O ensino de geometria na formação de professores primários em Minas Gerais entre as décadas de 1890 e 1940

Abstract

This paper historically investigates Geometry teaching of elementary school teachers’ training in Minas Gerais, Brazil, between the decades of 1890 from 1940. It tried to answer some questions: What were the geometry contents taught to those teachers in Normal Schools? How did they deal with this knowledge in elementary school teachers’ training? What were the purposes of geometry at that time? Therefore, it was used cultural history as theoretical and methodological tool, together with resources of the history of mathematics education. The analyzed sources were: Normal Schools legislation; female students’ notebooks from teacher Alda Lodi, one of the founders of Belo Horizonte Teaching Improvement School; two books that mentioned Geometry and were in that teacher’s library; and copies of the Minas Gerais Journal of Education. In the period comprised in this research the Free School Movement boomed, and it also coexisted with the Intuitive Method implemented in Primary Object Lessons. The research showed the poor presence of flat and spatial Geometry in elementary school teachers’ training, especially when compared to Arithmetic or Drawing. We also observed a distance between Geometry and teaching practice, which became a subject of high school culture rather than of professional culture, serving as application for the arithmetic.