THE DISCOURSE ON PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION: representations of minor, infancy and adolescence in Minas Gerais between 1890 and 1927
Political speech; Political Culture; Minor; Poverty-stricken; New Penal School; Education; Professional education.
In this dissertation, the analysis of the political discourse about children and adolescents is reported, scrutinizing the representations of delinquency and vagrancy featured in the judicial discourses of criminology and the "Nova Escola Penal" (New Penal School). Also, it highlights the construction of the idea of education, school and training for work as it relates to deviation of vagrancy, delinquency and marginalization of the referred population, in Brazil and in Minas Gerais, between the decades of 1890 to 1927. For this purpose , the theoretical and methodological resources of Political, Cultural and Social Histories were used to analyze the sources, mediated by Discourse Analysis and the History of Education, notably from Serge Berstein's propositions on the notion of Political Culture and Vector; on the notion of representation by Roger Chartier and Patrick Charaudeau's analysis of political discourse. The sources used were the Annals of the Brazilian and Minas Gerais legislative powers, Laws enacted and press publications from the period of late 19th century and early 20th century. Such sources were mapped and collected in the Public Archive of Minas Gerais, on the website of the Federal Senate, in the collection of the library of the Legislative Assembly of Minas Gerais and in the National Digital Bank of Brazil. Therefore, it is a documentary research. It was found that the political discourse contains specificities within the scope of criminal law, derived from the positivist school, which contributed to form a representation of childhood and adolescents, considering this poor population as vagrants and delinquents. Such representations, seen as preventive actions by the State to contain begging, vagrancy and idleness that threatened society, fed the social imaginary, in favor of a discourse of order for progress that would make modernity possible, in which the child and the adolescents were placed as prominent social actors, the target of public policies, linked to education, professional education and training for work.