A curious agreement: religious education without cost for the public authorities in the first LDB

Abstract

This article deals with religious education in public schools, trying to identify the position of political-ideological groups around this issue during the process of approval of the proposal for a Law of Directives and Bases for National Education (Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional - LDB), which was promulgated on 20 December 1961. The analysis took as its source the Diário do Congresso Nacional (Annals of the National Congress) in the period between 1948 and 1962. It was observed that during the long course of the proposal inside the House of Representatives, various pressures left their marks on the LDB: on the one hand, the length of the constitutional regulation about religious education in public schools, so as to meet the interests of the Catholic Church, the single organization openly committed to its offer; on the other hand, a wide ranging, albeit unsystematic, alliance which, lacking the political strength to defend a lay project for public education, was limited to try and resist the surge of confessionalism. Eventually, none of the sides was able to implement their demands in full, so that the law promulgated and sanctioned resulted in a hybrid product, possibly as a consequence of agreements among the members of the Committee of Education and Culture of the House of Representatives, at least with respect to the issue of religious education in public schools.