Fios, nós e laços: o mundo social de professoras e professores do ensino secundário na Região Centro-Oeste (1942-1961)

Abstract

This study aimed to reconstruct the trajectories, networks, and social world of female and male teachers from four institutions in the Central-West region of Brazil. The period established for the research was from 1942 to 1961, corresponding, respectively, to the enforcement of Decree Law No. 4,244 of 1942, part of the Capanema Reform and a landmark in secondary education in the country, and to the enactment of Law No. 4,024/1961, the National Education Guidelines and Framework Law. The objective of the study was to analyze whether, and how, the trajectories, networks, and social world of secondary school teachers in the Central-West region were related to and/or contributed to secondary education and society through their professional and social activities. This was a documentary research study. The sources collected originated primarily from the Regional Documentation Center of the Federal University of Grande Dourados, referring to Ginásio Osvaldo Cruz (1954), as well as documents from Ginásio Presidente Vargas (1951-1958), minutes of the Dourados City Council, newspapers from Mato Grosso, personal archives of teachers, birth, marriage, and death certificates, photographs, memoirs, copies of the newspaper O Progresso (1920-2017), documents from Liceu Cuiabano, and records from Liceu de Goiás. Documentary searches were conducted on Family Search, Facebook groups, and the Digital Newspaper Library of the National Library of Brazil. Data collection was based on a list of 214 teachers from the aforementioned institutions, from which 18 trajectories were selected for in-depth analysis. The methodology adopted was prosopography, understood as the study of collective biographies, applied in this case to teachers. Data analysis was grounded in the concepts of social world, dispositions, social mobility, and networks proposed by Lahire (2004, 2006), and the concept of sociability developed by Sirinelli (2003). It was concluded that secondary school teachers in the Central West region formed a non-homogeneous network and maintained connections with various social institutions. They established relationships of friendship, work, and family, forming a group that built individual and collective ties, which both influenced and were influenced by society. In this way, they contributed to social dynamics, to the strengthening of secondary education, and to the History of Education in the Central-West region.