From parish teacher to female catechist teachers: notes for the history of education in Santa Catarina State

Abstract

From a historical perspective, elementary teaching as a space that is majorly occupied by women is a social construction. In Brazil, this process of women assuming teaching career has been constructed over the 19th century and first decades of the 20th century. It has been overlapped with economic, social, cultural, religious and political factors. However, there have been readings and discussions that neutralized this process in such a way, that the service in elementary instruction was gradually associated to a sacred mission. Therefore, this article aims at discussing the problematization of discourses built around the foundation of an association of female teachers, in the state of Santa Catarina, in 1913. This Association was founded as a pastoral initiative and strategy in favor of religious values in parish schools, carried out by German priests from the province of Santa Cruz in Saxony. This discourse was incorporated by the young female teachers and assumed a missionary character, linking the teaching career to vocation, self-denial and donation. In other words, a work in which there would not be the need of much material reward. The undertaken discussion also signals to power and gender relations in education, in that the young female teachers were closed to a net of practices and prohibitions, shaped to self-resignation and abdication of desires.

Key words: female teachers, teaching career, sacred mission.