Antônio Carneiro Leão’s Reform at the end of 1920’s

Abstract

Carneiro Leão’s Reform of the education in Pernambuco, promulgated by the State Governor Estácio Coimbra, in 1928, is among those taken place in Brazil, in the 1920s and 1930s, which were inspired by Escola Nova (New School) Movement. Such reforms were intended as an answer to the claims for the Country’s modernization. It was a necessity to make the Republic look like one, by means of an education that could meet the demands of a new urban, industrial society, which was evolving into a social economic democracy. According to Carneiro Leao, education should turn the Brazilian people into a creative power, neutralizing the damaging and embarrassing burden generated from our ethnical roots. A professionalizing civic education would diminish such damaging heritage. The reform, put into practice by educators from São Paulo, was short-lived due to the happenings of the 1930s, as well as to the falling of Coimbra’s administration.