Educandário Coronel Felício: a participação militar na educação pública da Fronteira Brasil-Paraguai (1951-1980)

Abstract

The dissertation aims to evidence the participation of the Brazilian Army in public education. At the beginning, the text presents a historic setting for the object's bounding area of research: the municipality of Jardim, situated in the border region of Brazil with Paraguay, characte-rized by the limit in the river Apa and for having been the scene of an episode of the Paraguay War (1864-1870), who became known for the narrative of the Viscount de Taunay in the book “A Retirada da Laguna”. In the configuration is shown the interrelationships existing between the military presence and the formation of the municipality. The text continues with the evi-dences about the military involvement in public education, carried out by the Comissão de Es-tradas de Rodagem Numero 3 (CER-3), a military organization designed to roadworks and in-stalled in the region, succeeding others with differents denominations and that, after the rec-ognition as strategic place by the brazilian government, were designed to provide road servic-es in the region. The military presence in education was started with the support for the opera-tion of courses and schools and lasted until the installation of a school in the municipality, named Educandário Coronel Felicio, aimed for the studies not only of the children of em-ployees of CER-3, but with access to all population. In the text is demonstrated that, despite being under military administration, the educandário was differed from traditional models and acquaintances of military schools, where occurs the military participation in education. The temporal boundary is at the beginning (1951) the year that was implanted an course to teach adults to read and write in Jardim, and at the end (1980) the change to administration to the Mato Grosso do Sul state, leaving the military administration. The methodology applied in the research involved the realization of bibliographic and documentary analysis, centered on the documents obtained in the CER-3, as the internal bulletins issued by the head of the Commis-sion, plus interviews with former teachers of Educandario. On the theoretical basis, is used the theory proposed by Norbert Elias (1897-1990), about the civilizing process. Besides the par-ticipation of the military in public education, in the text are found the representatives aspects of school culture of Educandário Coronel Felicio, since the beginning of the operation, as the architecture, the school practices and the selection of the first Director and first professors.