On teachers training in Physical Education in Santa Catarina (1937-1945): science, control and recreation in the education bodies

Abstract

In the thirties and forties years of XX Century in Brazil were full of efforts in modernization and constructions of national identity. Physical exercises at school are important part of the healthy and productive policy of contraction of citizens for the industrialization of the country. A “civilized” turning in the behavior guided by the school of thirties was expected, in sense of State formation and of  construction of a “second nature” controlled by disciplinary dispositives, Physical Education at school among those. The state of Santa Catarina was engaged in this process and had created the State Physical Education School, whose aim was to graduate teachers in this discipline, beyond developing, advising and uniting the practice in all of schools. It was researched the escalate importance of body culture, taking as sources the prescriptions of  Revista de Educação (1937-1938) and of the Reports of State Physical Education Inspection. Three linked axis were found: the scientific basis of the lessons, the control of emotions or the moral discipline, the recreational character of plays. These axis resumed the expected functions of Physical Education: the construction of national citizen through physical capacity and moral discipline.