good as a whole, having in mind that school life is an unmatchable opportunity to exercise citizenship¹⁵.

The classroom socialization was also part of the civilizing process and should provide moments for actions and body interventions through the precepts of active pedagogies. The desks used in the classrooms, computer labs, and the Guided Study spaces were idealized for pair and group works, indicating that the classroom arrangement could vary depending on the type of class, subject, content given, or methodology adopted. There were no individual desks, as they set two students.

Figure 2
CIEP classroom

The standardization of the two-student desk was supposed to promote the increase of sociability and value work group as one of the marks of active pedagogies in CIEPs. However, students appropriate themselves of the spaces based on previous experiences and teachers also brought with them previous knowledge on how to teach and learn in a school environment.

The space prepared for work groups were the Guided Study classrooms. In them, desks were arranged in a way that students were in groups of four. Through a system of rotation, all classes frequented those classrooms, which worked as educational spaces to read and research.

However, the educational program of CIEPs faced many challenges to project itself in school culture, on the part of teachers and students entering the schools. Darcy Ribeiro faced disputes with teachers’ unions¹⁶ by declaring his preference for recently graduated teachers, as they would not have the “vices” of school culture entrenched in our educational system. Cunha (2009) talks about these conflicts between teachers and the government, in his words:

As seen, the thesis converged with the diagnosis that were been done about the discriminatory character of school (see for example, Cunha 1975) and did not spare teachers as instruments of this discrimination, qualifying them (without using these terms) of incompetent, accomplices, and even beneficiaries of the neglect of poor-children education. Thus, one could not expect a ready acceptance from teachers, especially when their self-esteem increased, even in the affirmation of Centro Estadual de Professores, whose legitimacy had been recognized as victorious in the election for state government, still during the 1982 campaign

(Cunha, 2009, p. 138).

Aiming to educate teachers on the pedagogical principles idealized to CIEPs, the program prescribed teacher training through Escolas de Demonstração (1º PEE- Demonstration schools) and the Refresh Course for Full-time School Teachers (2º PEE)¹⁷. It was “a point of honor to Darcy Ribeiro that only recently-graduated teachers worked in CIEPs. He did not admit veteran teachers alleging that they would already have vices that were difficult to fix” (Bomeny, 2008, p. 112). Darcy had the pragmatical point of view, that changing school culture was a difficult task and would be even more difficult with the presence of teachers who had been a long time in the profession.

We can see that the civilizing dimension of CIEPs project can be characterized by the description of a school routine given by the principal of CIEP 299:

Routine starts at 8 am. The classes are formed with the teachers in front, then they go to the cafeteria for breakfast. It is composed of a warm B type milk with chocolate, vanilla, or syrup; a porridge of oats or white corn. Followed by bread with butter or cookies.

At 5 pm, the classes are spread in different activities. Most go to the classrooms and Guided Study class, other do physical activities, shower, go to the library, tele-education, and cultural activities. In a system of rotation, all, during the week, participate of every activity. They are assisted by nurses and guided to pediatricians or dentists.

At 11:45 they start going to lunch. A strong lunch with rice, beans, meat, and vegetables. The meats and vegetables vary daily. We can see they enjoy jerked beef with pumpkin and desert.

They return to their activities, have a quick snack, at 2 pm, with juice and cookies and, later, around 4 pm, have dinner, which is almost always a flavorful and strong soup¹⁸

School routine in CIEPs was conditioned by a strict control of time. School time envisioned a great circulation of students and an intense rotation among school activities. The achievable operation of this routine, circulation of different classes in the school, demanded time control and body education so that students could learn and respect the cultural ways of living the school in an integrational project. For example, on the issue of physical activities mentioned by the director referring to the curricular classes of Physical Education, we can observe that, in the project of PEE, which based CIEPS, the aim of physical activities was to stimulate and develop children integrated with the processes of teaching-learning¹⁹. Thus, “physical activities” in that historical moment, as announced on the architectural project of sport gymnasiums, were understood as a set of sport practices and gymnastics organized by the curricular program of Physical Education in CIEPs (Gurgel, 2018). In the documents, we read: “Sports and Physical education. The integration of physical activities in the process of school learning speeds students’ development, improving their global performance”²⁰.

Therefore, Physical Education was also understood from its inter-relations with other curricular components. The proposal was to integrate its contents, without isolating Physical Education, as a subject offered in the counter-shift with a high level of absences and drop-outs. Finally, the subject Physical Education systematized the “physical activities” and gained more space in the curriculum of full-time school, not only a complementary activity to in the curriculum prescriptions. On the contrary, it was supposed to relate with other knowledges and practices from other subjects such as: Cultural Activities, Education for Health, Artistic Education, which were Gurgel’s (2018) study objects.

The cafeteria was a key space on the school routine of CIEPs. Located in the ground floor, it had a kitchen capable of providing four meals (breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner). Cafeteria tables were long with approximately 10 chairs on each side and could held 200 people. On one side of the cafeteria there were male and female restrooms. On the opposite side, there was the space for garbage, to pre-clean cutlery, dishes, and glasses, and a counter to distribute and clean the trays.

The cafeteria was the space for four daily meetings involving students, teachers, and principals, becoming a place for socialization, educational food practices, and the simple act of sitting around the table. We observed that the civilizing project was present in the socialization of how to eat and behave as part of a systematic learning of movements and corporal gestures considered adequate during the meal, that is, an education of the body to enjoy controllably the pleasures of food.

Figure 3
Blackboard written “Setting the table”

The regulation ways and educational practices were present in the cafeterias of CIEPs, as the representation on a good relation around the table, the correct use of cutlery, the cleanliness of trays, the correct position to sit, the daily toothbrushing, and the learning of a healthy diet. Ribeiro (1986) describes how this systematization should take place:

Children ate on strong trays, using glasses and cutlery also made in iron. As each student finished the meal, he would throw away any leftovers in the garbage can, pre-cleaned the material in a collective tank and hand it, through the counter, to a worker responsible for the final clean. Thereby stimulating on children the permanent habit of cleanliness, seen as an indispensable factor to preserve good health (p. 120).

Darcy Ribeiro conceived education as an act to civilize and grant citizenship to underprivileged people, he understood that school was supposed to transmit new habits and refine conducts to change students’ behaviors, be it during the meals or in the ways to communicate.

We can see that the agenda of social hygiene, considering the contextual differences, was still present in this project of schooling the bodies. In this sense, the CIEPs intended to offer all the necessary support for attitudes and habits socially established by standards considered civilized.

Even though the initiatives of CIEPs educational projects aimed a more equalitarian distribution of “social capital” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 2014), at the same time they collaborated to value a culture considered as civilized, legitimate in the dominant social groups, which should be symbolic apprehended through the education of the masses.

There was, undoubtfully, in these times and spaces, a “fight for representations” regarding what was considered appropriate or not in terms of low-income classes body education. These fights expose the symbolic strategies that “determined positions and relations and that construct, for each class, group, or milieu a perceived-being constituting its identity” (Chartier, 1991, p. 184). When observing the contradictions in the educational proposals of CIEPs, we noticed the fights of different representations on body education through a ‘civilized’ behavior, that is, culturally established as elevated in its moral principles, as part of a “cultural capital” that opposes the “good taste” to what is considered vulgar (Bourdieu, 2015).

The dichotomy between an educational proposal centered on low-income classes and another of erudition reveals a depreciative representation on children without a broad access to “cultural capital”, associating their identities, as poor children, to values considered uncivilized, as indiscipline, speaking loudly, lack of control of their bodies and desires, as if they were exclusive characteristics of this social groups. We question if those characteristics, mainly represented by indiscipline, would not originate in different social stratums or different cultural contexts.

The modern educational project in Brazil focused mainly on the education of masses, a relevant fact to establish a national identity that, according to Carvalho (1998), assembled intellectuals of different political positions since the 1920s in the country. However, this focus also reveals representations on low-income classes, that in this fight incorporate a stigmatized identity, as if rich children, by having access to “cultural capital”, would held a “fundamental state”, translated into practices as corporal postures, linguistic abilities, intellectual capacities, that is, a capital that would distinguish them (Bourdieu, 2015), and, on the contrary, poor children would be in a state of incivility. They would then be uncultured, devoid of “cultural capital” thus needing a governmental intervention idealized by a part of an enlightened intellectual elite.

However, even under those contradictions, an interpretation that does not deconstruct, but highlights the detours of modernity, educational projects as CIEPs allowed the democratization and access to policies of education and health which cannot be confused with the disciplinarization of bodies, authoritarian and/or fascist policies. When observing the integration between popular education and health public policies within the CIEPs, we also see the intention of this educational project to provide to low-income groups objective conditions closer to the education given to richer children.

As an example, we highlight the investment in structuring the equipment and health professionals in schools. The unity, called Health Center, was located on the ground floor and was composed by a dental, a nursing, and a physician office, equipped to offer quality primary assistance and full dental treatment. Besides the equipment used, such as dentist chair, stretchers, specific tools (stethoscopes, tweezers, dental spoons, medical scale), according to Ribeiro (1986),

in this unit was developed a work in the favorable perspective of preventive medicine, beyond the routine clinical services. The Center offered: dental and ophthalmic services, professional assistance in nutrition, and activities for health education ( that intends to make each students and community member an agent to disseminate good sanitations practices in their homes and neighborhood) (p. 115).

Medical assistance was another important dimension in the educational proposal of CIEPs. The idea was to form the student to be an agent to disseminate healthy habits in the community. The role of health in the project of CIEPs can be seen in administrative documents:

health is extremely important to human beings and hygiene is a way to preserve it. As one is aware of the need of hygiene as an important factor in prevent diseases, there starts the battle against sickness²¹.

These representations of health were, in a way, incorporated by institutional agents. The report of the principal of CIEP 299, highlights a health campaign in his unity:

In the first week we started a hard work to transmit healthy habits and attitudes. We perceived a lice infestation, as out of the 10 children examined by our nurse, 8 had lice. We promoted a daily shower. Through the shower, we started the “campaign against lice”.

We followed the recipe for a natural herbal shampoo, provided by SEEPE and, together with the community, we got enough herbs and coconut soap to prepare it for the shower of all students for 5 days. This was done in the school, integrating: medical office, cultural activities, teachers, and janitors²².

This excerpt is documented on the archive Fundar with a purpose, as this was a letter from a principal showing his alignment to the proposal of CIEPs. The letter indicated the possibilities of integration of school agents in CIEPs (teachers, cultural-activity staff, health center, janitors, and principal) with the community to promote health based on a concrete problem.

According to the Report of the Technical-pedagogical staff in CIEP Avenida dos Desfiles, the times of meals and corporal hygiene followed a rotation system.

There are three shifts for meals and corporal hygiene due to the number of classes and available space in the cafeteria and bathrooms.

For the shower and hygiene, we use two bathrooms in the lower floor and two on the upper floor. Classes take turns, one at a time in each bathroom. To this activity, we need a teacher and a janitor.

Shower time- 2pm until 3:50 pm, 30 minutes for each class. Hygiene time: 15 minutes for each class after lunch and dinner.

In preschool, the shower and dental hygiene have an educational character. The teacher guides children on how to shower and the correct way to brush their teeth.

We have noticed the need to install non-slip rugs in the showers as the wet floor becomes slippery and there is the risk of fall²³.

A time to shower was also planned after physical education classes, as seen in the documents of PEE.

We understand that, in a full-time school, showers are needed as a hygiene measure. Therefore, a space in the school schedule was established to attend this need.

On the days that shower coincides with Physical education class, children will be supervised by the teacher of this subject. On other days, the teachers of Educational Practices would be responsible for the classes. In both cases, teachers will be assisted by the Shift Coordinator.

Each class should go to the showers, 10 minutes before the established time²⁴.

The curricular and architectural proposals of CIEPs were planned for the educational practice of corporal hygiene. They needed to establish, in the curriculum schedules, times to shower and brush the teeth, besides having educational actions for this end. CIEPs architecture had gymnasiums with large lockers for boys and girls to clean themselves. Health was part of the curriculum, “inserted in the pedagogical process through action promoting health, preventing disease, involving all sectors of the school, extending to students’ families and communities”²⁵.

Final remarks

This study tried to understand body education in the proposal of full-time schools in CIEPs, based on their curricular and architectural proposals. The curriculum envisioned the organization of school times and spaces with practices guided towards an education of the bodies. We observed explicit indications of this aspect, present in the architecture of school buildings and specific times and spaces for socialization (classrooms, hallways, cafeteria), besides the power of prescription on the health of students and local community.

The curriculum prescribed in the documents indicate that the proposal of intervention in the body aimed to refine the behaviors, instill new habits, produce new sociabilities and relationships between school and community.

Finally, body education aimed to create habits and customs considered civilized by Western society. Among the habits inserted in the educational processes of CIEPs, hygiene habits were one of the most valued, as, according to its main creators Darcy Ribeiro, personal hygiene was an important way to prevent health and guarantee good health on low-income classes which lived in precarious conditions.

Thus, the educational project would aim to transform the behavior of poor children, as if rich ones had no need for a body education because they would inherit, from their families, a “cultural capital”. Obviously, this “fight of representations” (Chartier, 2002), in the symbolic game of valuing certain “cultural capital” transforms school in an institution that reproduces social inequalities (Bourdieu & Passeron, 2014), justifies and bases the criticisms to the educational projects that aimed the autonomy and/or emancipation of low-income classes through an enlightening concept. However, we consider that, even though the projects of CIEPs started from a stigmatizing representation, especially Darcy Ribeiro’s, towards low-income children, giving them an identity closer to uncivility, its educational proposal had the merit of structuring a public school aiming to provide access to health, leisure, and cultural equipment. We conclude that educational projects, such as CIEPs, cannot be ‘invisibilized’ and/or disqualified by their modern principles, but to rethink their representations.

• 1
  English version: Viviane Ramos- [e-mail]
• 2
  Support: Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ), Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)
• 2
  References correction and bibliographic normalization services: Douglas Mattos (Tikinet) – [e-mail].
• 4
  The archive is organized by acronyms referring to the series, volumes, folders according to the location of the document. For example: DR, gbII, 1994.00.00.V3. and DR, gbII, 1994.00.01 Pasta IV. The DR refers to Darcy Ribeiro, gbII to the second Brizola government, 1994 the year it was produced and/or published, V3 to the volume, and, on the second case to the pasta (folder) number. In this study, when citing any document from this archive, we will use these references.
• 5
  Teixeira (1977) affirms that basic school aims, above all, the formation of work habits, of social coexistence, intellectual reflection, taste, and awareness, and could not limit its activities to less than a full day. It needs to be and should be full-time for the students and have full-time teachers.
• 6
  In this sense, we work with the concept of school culture defined by Julia (2001) as “ a set of rules that define the knowledges to teach and conducts to instill, and a set of practices that allow the transmission of those knowledges and the incorporation of those behaviors” (p. 9).
• 7
  Oscar Niemeyer is considered one of the most respected and audacious names in international modern architecture.
• 8
  This Family was represented by the social parents in the Projeto Alunos Residentes (Resident Student Project)
• 9
  Archive Fundar DR, gbII, PEE 1994.00.00 Pasta II.
• 10
  Ana Maria Monteiro was the director of Education School in Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and member of the team which implemented PEE (1991-1994).
• 11
  Archive Fundar DR, gbI, 1980.09.00.V4.
• 12
  Archive Fundar DR, gbII, PEE 1994.00.00 Pasta III.
• 13
  Trecho retirado do Arquivo da Fundar no qual se transcreve uma entrevista de Darcy Ribeiro concedida ao jornal O Globo. Neste trecho, Darcy rebate as críticas que o modelo arquitetônico do CIEP recebia, principalmente as divisórias baixas das salas de aula.
• 14
  Archive Fundar DR, gbII, PEE 1989.01.00 Pasta VI.
• 15
  Archive Fundar DR, gbII, PEE 1994.00.00 Pasta III.
• 16
  In 1987, teachers’ union established the acronym Cepe (Centro Estadual dos Profissionais de Educação- Stae Center of Education Professionals), as it started to include all professionals of education. It is currently called Sepe (Sindicato Estadual dos Profissionais da Educação- State Union of Education Professionals).
• 17
  For the 1st PEE they envisioned the Demonstration Schools, in places to follow up and assess the pedagogical proposals of CIEPs, periodically receiving teachers and staff who worked or would work in CIEPs, for demonstrations and internships. In the 2^nd PEE, they created the Directory of Teachers’ Training (Diretoria de Capacitação do Magistério), responsible for the general coordination of in-service training and for the Refresh Course for Full-time School Teachers (Monteiro, 2009).
• 18
  Archive Fundar DR, gbII, PEE 1989.01.00 Pasta XI (CIEP 299).
• 19
  Archive Fundar DR, gbII, PEE 1994.00.00 Pasta IV.
• 20
  Archive Fundar DR, gbI, 1986.00.00.V2.
• 21
  Archive Fundar DR, gbII, PEE 1994.00.00 Pasta III.
• 22
  Archive Fundar DR, gbII, PEE 1989.01.00 Pasta XI.
• 23
  Archive Fundar. CIEP – Avenida dos Desfiles. Equipe de Orientação Técnico-Pedagógica. Relatório da Equipe – julho de 1986.
• 24
  Archive Fundar. DR, gbII, PEE 1994.00.00 Pasta III.
• 25
  Archive Fundar DR, gbII, PEE 1994.00.00 Pasta III.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  02 Dec 2019
• Date of issue
  2019

History

• Received
  08 Jan 2018
• Reviewed
  13 Aug 2018
• Accepted
  13 Sept 2018