Body education and school hygiene in Rio de Janeiro press (1930 - 1939)

Abstract

In the 1930s in Rio de Janeiro, there was an effective presence of intellectuals in government positions, which could ensure the implementation of a number of strategies aimed at the construction of a wider reform of a society guided by modernity, which lay in the reform of habits, such as hygiene and body education. Rio de Janeiro was the administrative center of the republic, so there was a need for coordinating government policy on education and health, especially in that city. This study has aimed to evaluate the influence and impact of hygienist strategies on the daily life of schools. Its sources were mainly O Paiz and Jornal do Brazil newspapers in the 1930s. The document corpus consisted of 37 newspaper articles, of which 21 were analyzed in this research, because they involved the following specific categories: school medicine, school hygiene and health education. The hypothesis pointed to the limited influence of intellectuals, with a gap between what was thought and what was executed. However, findings allow us to consider approaching the educational discourses and practices influenced by the actual participation of intellectuals such as Fernando de Azevedo and Anísio Teixeira in the organization of education in Rio de Janeiro, particularly in the early 1930s.