EDUCATIONAL PROCESSES IN BAIXADA FLUMINENSE: THE CITY, THE BOYS AND THE FORMATION OF THE ‘WELESSED CHILDHOOD’ (1938-1996).
Keywords: Educational processes, Educational Institutions, Cidade dos Meninos Duque de Caxias, Baixada Fluminense, 1938-1996.
With the implementation of the Brazilian national consolidation project through the administrative reform of the Estado Novo engendered by Commander Amaral Peixoto, one of its products was the emancipation of Duque de Caxias, in 1943. The territory was in an intense urbanization process conditioned, above all, by the implementation of the National Motor Factory and by population growth due to the proximity to the city of Rio de Janeiro. Accelerated industrialization and its correlate of urbanization increased the number of children and adolescents in urban spaces, deprived of family control – the latter, historically, considered a central element in the control and reproduction of capital. The State needed to take control of the 'disadvantaged children' who occupied the central regions of the city in search of survival, thus beginning a certain dispute with the church which, until then, was hegemonic in the political conduct of the issue. social situation generated by the existence of underprivileged childhood. We sought to point out that the creation of Cidade dos Meninos (1938-1996), in this context, served a double dimension: the expansion of the State's power over the management of childhood in situations of family abandonment, which concealed coercive processes already employed by the State ; and the conditioning of the behavior of these children and adolescents through the articulation between work and education as a way to contain childhood homelessness. To this end, we start from the analysis of documents produced, between (1935-1996) by the Fundação Abrigo do Cristo Redentor (FACR) such as FACR Report, Photographic Album of the City of Darcy Vargas Boys, FACR Professional Schools Regulation, Commemorative Magazine 25 years of FACR, History of Levy Miranda, Official Letters of FACR, Statutes of FACR, Photographs of visits by authorities to Cidade das Meninas and the Getúlio Vargas Professional Institute (IPGV); of newspapers that circulated in the city of Rio de Janeiro and Duque de Caxias, between 1935 and 1990, such as Jornal do Rio de Janeiro, Anoite, O Imparcial, O Correio da Manhã, O Jornal do Brasil, A Voz do Povo de Caxias, O Tópico and Folha de Caxias; and the bibliographic and academic production about Cidade dos Meninos. It is important to understand the elements that configure an institution in its educational dimension (SANFELICE, 2017), based on the periodization proposal regarding the history of public schools in Brazil, formulated by Saviani (2014). We also seek to understand the relationship between work and education in its onto-historical sense (ENGELS, 2004; MARX, 2013; CIAVATTA, 2002) and the assumptions that give work the character of an educational principle (GRAMSCI, 1981). That said, Cidade dos Meninos is pointed out as a political project produced during the Vargas government that was based on the assumptions of fascism implemented in Italy (1919-1943). And whose central function focused, above all, on the preventive containment of underprivileged children, which called into question national development based on the capitalist mode of production that expanded with the municipalization of the territory, through the instrumental use of the relationship between work and education in the development of educational practices aimed at the formation of a specific childhood.