Hygiene for primary schools: the written production of Antonio Ferreira de Almeida Júnior (1922-1939)

Abstract

In intervention projects developed during the first decades of the 20th century in São Paulo, health and education were raised to pillars on which laid a program to regenerate society. This article includes its discussions in this scenario and discusses the knowledge of hygiene proposed for primary schools based on the written production of Antonio Ferreira de Almeida Júnior (1892-1971). Professor, physician, and education administrator, he not only defended and recommended programs aimed at teaching hygiene, but he also held positions that guaranteed him the condition of an agent that could propose and disseminate these precepts. As a chronological cutout, the years between 1922 and 1939 were considered. During this period, this professor wrote and published texts of different kind in which he addressed the importance of hygiene content in schools. Almeida Júnior’s bibliographical production was analyzed in parallel with his professional performance, which allowed us to understand his participation in medical-educational debates, which, quite punctually, defended a political project whose motto was “to clean up the population through school”. Thus, it appears that, in his writings on education, Almeida Júnior nuanced representations of childhood nature, formulated from the idea of brain plasticity, into his conceptions about the purposes of primary school and the change in teacher education based on absorbing new programs and more active teaching methods.