Memories of professional and technological education in Campos dos Goytacazes, Rio de Janeiro: the school of Apprentices and Craftsmen in focus

Abstract

This article discusses the relationship between the childhood of the working class, at the beginning of the 20th century, with the duality, still persistent in the 21st century, between general education and Vocational and Technological Education (EPT). Through the Discursive Textual Analysis (ATD) of the Presidential Decree nº 7.566, of September 23, 1909, which creates the national network of EPT schools and photographs of the former Escola de Aprendizes Artífices de Campos dos Goytacazes, Rio de Janeiro, the This article seeks to answer the following guiding questions: How are childhoods portrayed in the history of the EPT, more precisely in the early 20th century? Is this treatment given to childhood related to the historical duality between propaedeutic training, for the elite, and professional training, for the poor? It can be seen that the EPT achieved a strong regenerative bias due to the ruling classes of the early 20th century considering the underprivileged of fortune ignorant and liable to the school of vice and crime. Thus, the treatment given to childhoods at the beginning of the 20th century reveals much of the persistent duality between knowing how to do and knowing how to think that still occurs in the 21st century.

Keywords: Professional and Technological Education. School of Apprentice Craftsmen. Childhoods of the Brazilian working class. Discursive Textual Analysis