Emergence of group schools and production, through differentiation, of isolated schools in the state of Espírito Santo (1908-1916)

Abstract

This article assesses the trajectory of isolated schools in Espírito Santo, in the context of opposition and competition with the model school, the projection, and the conditions for the effective functioning of the Gomes Cardim School Group, the first and for a long time the only school group in Espírito Santo. The period chosen (1908-1916) covers the period from the declaration of the inconvenience of the isolated schools in Vitória, capital city of the state of Espírito Santo, to the creation of an institution aimed at modeling the practice of teachers to work in those same schools. The documentary corpus worked on including letters, requests, reports, decrees, laws, official acts of the Brazilian Ministry of Education, photographs, and news articles. Through an indexical analysis of these sources, the text focuses on school spaces, teaching staff, and the organization of teaching in isolated schools in Espírito Santo. In general, it is understood that the generally negative evaluation attributed to isolated schools (Souza, 2016 ) coexisted with forced ambiguities, on the one hand, due to the fragility of the locally established school group, and on the other hand — despite the inconvenience decreed in 1908 — due to the indispensable role of isolated schools, to the point of their modeling in 1916. In the case of Espírito Santo, contrary to the discursively constructed binarism about the modes of schooling in the early twentieth century, the relationship between the school group and the isolated schools is understood as a conflict permeated by challenges and mutual borrowings, considering that the markers of differentiation established between the two mainly concern the legal prescriptions, the status, and the visibility granted to each institution.