LUIZ SUGIMOTO

Ahe stories of two of the oldest schools in Campinas, Colégio Progresso Campineiro (founded in 1900) and Escola Estadual Orosimbo Maia (1923), are being reconstructed from documents deposited in the sacristy of the chapel of one of them – among pans, pictures and priest's attire – and, in the second, under the dust and soot of the basement – ​​whose air intakes are at the level of the sidewalk of a congested city avenue.

Maria do Carmo coordinates the multidisciplinary team of the project “Memories of school education – Material culture and organization of historical archives”, financed by CNPq, linked to the CME, a document reference and research support body relating to the heritage culture of Brazilian education: “We started to plant the project in 2003, still without funding, and in the following two years we took care of the historical archives, which require greater care such as cleaning and packaging. But I hope it has many developments.”

According to the teacher, at Colégio Progresso alone, approximately 100 documents have been organized covering its 100 years of existence, from 1900 to 2000. Both there and at Escola Orosimbo Maia, the files are divided into groups of documents: administration, pedagogical practices , pedagogical resources, iconography and bibliographic documents.

“This project has the obvious function of organizing research sources for the history of education, but at the same time we work with the concept of school memory. The idea is that the archive serves as a nucleus for cultural movement at the school. At Progresso, the documentation has already allowed the production of a film, O Colégio, and an exhibition of paintings is scheduled, created based on photographs from the archive. At Escola Orosimbo Maia, students on the FE teacher training course are beginning to use the archive in their pedagogical work”, moving their internships forward, informs Maria do Carmo.

Girls school – Pedagogy student Priscila Corrêa produced, within the project, scientific initiation work that influenced her hiring to work at the Memorial do Colégio Progresso Campineiro. She says that this school – the only one for girls operating in the city – was founded by five illustrious members of the Campinas elite, concerned with the education of their daughters, nieces and goddaughters.

“The first director, Ana von Maleszewska, an Austrian trained in France and Germany, remained only until 1902, because the students complained about her rigidity. Mrs Emília de Paiva Meira was called to take her place, who would become the most significant figure in the school’s history, until her death in 1937”, recalls Priscila.

Initially installed in a farm, Progresso passed through three buildings on central streets, until gaining, in 1917, the headquarters that was designed to be a women's school, including a chapel for the students' daily prayers. “By decision of the founders, Mrs. Emília took over the school entirely from 1913 and, in 1928, created the supporting association, the Sociedade Brasileira de Educação e Instrução de Meninas, of which only single, Catholic women with unblemished morals would take part” , informs Priscila Corrêa.

This religious character, which took on a significant dimension in a school that was born secular and with a discourse clearly in opposition to religious schools in the region, is one of the aspects highlighted by professor Heloísa Helena Pimenta Rocha, from the management committee of the Education Memory Center. “When we organize the documentation of pedagogical practices, we observe the very strong presence of religion in school practices, expressed in saints and in photographs of religious festivals and first communion”.

Maria do Carmo Martins highlights, on the other hand, that the school brought the mark of pedagogical innovation, with physical education classes for girls already at that time and a scientific-based curricular organization, which included science laboratories. “We want to know how the school promoted a pedagogical debate in the city and what areas of influence it exerted”.

The coordinator adds that Progresso had an intense presence in the cultural activities of Campinas, maintaining close links with the City Hall, the Curia and social entities. “The school is a very important reference for us, education historians, including for more than 100 years of activity, which is rare in Brazilian school models.”

Among the illustrious founders of Progresso was Orosimbo Maia, who then wanted to give his daughter a good education. Farmer, lawyer, mayor of Campinas on three occasions, he was the president of the City Council when the house donated land to the state government for the construction of the fourth school group in the city.

The donation of the land, located close to the Mogiana station, took place in 1910 and the construction of the school building began in 1917, the same year in which the definitive Progresso building was delivered. The school was completed in 1923 and, in 1939, it was named Orosimbo Maia. With 24 classes at its beginning, the then 4th School Group was the largest primary education establishment in Campinas.

This network of connections is what led the Education Memory Center team to become interested in the documents in the basement of the second school built around the old Railway Station, serving a group of children, daughters of liberal civil servants from the middle and lower middle classes. – railway workers, traders, workers, tailors, carpenters, carpenters – residents in the city center or in popular neighborhoods such as Jardim Chapadão, Botafogo and Vila Industrial.

“The documents show the school’s rapid growth, which gained more than 200 students in five years. It’s a very high number for the time”, says Maria do Carmo. She states that the donation of the land by the Chamber also draws attention, as the construction would be the responsibility of the State and the school would belong to the state network.

Regarding this, professor Heloísa Rocha explains that the city thus encouraged the fulfillment of a project from the end of the 19th century, foreseeing investment by the State in the creation of primary schools, with appropriate buildings and different classes by age and degree of assimilation. of knowledge. “This experience that is so common today – separation by grade – at that time represented a pedagogical innovation. So-called school groups were organized.”

Heloísa observes that both the Colégio Progresso, created for the elite, and the Orosimbo Maia School, presented a more secular education project, with content aimed not only at the acquisition of reading, writing and calculation, but also at the foundations of science and to a moral dimension. “It is a project that was born in the Republic, with the objective of forming republican citizens”.

Isolated schools – Regarding the scenario at the time, professor Maria do Carmo remembers that Colégio Progresso emerged in a very restricted school universe, among seven or eight schools concentrated in the central region. In 1900, there were basically isolated schools or isolated classes. At the time of the creation of the Orosimbo Maia School, a small network of public schools was already in existence, including Culto à Ciência, Escola Normal and Grupo Escolar Francisco Glicério.

Interestingly, Orosimbo Maia keeps documents from attached schools, such as those at Fazenda Sete Quedas, Escola Mista do Bonfim and Vila Castelo Branco. “They began to report to Orosimbo Maia as a kind of headquarters, in another network of connections that we seek to uncover. There is still a lot to organize regarding the memory of education throughout the period covered”, estimates the coordinator.

The Education Memory Center has been counting on the help of the Unicamp Central Archive (Siarq) to organize the two funds, which will allow the external public to search the schools' documentation through the University's portal.

In addition to the interviewees, the following participate in this project: Rogério Xavier Neves, archivist; Carla T. Bizarro and Bianca Caetano, scientific initiation scholarship holders; Rayane da Silva, work scholarship holder; Alan Victor Pimenta, historian and photographer; and Rodrigo Bryan, architect, the last two from the Olho group, from FE, whose research partnership has favored debates on memory.