“A escola que produz saúde”: os serviços de assistência médico-escolar no Brasil e na Colômbia (1920-1938).

Abstract

The present study is part of the New Cultural History field and proposes to analyze how circulated the discourses based on the medical-hygienist knowledge that subsidized the activities of school health care in Brazil and Colombia in the period 1920-1938. We emphasize that the development of this study is necessary to bring approximations between the areas of health and education, as well as, it seeks a Latin American approach by proposing the analysis of printed versions in Brazil and Colombia. To do so, we propose to think the stories connected by medical-hygienic influences. Then, as sources we will use the Minutes of the Pan American Sanitary Conferences, considering the circulation of hygienist ideas at the continental level. Following, we adopted the magazines: The Primary School (Rio de Janeiro) and Salud y Sanidad (Bogotá), as well as the books The Fairy Higia (Brazil) and Subjects of Mental Hygiene Education and Eugenics (Colombia). The theoretical-methodological contribution of this research has taken on the contributions of Michel Foucault, so that we can problematize the prescriptions influenced by the medical-hygienist knowledge for the students and the representations produced, we will support the concepts of biopolitics, biopower and disciplinary power. The analysis enabled us to understand that the production of medical knowledge from the Pan American Sanitary Conferences constituted a space for the circulation of medical hygienist ideas. In order to civilize the Brazilian and Colombian citizens, sanitation was necessary, and the school institution composed an ideal space to carry out activities based on hygiene. The schools underwent transformations, among their changes, we observed adaptations of school institutions to receive the work of health professionals. The figures of doctors, nurses and school dentists composed projects in the countries analyzed. They were also marked by health promotion and disease prevention activities, detailed physical examinations, reception of eugenics ideas and the accomplishment of classification and separation of students. Thus, it became evident that hygienist ideas through the educational practices of the body exerted strategies of power over the students imposing healthy and hygienic habits.