Inventorying resources, constructing historical interpretations: the daycare and kindergarten in Brasília (DF, 1960-1970)

Abstract

When one thinks about the constitution of daycare centers and preschools in Brasília, from the moment the capital was inaugurated, on April 21, 1960, there is still a gap in history that allows us to grasp a historical interpretation of the education and care given to these children, at least in the first two decades. To understand this constitution and the practices/conceptions present there, this study locates, through an inventory of sources, the documents that make it possible to go through the traces of the first daycare centers and kindergartens in Brasília, in the 1960s and 1970s. Having defined the intention, the files consulted were: the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (INEP); the Public Archive of the Federal District; the Public Archive of the Senate, the Digital Newspaper Library of the National Library, and the Museum of Education of the Federal District. As first interpretations, it was possible to show that, in Brasília, the creation of the daycare center and preschool follows what happened in other parts of the Brazilian territory, with distinction where the first was a guard space and the second of pedagogical practices with children, made by trained teachers. However, there is already a demand for daycare that ends up echoing in the pages of the Correio Braziliense newspaper, albeit as a right of the mother and not of the children. In the kindergartens, the organization of routines is located, where the languages appeared, linked to playing, although not centered on the children, but on the proposers of the activities: the teachers.