A presença intelectual de Hélder Câmara na Revista Brasileira de Pedagogia (1934-1938)

Abstract

The objective of this dissertation is to analyze Hélder Câmara’s writings in the Revista Brasileira de Pedagogia (1934-1938) in order to verify the model of education and pedagogical action he defended in that period. His texts are examined aiming at investigating whether they put forward educational proposals linked to his affiliation to the integralismo, in 1932, or whether his writing favored the opening of a renewing dialogue with the modern education. The primary sources used in the research were the articles published by Hélder Câmara as well as the critical reviews in which he used his pseudonym, Alceu da Silveira, during the existence of the Revista Brasileira de Pedagogia (RBP), an official agency of the Confederação Católica Brasileira de Educação – CCBE (Education Catholic Brazilian Confederation). Sixty texts were gathered, namely, 26 articles and 34 critical reviews. The singularity of Hélder Câmara’s intellectual trajectory was situated from the articulation between his biographical data and the characteristics of the different institutions in which he was a member. The objectives were to contemplate his primary and secondary socialization and to evaluate his role as a clergyman – when acting as an intellectual in the management of educational institutions under the guidance of the catholic church hierarchy. With the purpose of discussing the agents’ movement in the different social spaces to accumulate greater influence capacity, by using different fight modes, the analysis of categories from Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology was employed, mainly the concepts of field and habitus, economic capital, cultural capital, social capital and symbolic capital. To analyze Hélder Câmara’s actions as an intellectual, regarding his relationships with other intellectuals, we used the sociability category, as conceived by the historian Jean-François Sirinelli, which highlights the importance and particularity of the dynamics of the relationships developed between agents of the intellectual field. Also, when developing the analysis of Hélder Câmara’s writings in the RBP, we employed the appropriation concept, as established by Roger Chartier; as well as the concept of strategy, defined by Michel de Certeau, aiming to evaluate the particularities of the catholic intellectuals’ mode of action in that specific context. The findings of our investigation of the texts adopted as primary sources refer to aspects linked to the integralist thought such as the defense of nationalism and the holistic education – emphasizing the attention given to spirituality. The presence of such ideals was not limited to a specific year, since in the 1935 articles some arguments in this sense were already put forward, something that was seen to occur repeatedly up to 1937, the time when Hélder Câmara distanced from the ‘green shirts’ (a nickname given to the integralists at that time). Along with this aspect of his intellectual action, since 1934, the presence of positive evaluations of teaching methods and techniques that were seen as modern were verified, mainly through mentions to the proposals of the New School Movement. Thus, in the period between 1935 and 1937 the presence of these two sets of ideas were seen to permeate Hélder Câmara’s written production in the Revista Brasileira de Pedagogia.