Presentation - Education, health and childcare: thoughts on the object of research

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to present some reflections on dossier Education, Health and Childcare: knowledge, expertise and social practices. Its organization brings together articles that intend to debate public and/or private initiatives produced by intellectuals and/or institutions in the context of the institutionalization of scientific knowledge and care models related to public health, guardianship actions and the education of children. To this attempt, it is a collection of ten articles resulting from research with varied documentary repertoires and theoretical-methodological references that express possible trends and perspectives of analysis about the production of knowledge in the field of human sciences. In this way, the articles contribute to thoughts that are anchored on issues related to philanthropy; public health, interdiction and education policies; subjects related to school hygiene, schooling processes, welfare and education institutions, as well as enhancing analyses on the role of intellectuals and institutions in different spaces/times that take childhood as the mobilizing axis of reflections and research.

Keywords:
Assistance; Childhoods; Education; Health; History of Education

RESUMO

Este artigo tem como intuito apresentar algumas reflexões acerca do dossiê Educação, Saúde e assistência às infâncias: saberes, conhecimentos e práticas sociais. Em sua organização reúne artigos que tencionam debater iniciativas públicas e ou privadas produzidas por intelectuais e ou instituições no âmbito da institucionalização de conhecimentos científicos e de modelos de assistência relacionados com a saúde pública, as ações tutelares e a educação das infâncias. Com esse intento, congrega dez artigos decorrentes de pesquisas com variados repertórios documentais e referenciais teórico-metodológicos que expressam tendências e perspectivas de análises possíveis acerca da produção de conhecimentos no âmbito das ciências humanas. Deste modo, os artigos contribuem para reflexões que se ancoram em temáticas relacionadas à filantropia; às políticas públicas de saúde, de interdição e de educação; as problemáticas relativas à higiene escolar, aos processos de escolarização, as instituições de atendimento assistencial e de educação, bem como potencializam analises sobre o papel dos intelectuais e das instituições em diferentes espaços/tempos que tomam às infâncias como eixo mobilizadores de inflexões e de pesquisas.

Palavras-chave:
Assistência; Infâncias; Educação; Saúde; História da Educação

RESUMEN

Este artículo tiene como objetivo presentar algunas reflexiones sobre el dossier Educación, Salud y Puericultura: saberes, conocimientos y prácticas sociales. En su organización, reúne artículos que pretenden debatir iniciativas públicas y/o privadas producidas por intelectuales y/o instituciones en el ámbito de la institucionalización del conocimiento científico y modelos de asistencia relacionados con la salud pública, acciones de tutela y educación infantil. Con ese propósito, presentamos un conjunto de diez artículos resultantes de investigaciones con variados repertorios documentales y referentes teórico-metodológicos, que expresan tendencias y perspectivas de posibles análisis sobre la producción de conocimiento en el campo de las ciencias humanas. De esta forma, los artículos contribuyen a reflexiones que se anclan en temas relacionados con la filantropía; políticas de salud pública, interdicción y educación; cuestiones relacionadas con la higiene escolar, los procesos de escolarización, las instituciones de cuidado y educación, así como a enriquecer los análisis sobre el papel de los intelectuales y las instituciones en diferentes espacios/tiempos que toman a la infancia como eje movilizador de reflexiones e investigaciones.

Palabras clave:
Asistencia; Infancias; Educación; Salud; Historia de la Educación

Introduction

A time for dreaming and imagining, the arrival of the turn of the century filled the eyes of those ‘people seeking new experiences’. It was time not only to map out the present, but also to plan for the future. If the arrival of a new century has always made people dream, perhaps it was the end of the 19th century that best brought this kind of utopia to life. Universal exhibitions began to didactically demonstrate progress and imagine tomorrow; mappings and inventions looked at the deadlocks of the present, but sidelong glanced at the next century; ‘science’ was imposed as a way of redeeming uncertainties (COSTA; SCHWARCZ, 2000, p.10-11- quotes added by the authors).

At the dawn of the 20th century, there were renewed scientific and political debates around the problem of organizing the nation and building an ideal of Brazilianness aimed at consolidating the new regime established after the proclamation of the Republic in 1889. Brazil’s continental dimensions, coupled with its economic and social problems, imposed challenges to the country as it sought to achieve its so longed civilization. From this perspective, “educating the population, planning the economy, ridding the country of ignorance, treating tropical diseases, preventing diseases and epidemics, promoting eugenic policies” and undertaking actions to adapt institutions, politics, society and the population were part of the measures taken by different sectors of society involved in proposing projects and actions aimed at overcoming the problems that plagued the country (CAMARA, 2011).

In this scenario, the unfolding panorama brought to the stage the conviction on the part of these sectors of society that science was the way to “redeem uncertainties” (COSTA; SCHWARCZ, 2000) and intervene in the present in order to predict the country’s future. In this sense, protecting children and acting on poor families became some of the measures capable of undertaking civilization and requiring the progress and modernization of the country.

In this context, as Velloso (2010) argues, the modern took on a broad, polysemic and controversial meaning. On the one hand, it was associated with “scientific-technological achievements and the development of the urban-industrial process” and on the other, it was linked to ideas and representations that were dedicated to thinking about the country’s place “in the world civilization order” (VELLOSO, 2010, p. 49). Thinking about the country from these perspectives meant scrutinizing the different social realities in order to influence them, projecting the possibility of the future in the present. Thus, anchored in science and with the intention of building a new image of the country, projects were designed to build a new social order.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, the actions carried out by public, private, public-private, mutual aid institutions and philanthropists from different backgrounds largely resulted in the opening and maintenance of hospitals, asylums, corrective colonies, nurseries, leagues, institutes, medical centers, maternity hospitals, preventive clinics, dispensaries, polyclinics and schools aimed at promoting and carrying out charitable, welfare, protective, regenerative and educational actions aimed at alleviating the poverty and ignorance of the population, especially children. According to Camara (2011), in dialogue with Scwartzman (2004), the supporters of the Republic, who positioned themselves as heralds of a new era, built nation-building strategies in different ways, based on the liberal banner, which aimed to “’transform’ and ‘incorporate’” individuals. In such a way,

The new century offered to republicans of different origins the hope of consolidating the project of a country associated with a perspective of minimizing social inequalities and remedying the problems associated with poverty. Poor children were seen as a privileged platform for rhetoric and action, galvanizing proposals aimed at categorizing them at the same time as regulating and inspecting their activities and their daily lives, which were seen as unhygienic, ‘unruly’ and ‘reprehensible’.

[...] In the course of this process, concern for childhood became the focus of different discourses and practices (CAMARA, 2011, p. 18-19 - quotes added by the author).

As far as the measures taken by different sectors of society to care for children are concerned, these were not conceived uniformly throughout Brazil. However, it is possible to identify charitable, philanthropic and welfare experiences in different regions of the country. In this way, reflecting on the uses and ways in which assistance initiatives and public policies took shape during the 19th and 20th centuries requires us to understand the meanings attributed to impoverished children and families in the context of the nation projects outlined and implemented by their creators.

In agreement with the assertion made by Abreu (2015), we consider that if, on the one hand, “the social uses of assistance” were designed to largely serve the “administrators of the system”, or even to establish power relations that took place in the intertwining of public and private interests, it is possible on the other hand, to consider that the users of these charitable, philanthropic and assistance services promoted on a local, regional and national scale were able to enjoy their benefits (ABREU, 2015, p. 9).

Thus, with the aim of reflecting on the situation of children and the initiatives aimed at their care and education, this dossier brings a collection of ten articles written by nineteen researchers who, from different perspectives of analysis and angles of observation, chose different problems and temporalities from which to undertake their reflections related to philanthropy and charity; public health, prohibition and education policies; hygiene and school hygiene; sanitary education; the processes of schooling children; the transformations of science and its social impacts, welfare and educational institutions and the role played by philanthropists.

In its variety of topics, the dossier brings together institutions representing the Southeast, South, North, Center-west and Northeast regions of the country, with researchers from the University of Brasilia, the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, the State and Federal Universities of Bahia, the University of Amazonas and the Federal University of Amazonas, the Federal University of Goiânia, the State University of Rio de Janeiro, the State University of Pará, the State University of Santa Catarina, the Federal Institute of the State of Bahia and the Federal University of Amazonas, University of Amazonas and Federal University of Amazonas, Federal University of Goiânia, University of the state of Rio de Janeiro, University of the state of Pará, University of the state of Santa Catarina, Federal Institute of Paraná, Education Secretariat of the Federal District, and Municipal Secretary of Manaus/AM.

In fact, we hope to be able to collaborate in line with the editorial scope of the Journal to socialize and disseminate analyses that are dedicated to thinking about different initiatives aimed at children in Brazil and the United States. In addition to presenting the articles included in the dossier, the text tries to develop some ideas about the imbrications between public and private assistance actions during the process of consolidating an assistance matrix, which foresaw and called for the state to act as a central element in promoting public policies for the care and education of children. To this end, this text is organized into two parts. In the first, it seeks to highlight some aspects from which it is possible to think about initiatives aimed at children, with emphasis on medical-hygienist and legal measures. In the second, it presents the writing itinerary of the articles included in the dossier.

Towards a perspective of assistance and protection for children: interweaving philanthropic and assistance actions for childhoods.

A look at the past reveals that the subject of childhood was a recurring phenomenon in contexts of rapid industrialization and accelerated urban development. In France and England in the 19th century, children were part of the reflection on living conditions of the working classes in the context of emerging capitalism. There was talk both of children exploited by industrial labor and of abandoned children, tramps and beggars, who were part of the cruel universe of the big city and who were portrayed with great realism by writers [...] (ALVIM; VALLADARES, 1988, p. 3)

As Alvim and Valladares show in a text published in 1988, the issue of childhood, and in particular impoverished children, came to the fore in different countries during the 19th century. In Brazil, especially from the last decades of the 19th century, with the social transformations underway, particularly with the abolition of slavery (1888) and the proclamation of the Republic (1889), measures were required involving the creation of a free workforce, and the creation of mechanisms capable of establishing discourses and practices for integrating the population into the new order under development. In this process, the issue of childhood took center stage among the social issues to be faced by the country (ALVIM; VALLADARES, 1988, p. 4).

In the international context, numerous congresses and associations were organized as arenas for discussions about childhood’s situation, with particular attention to the regulation of work, compulsory schooling, guardianship measures and the drafting of specific institutions and laws for their care, such as the Paris Criminal Congress of 1889.

At the 1889 congress, according to Camara’s analysis (2010, p. 213), the theories of the anthropological criminal type and the incorrigible born criminal defended by the Italian psychiatrist Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) were contested and resisted. Based on a New Criminal School, its supporters defended explanations based on “the primacy and recognition of social factors over biological ones”. From then on, Criminal Sociology, with exponents such as the French philosopher and sociologist Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904), defended a new perspective from which to understand crime and criminals. Poverty, the moral and material environment, as well as living conditions were elements that influenced people’s lives and, as such, should be plausible for intervention by the state and civil society initiatives.

The effects of these debates had a wide repercussion in Brazil, contributing to changes on the part of doctors, lawyers and philanthropists who took a stand, raising flags and building actions based on the desire to understand and intervene in the situation of childhood in the country. As Camara (2010) points out, in the flow of this movement, children were idealized as the “genesis of society”, an object of study and regulation. Aiming to expand the role of the state in conducting and directing policies designed to meet the interests of the nation, sectors of society directed their efforts towards reorganizing society, and for this, establishing strategies for social control and transformation. To this end, asylums for minors in different regions of the country were designed, mobilizing debates and actions by the state, the Church, philanthropists, jurists and doctors. In this way, they considered it to be

[...] necessary to encourage the creation of useful works of scientific charity, to establish the appropriate legislation, far from the usual platonic character, becoming a practical reality, operating, finally, a promising movement, for the dissemination, throughout the country, of healthy principles that will lead our people, in a wholesome atmosphere of kindness and affection, to happiness and physical and moral vigor.

[...] It is now time to organize Public Assistance in a definitive and efficient way and governments, in view of our pressing needs in this regard, to the great progress of the nations of the old and new continents and the social moment we are going through. Therefore, we have the imperative obligation to look affectionately at the resolution of this current problem, seeking, as is required today, to support the child, the old, the poor, the sick, the indigent, the helpless (MONCORVO FILHO, 1923, p. 128-129).

Thus, based on medical-hygienic models, specialists and activists, like Moncorvo Filho, aimed to act on the possible threats caused by an unruly and dangerous population, transforming what was considered heterogeneous and discordant with the country’s modernization project, into a homogeneous and unified composition. In a combined action, through technical, scientific and rational parameters, measures were proposed to propagate and institute child hygiene, childcare, and pediatrics and school hygiene as parameters for regulating and ordering social life, the environment and housing.

During the first decades of the 20th century, especially between the end of the First World War and the outbreak of the World War II, the issue of child protection and medical and social assistance manifested itself as an international collective action involving doctors, lawyers, educators and charitable and philanthropic institutions from various countries (BIRN, 2006; SCARZANELLA, 2014)¹. At this stage, interdependent movements across national borders were conceived with the aim of sensitizing civil society and governments to act in favor of children.

International agreements, legislation and institutional structures were drawn up in different countries to protect the specificities and meet the social, legal and health needs of children, especially those subjected to abandonment and poverty. To this end, official representatives and active civil society activists from European nations, the United States and Latin American countries such as Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Chile organized international committees, associations and institutes dedicated to promoting studies, organizing congresses and publications on different aspects of the so-called “problem of childhood”.

The agenda of international child protection institutions was extensive and developed according to different socio-cultural contexts. Despite this, issues related to social rights, education and child mortality generally took predominance. From the perspective of the time, the “problem of childhood” could be summed up in two crucial points: abandonment and mortality. In this line of concern, specialists and campaigners for the cause of childhood considered these two points to be undesirable consequences of poverty and the untidy and unhygienic habits of the poor. Emphasis was placed on the elements that contributed to the degeneration of the race and to infant mortality, such as alcoholism, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and tuberculosis. With regard to these aspects, in a conference held in 1916, the pediatrician and founder of the Institute for the Protection and Assistance of Children (IPAI), Moncorvo Filho, argued that the problem of infant mortality was even more acute among children between 0 and 7 years of age, affected by diseases such as smallpox, tuberculosis and alcoholism. Thus, based on the high infant mortality rates, especially in cities such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, he sought, on the one hand, to demonstrate that the figures showed the hygienic ignorance that prevailed among parents and on the other hand, indicated the lack of medical care and the abandonment of public assistance in the country (MONCORVO FILHO, 1923, p. 123-124).

The thoughts produced by Doctor Moncorvo Filho were echoed by his peers and other specialists and activists from other fields of knowledge. In this way, they

considered that childhood protection depended on medical and legal intervention strategies regarding the conduct and living conditions of poor and working-class populations, particularly in countries like Brazil where, according to them, “the mesological, climatic and social influences vary with the great distances that separate, for example, the sertões - hinterlands - from the coast; and the results that such influences can produce in the physical development of individuals must also be diverse” (BARRETO, 2003, p. 15).

Thus, doctors and jurists involved in the cause of childhood, when pondering protection and assistance, considered that in order to save children it would be necessary to take coordinated action involving several fronts, namely: controlling the high illegitimacy and birth rates; changing eating habits and nutritional status; improving housing conditions, preventing the spread of contagious diseases; regulating child labor and the work of breastfeeding women; organizing school systems; creating maternal and child care services; repressing delinquency among children and young people, stimulating the pedagogy of work and educating women to exercise motherhood and maintain the home.

Sanglard and Ferreira (2010, p. 458) identify the existence of an “umbilical relationship between the institutionalization of pediatrics and the creation of childhood care institutions”, where doctors played a leading role in the historical movement in which the role of philanthropy and benevolence in the care, protection and assistance of children was re-signified. The assistance that was gradually being implemented, especially from the first decades of the Republic, was intended to take on a scientific character based on the knowledge gained from childcare and pediatrics. Thus:

[...] the scientific actions were ultimately motivated by the idea that the absence of public policies aimed at correcting the typical ‘bad habits’ of family cultures (especially families from the vast sector of the urban working classes) and the pre-scientific practices in school, hospital, asylum and correctional institutions condemned Brazilian children to disease. And at a time when liberalism still dominated welfare practices, the support of philanthropy became essential for the ideas advocated by these doctors to be put into practice (SANGLARD; FERREIRA, 2010, p. 458).

In order to institute a crusade to save children, hygienist doctors insisted on the relevant role of women. As Freire (2008, p. 154) assures us, although linked to female nature, motherhood “[...] went beyond the limits of the domestic sphere and acquired a new character, of patriotic mission and public function. It was no longer a question of providing children for the husband, but of providing citizens for the homeland”. In this direction, popular courses and campaigns aimed at instructing and educating mothers were designed to break with backwardness and establish the assumptions of science. Philanthropy and scientific assistance were required to join forces in order to promote healthy and robust “good offspring”. Thus, it was at the crossroads of educational, hygienic, eugenic and legal initiatives that relations were woven between the intellectual sectors, society and the state; medicine, education and law; the school and the family; the public and the private.

We think it’s fair to say that welfare and philanthropic initiatives have a far-reaching effect on families, such as medical prescriptions for childcare, or even the regulatory measures determined by the legal system when it establishes the state’s guardianship over people’s lives. In this sense, the projects and actions instituted for children need to be thought of in terms of a relational analysis (BOURDIEU, 2012, p. 33) of the different fields of knowledge, such as welfare, medicine, education and law. In this way, the projects developed and practiced are, in our understanding, clues from which it is possible to map and understand the conceptions that took shape and materialized with regard to childhood in the country, as well as the possibility of using these initiatives to search for the threads and traces (GINZBURG, 2007) that allow us to weave history from other listenings, from other voices.

On a reading itinerary: research in focus

Although the educated men of a given period may disagree on the issues. It is above all through the obligatory issues on which and through which a thinker reflects that he comes to belong to his era, and can be situated and dated. Just as linguists resort to the criterion of intercomprehension in order to determine intellectual and cultural areas and generations through a survey of the sets of ‘mandatory issues’ that define the cultural field of an era (BOURDIEU, 1987, p. 207).

In its organization, the dossier brings together a dozen articles that make original contributions to the field of social and historical studies on public and private social policies to assist children. As a reading itinerary, we suggest that readers, in the light of Bourdieu’s perspective (1987, p. 207), consider what the author calls the “obligatory questions”, that is, the set of concepts, categories and repertoires of analysis that give intelligibility to the discussions taking place in the intellectual field of an era. Considering the issues from which questions related to childhoods have been woven and given meaning allows us to understand the historicity of the phenomena named, described and problematized, but also expresses a range of concerns that have mobilized researchers around questions related to childhoods.

Seen from this perspective, we believe that this compilation of articles shows the position of the authors with regard to the characteristics of Brazilian social policies, especially the tendency to form consortia or alliances between public and private agents. Conceived as a public-private social policy, childcare is presented as a social work involving different groups and social types, articulated according to values related to religious charity or secular or scientific philanthropy.

Starting from this premise, the dossier leads to two lines of analysis. The first brings together articles that deal with issues associated with the institutionalization of childhoods, which combined actions to protect and repress minors. The second brings together articles dedicated to thinking about initiatives in the field of care itself, which primarily aimed to medicate and educate childhoods.

The article The pioneer of education for the blind and deafblind in the United States: Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876), by Tatiana de Andrade Fulas, opens the dossier by dealing with the work of physician and philanthropist Samuel Gridley Howe, a typical intellectual liberal-social reformer of the first half of the 19th century who trusted in education as a solution to problems related to the so-called “social question”. Samuel Howe was responsible for setting up the first institute dedicated to educating the blind and deaf in the United States in the first half of the 19th century. In dialogue with the model for analyzing intellectuals proposed by Jean-François Sirinelli, the author examines Howe’s social work, debating the repercussions of his ideas and practices in the context of the European philanthropic movement for the creation of institutes, pedagogical innovations and technologies that made schooling possible for children and young people who were blind or deaf-blind.

Next, in the article Institutions and laws for children in Empire Brazil: the circulation of ideas about minorism, Maria Nilvane Fernandes and Elizabeth Trejos-Castillo challenge the current interpretation in historiography of the use of the concept of minor in the Brazilian legal and welfare field, which is commonly related to the promulgation of the 1927 Minors’ Code. The authors revisit the legislation, rules, decrees and regulations pertaining to education, repression and guardianship of childhood produced during the Brazilian imperial regime. They find that the concept was already used frequently in the mid-19th century, providing evidence of the existence of a culture of minors in relation to impoverished children. Although it is not a genealogical analysis of the discourse on minors, the article records the movements of “re-signification of the concepts child and childhood” which resulted in the formation of an official culture that defined impoverished children as a social problem of concern to the imperial and republican ruling elite and intellectuals.

The issue of minorism is also dealt with in the article Immigration, crime and correctional institutions: the case of Portuguese minors in the Pará Amazon (1880-1925). The author, Telmo Renato da Silva Araújo, analyzes the commission of crimes and the correctional detention of Portuguese immigrant minors attracted to the city of Belém, capital of the state of Pará, during the period of expansion of the rubber economy in the Amazon region. In his view, although the concept of a minor was already in use in the legal and welfare field, there was no specific criminal legislation for cases of foreign criminal minors. Despite this, minors of various nationalities, especially Portuguese, were classified under various criminal categories and sent to the Santo Antônio do Prata Correctional Colony (CCSAP). In addition to drawing up a social profile of the foreign minors mentioned in the criminal court documents, the article highlights the winding path of internments, escapes and repeat offenses of Portuguese immigrant minors detained in the Correctional Colony even after they reached the age of legal majority.

The article Guidelines for school education in an institution for minors considered to be antisocial (Santa Catarina/Brazil - 1972-1982), by Silvia Maria Fávero Arend and Otoniel Rodrigues Silva, aims to address the conceptions and correctional practices of minors, with emphasis on initiatives in the field of school education. To this end, the analysis focuses on the guidelines that governed the creation and operation of the Educational Center for Minors, a correctional institution for minors considered to be prone to or actually practicing antisocial behavior. The study follows the adoption by the state of Santa Catarina of the guidelines of the “national policy for the welfare of minors” formulated during the Brazilian civil-military regime that began in 1964. Specifically, it highlights the adoption of the standard of care of the Foundation for the Welfare of Minors (FUNABEM - Fundação do Bem-Estar do Menor). The adoption of the FUNABEM model broke with the traditional alliance between the state and the Catholic Church, which was generally in charge of the pedagogical and administrative management of childcare institutions. The Educational Center for Minors, a “para-penal institution”, promoted the internment of minors who presented what the creators of the project considered to be a “serious deviation of conduct”.

The article by Ricardo Santos Batista, entitled School Hygiene and Public Health in Salvador (1925-1930), aims to reflect on the hygienist conceptions and practices that were the basis for the implementation of public childcare policy in the state of Bahia. As a result of the health crisis caused by the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918, there was a reform in the area of federal public health with the creation of the National Department of Public Health (DNSP). The health regulations proposed by the new federal body advocated effective intervention by the public authorities in matters relating to public health. The state of Bahia was one of the first to adhere to the new health legislation, setting up the Secretariat of Health and Public Assistance (SSAP), the body responsible for state public health. In line with the model proposed by the DNSP, the Directorate of Child and School Hygiene (DHIE) was created within the SSAP, headed by the pediatrician and philanthropist Joaquim Martagão Gesteira, professor of pediatrics at the Bahia Medical School and leader of the Bahia League against Infant Mortality (LBCMI), a philanthropic organization created in 1923. In Bahia, the implementation of social policies to assist childhood was shared between the DHIE and the LBCMI, an institutional format that became the model followed by later childhood assistance policies.

The “private” management of childhood care is the subject of the analysis developed in the article Health, care and education: the institutionalization of poor children in Goiás in the 20th century by Rildo Bento de Souza, Lara Alexandra Tavares da Costa and Kalyna Ynanhiá Silva de Faria. The article deals with three institutions dedicated to providing assistance to poor children: the São Vicente de Paulo Asylum (1909), which was dedicated to health care; the São José Orphanage (1922), which set out to educate orphaned girls; and the Afrânio de Azevedo Preventory (1943), an institution for the compulsory isolation of children of parents infected with hanseniasis (leprosy). The article is in line with the tradition of studies on childhood that address the provision of care in a context where ideas and practices coming from Catholic charity, lay philanthropy and medical hygienism coexisted. The absence of references to public authorities is remarkable, suggesting that there were no social policies for children issued by the state and municipal governments of Goiás for a long period of time.

The article Isolated childhood: public policy for leprosy prophylaxis in Maranhão (1930-1950), by Rosyane de Moraes Martins Dutra and Celia Maria Benedicto Giglio deals with a case of local implementation of the national policy to prevent leprosy. Since the creation of the Inspectorate for the Prophylaxis of Leprosy and Venereal Diseases (1923), a body linked to the National Department of Public Health (DNSP), leprosy prevention was based on the model of social isolation of the sick and proposed the creation of three types of institutions: dispensaries, which diagnosed and screened the sick; leprosariums, which promoted the compulsory isolation of the sick; and preventoriums, which served for the social segregation of the sons and daughters of those affected by leprosy. Between 1930 and 1954, the isolation policy was maintained and expanded with the formulation of the National Plan to Combat Leprosy, which provided for the setting up of a national network of leprosaria, dispensaries and preventive clinics. In Maranhão, the Frei Querubim Dispensary, the Ponta do Bonfim Leprosarium and the Educandário Santo Antônio preventive clinics were created. Hansen’s disease prevention was also a public policy of “private” medical and social assistance run by a nationwide women’s philanthropy organization, the Federation of Societies for Assistance to Lazarus and Defense against Leprosy (FSALDL), which represented the interests of all the Societies for Assistance to Lazarus and Defense against Leprosy present in the Brazilian states.

The article The effects of a policy on access to early childhood education for malnourished babies and children, by Mariana Pereira de Castro e Souza and Bruno Tovar Falciano deals with the limits of the concept of public policy for childhood care. The case studied is the program Nurseries and Childcare Centers in Duque de Caxias (CCAIC) promoted by the municipal departments of education, health and social assistance of the Municipality of Duque de Caxias (RJ). The program in question adopted a “medical-assistance approach” that conceived medical-school care for early childhood as a strategy for mitigating family poverty. In this way, the article deals with the “long-term” persistence of discourses and practices that refer to and reiterate the meaning historically attributed to early childhood care and education as a strategy for alleviating family poverty.

Criticism of the “medical-assistance” model is also made in the article Casulo (cocoon) nurseries in Amazonas, 1979-1990, by Kelly Rocha de Matos Vasconcelos, Moysés Kuhlmann Júnior and Pérsida da Silva Ribeiro Miki, which deals with the public policy of pre-school childcare adopted by the Brazilian civil-military regime (1964-1989). Besides preparing children for compulsory schooling, the Cocoon Project’s aim was to “mass using” nationally the supply of day-care centers that were easy to set up and required little investment of public resources, the so-called “low-cost” day-care centers. To do this, they would adopt the “mass pre-school model” based on the direct involvement of the local “community”, i.e. philanthropic, charitable and religious organizations. Inspired by the arguments of Moysés Kuhlmann Júnior and Fúlvia Rosemberg, the article follows an interpretative path that emphasizes the political-ideological purposes and limits of the pre-school education model adopted by the Cocoon Project.

Finally, the article Overview of pedagogical home care Brazilian public policies, by Helma Salla and Geraldo Eustáquio Moreira examines the legislative formulations and state regulations that support the current public policies for Home Pedagogical Assistance (HPA). Adopting a “qualitative and exploratory research approach”, the authors analyze the textual content of the legislation and educational standards adopted by Brazilian states, available on official websites. HPA is a specific type of transitional assistance that aims to guarantee the continuity of the schooling process in situations where health conditions prevent regular attendance at school. The discussion developed in the article is about the “almost non-existence” of the HPA teaching modality, which demonstrates one of the weaknesses of the current public educational policy.

Final Considerations

We can conclude by saying that the collection of articles in the Education, Health and Childcare: Knowledge, Knowledge and Social Practices dossier are located in the area of dialogue between contributions from the History of Education, the History of Childcare and the History of Childhood. Another aspect that we think it might be worth considering is highlighting the possibility that these analyses may encourage problematizing movements capable of broadening the focus of vision about childhoods considered as social and legal problems, as well as the attempt to understand the dimensions assumed by the actions of men and women involved in promoting welfare actions and the social role of institutions.

In this sense, we would like to point out that although many studies and surveys have been produced in the human sciences since the last decades of the 20th century, there is still a need to expand our analytical investments in the production of approaches bringing to the stage the active social actors, the very people who use or are subjected to social policies for childhood. Or in other words, children and young people with their own specificities and socio-cultural diversities. We invite you to read on and ponder the ideas that this dossier may give rise to.

REFERÊNCIAS

• ALVIM, Rosilene Barbosa; VALLADARES, Lícia do Prado. Infâncias e sociedade no Brasil: uma análise da literatura. Boletim Informativo e Bibliográfico de Ciências Sociais. n. 26, p. 3-37, 1988. Disponível em: https://bibanpocs.emnuvens.com.br/revista/article/view/90 Acesso em: 24 ago. 2022.
  » https://bibanpocs.emnuvens.com.br/revista/article/view/90
• BARRETO, Tobias. Menores e loucos em Direito Penal. Brasília: Senado Federal, Conselho Editorial, 2003.
• BIRN, Anne-Emanuelle. O nexo nacional-internacional na saúde pública: o Uruguai e a circulação das políticas e ideologias de saúde infantil, 1890-1940. História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos, v. 13, n. 3, 2006. Disponível em: https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-59702006000300007 Acesso em: 25 set. 2022.
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-59702006000300007
• BOURDIEU, Pierre. A economia das trocas simbólicas. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1987.
• BOURDIEU, Pierre. O poder simbólico. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil, 2012.
• CAMARA, Sônia. Sob a Guarda da República: a infância menorizada no Rio de Janeiro na década de 1920. Rio de Janeiro: Quartet, 2010.
• CAMARA, Sônia. Infância pobre e instituições assistenciais no Brasil republicano. In: FARIA FILHO, Luciano Mendes; ARAÚJO, Vania Carvalho (Org.). História da Educação e da assistência à infância no Brasil. Vitória: EDUFES, 2011. p. 17-56 Disponível em: http://iesc.pro.br/publicacoes_iesc/livro-historia-da-educacao-e-da-assistencia-a-infancia-no-brasil/. Acesso em: 25 set. 2022.
  » http://iesc.pro.br/publicacoes_iesc/livro-historia-da-educacao-e-da-assistencia-a-infancia-no-brasil
• COSTA, Ângela Marques da; SCHWARCZ, Lilia Moritz 1890-1914: no tempo das certezas. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2000.
• FREIRE, Maria Martha de L. “Ser mãe é uma ciência”: mulheres, médicos e a construção da maternidade científica na década de 1920. História, Ciências, Saúde - Manguinhos, v. 15, supl., p. 153-171, 2008. Disponível em: https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-59702008000500008 Acesso em: 15 set. 2022.
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-59702008000500008
• GINZBURG, Carlo. O fio e os rastros. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2007.
• MONCORVO FILHO, Arthur. Discurso do Presidente do Primeiro Congresso Brasileiro de Proteção à Infância. In: Boletim do Primeiro Congresso de Proteção à Infância. 6º Boletim. Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1923.
• SANGLARD, Gisele; FERREIRA, Luiz Otávio. Médicos e filantropos: a institucionalização do ensino da pediatria e da assistência à infância no Rio de janeiro da Primeira República. Varia História, Belo Horizonte, v. 26, n. 44, p. 437-459, 2010. Disponível em: https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-87752010000200006 Acesso em: 15 set. 2022.
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-87752010000200006
• SCARZANELLA, Eugenia. Los pibes en el Palacio de Ginebra: Las investigaciones de la Sociedad de las Naciones sobre la infancia latinoamericana (1925-1939). Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe, v. 14, n. 2, 2014. Disponível em: https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=4003703 Acesso em: 18 set. 2022.
  » https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=4003703
• VELLOSO, Monica Pimenta. As distintas retóricas do moderno. In: OLIVEIRA, Claudia; VELLOSO, Monica Pimenta; LIMA, Vera. O moderno em revista. Representações do Rio de Janeiro de 1890 a 1930. Rio de Janeiro: Garamond, 2010. p. 43-110.

• 1
  Regarding the international child protection movement, see the works of Scarzanella (2014) and Birn (2006).

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  04 Dec 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  17 Aug 2023
• Accepted
  30 Aug 2023