Da pedra ao pó: o itinerário da lousa na escola paulista do século XIX

Abstract

This work presents, from the perspective of the History of Education e through empirical research, the relationships between modern school form constitution and the materials that provided São Paulo elementary public schools during 19th century. Its hypothesis is that school form constituted on latter 19th century is also tributary to practices attempted throughout that period in elementary schools and that became known in teachers and inspectors reports. It is an historiographic exercise with the concepts of school culture of Julia (1995) and school form of Vincent (1980, 1994) Lousa" is the material in evidence, among others. "Lousa" was the denomination of the pupil's individual use slate in the elementary schools of 19th century, and "pedra" was the portable chalkboard. On latter 19th century, the chalkboard hanging on the wall or fixed to it (parietal chalkboard) was denominated "lousa" or "quadro- negro". The individual slate was classified as school utility, while the chalkboard was classified as sometimes as utility, sometimes as furniture. After being fixed to the wall, that school material lost the its identity as school furniture or utility and integrated the spatial composition of the classroom, transformed in a portion of the wal. The lousa's itinerary in 19th century São Paulo schools implied the realtionship betrween school material and method, school material and learning matter and the practical conditions of the school organization in the widening of the use of the chalkboard, to make it of single or multiple use. During 19th century, different and complementary themes guided the lousa's itinerary in the constituting primary school: one was adjusting the learning method linked to the way of organization and distribution of school services to the learning method linked to educational interventions oriented by modern education theories; the other was the need to homogenize pupil's classes. Those themes interacted with pupil's mean attendance, teacher's instruction, learning programs and others