Physical education at school and the military dictatorship in Brazil (1968-1984): history and historiography

Abstract

This paper describes a set of official, institutional and professional procedures that, since the late sixties, produced a new way of conceiving the physical education within the school in Brazil; to this end, a critical dialogue is effected with the recent historiography literature on education and physical education in Brazil. The aforementioned procedures were geared towards endowing the physical education with greater academic legitimacy through a series of measures: a wide program of massification of its concepts and practices, massive state investments in research in this field, the need to train specialists through the expansion of higher education courses, and the creation of a legal apparatus that defined rigorously the standards of its practice at school. To such effect, the paper's main sources are the complete series of the Revista Brasileira de Educação Física e Desportos (Brazilian Journal of Physical Education and Sports (1968-1984), edited by the Physical Education Division of the Ministry of Education (MEC), the Programas de Educação Física (Programs of Physical Education) from the Municipal Government of Curitiba between 1970 and 1984, and statements given by teachers of the municipal school system of Curitba. Considering that the historical process is defined as a synthesis of continuity and rupture, the work of Edward Palmer Thompson is drawn upon to show how this process develops from the experience of history's agents and from the dialogue between the social being and the social conscience, without overlooking the analysis of the influence of structural factors, an aspect privileged by the historiography criticized.