Reopening the debate about Jorge Nagle

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the concepts of Jorge Nagle about politics and professionalism in Brazilian educational processes, in the decades that preceded and followed the“Vargas Era”. Nagle’s concepts allow us to analyze a rich period of ideological and civic effervescence, in which many participants were at the same time supporters of educational change and proponents of health reform. During the post-1930 decades, the new technical and administrative trends did not eliminate the political and ideological climate that characterized the pre-Vargas years. Nagle’s work invites us to discuss some researches, that point out in his work a suggestion of an “exclusion” of politics by the new trends in professionalism. In addition, it is argued here that the politics of the “new professionals” studied by Nagle did not represent a cohesive proposal for the “control of minds and bodies”, as a few critics have erroneously suggested.