GUSTAVO CAPANEMA and SECUNDARY EDUCATION in BRAZIL: The INVENTION of A LEGACY

Abstract

This article poses a problem for the political history of education: what would be the indication of the option of making secondary education the most attractive branch of secondary education, in a time of accelerated change to a prototype of a mass society, organized around an incipient free labor market, leveraged by the growth of industrial production and the urban way of life? Despite the controversial results of this option, unable to break with the elitist educational model, a work of social construction of memory made there for organized by Minister Gustavo Capanema in 1942 to be recognized as a synonym for quality education. In this sense, understanding the role of the relations of the modernizing state with the more conservative sectors of society, strongly represented by private educational institutions, reproducing school processes of social selectivity, can be a fruitful path of research.