Furniture and objects from the primary schools of Santo Antonio - Mato Grosso (1930-1945)

Abstract

This article is part of an investigation whose theme deals with school institutions. The temporal delimitation is focused on the period of the so-called “Vargas Era” (1930-1945), in which the country was governed uninterruptedly by a single president. The research seeks to map the furniture and objects (materials) of primary schools, which were created in the categories of School Group and isolated schools, in the region called Santo Antônio do Rio Baixo (formerly) Santo Antônio de Leverger, a municipality located in the countryside of the state of Mato Grosso. To this end, documentary sources from the defined period were used, with which it was possible to weave some analyzes around school material culture. The theoretical support is based on Cultural History with a methodological procedure based on historiography and documents, whose official sources were located in the collection of the Public Archive of Mato Grosso (APMT) and constitute Regulation, Report, Presidential Message. The reflection was guided by the following question: what were the school objects used in primary schools and how can materiality help us think about the relationships established in the context of the time? The article is organized into two parts, the first of which will present the types of schools that existent in the municipality where the research was carried out and, in the second, the emphasis is on analyzing the furniture and objects that were identified as existing in primary schools. of Santo Antônio. The results indicate that when it comes to primary schools in Santo Antônio de Leverger, in the initial decades of the 20th century, isolated rural schools presented disparities related to the availability of the minimum materials necessary to offer support for the teaching-learning practice, when compared to the school group created at the municipality headquarters.