Pedagogia e psicologia dos testes mentais na primeira metade do século XX

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze the technologies of subjectivation and psychological knowledge, closely related to the field of pedagogy, that circulated in both international and national contexts during the First Brazilian Republic. Looking at a different present, considering that history is discontinuous and that each era and event has its own history, in addition to the fact that regimes of truth are produced according to the interests of the society of the period in question (Foucault, 1969), was relevant for two complementary reasons: i) to perceive the changes in the selective practices of students, both in regular public schools and those of an asylum/school nature; ii) to question the notions of education, formation, and the student. The thorough literature review in the field of recent History of Education, the notion of regimes of truth (Foucault, 1971), and the documentary sources, composed of a set of articles published in pedagogical journals, as well as studies by Prudhommeau (1969) and Alves (1928), in addition to research at the Center for Research and Documentation on Contemporary History of Brazil (CPDOC), the Digital Hemeroteca, and the Archives of the State Institute of Education of Juiz de Fora, allowed the writing of this work to be developed in the form of interwoven threads. The idea of placing students into homogeneous classes aimed to facilitate the progress of school education at its various levels. In this sense, the examination of children's intellectual capacity (tests) was the main tool used to achieve the desired objective by the group of educators who supported it. Applied to school education, such experimental models facilitated not only the definition of the child's place in childhood and the difference between children and adults but also the differences between other stages of life, such as adolescence. Additionally, they defined, through the presence of Psychology and Pedology in the curricula of Normal Schools, changes in teacher education.