A dispute between two legacies at the Instituto de Educação do Rio de Janeiro (1932-1935)

Abstract

This article presupposes that the legacy left by the Pioneers of the Education Reform concerning the reconstruction of the education paradigm results from a series of selective operations performed either explicitly or implicitly by those who were legitimately empowered to perform them – the widely acknowledged agents of such movement. Therefore, it raises the  following question: what events had to be silenced – or veiled – so as not to harm the legacy left by a group of people who longed to be homogeneous and exempt from conflict? This is the central issue of this paper, which goes back to the period between 1932 and 1935 to analyse the actions of the major exponents in education at that time: Anísio Teixeira and Lourenço Filho, and their work at Instituto de Educação do Rio de Janeiro.