Advogados, engenheiros, médicos e professores : a formação de uma rede de intelectuais e o discurso da modernidade educacional na cidade de Santos (1908-1930)

Abstract

The expansion of the coffee production, the railway, and the port, as well as the movement of liberal, abolitionist, and republican ideas, are some of the aspects that propitiated the town of Santos to let its provincial garments, at the end of the 19th century, to become a modern city by the standards of Brazilian Belle Époque. During this process, Education was seen as an instrument to consolidate the capitalist modernity, and it was strictly attached to politics and the subjects' acting ¿ intellectuals. These individuals ideologically reinforced, both in civil and political society, the discourse of educational modernity. The intellectuals from Santos ¿ not because they were born in the town but for turning it the stage of their action ¿ acted, in fact, through the communication means of the time. Above all, through periodicals, which became the voice of many members of this group. This investigation aimed to understand the social practices of these subjects (the intellectuals of Education during the First Republic of Santos) by observing their particularities: the qualification path, the political activity of these intellectuals, and the contradictions present in the clashes of this generation of enlightened ones, that fought for the hegemony of the educational field in the town of Santos. For that, we analyzed discourses from the time¿s periodicals, mainly newspapers, and the minutes of the institutions of the time, articulating a dialogue with the evidence ¿ historical sources ¿ in its primary and secondary forms, according to Thompson. We sought theoretical foundation in Gramsci and Sirinelli, who offer a possibility to reflect about ¿identity¿ and ¿function¿, as well as ¿sociability structures¿, respectively. Among the obtained results, it was identified that with the ascension of the Partido Municipal in 1908, there was the rigging of the civil society with the political society, forming a network of sociability for intellectuals (organic) that worked to the consecution of a desired social project.