Educação feminina: ideias e concepções sobre a formação da mulher veiculadas na imprensa da Parahyba do Norte (1912-1927)

Abstract

This paper aims to clarify the educational ideas and concepts expressed by newspapers in Paraíba on the education given to girls in the period of 1912 to 1927. To do so, it tries to reveal the discourses on girls' education, emphasizing the representations of the roles assigned to them by the press, as well as to understand how the society, with all its demands, used to influence and/or determine the content of their education. It also intends to collaborate with the studies in History of Education that use those leaflets as a research source. The sources used for the construction of this text are the newspapers: O Educador, A Imprensa, A União, and official documents such as decrees, reports and regulations. Three categories of analysis guide this work: representation, school culture and gender, in a historical perspective. Most of the articles analyzed show that, in the case of female education, the concern of Paraiba society was driven by the need to educate women to exceedingly pursue their primary role as mother and wife. To women should be given a solid elementary education, for the new society required them to be able to educate the new man in the mold of a hygienist education, however this could not take into risk the home, the family, the patriarchy. For a society in the process of modernization, it was not pleasant to keep women uneducated, isolated in the "recesses of their homes", but could not release them to a completely activity performed for public services; the teaching was thus a plausible alternative to this balance, and the Escola Normal becomes the indicated institution for that function.