Discipline and control of students as necessary bases for the success of pedagogical experimentation in mathematics laboratory classes at the Bahia State High School (1966-1969)

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss some aspects of pedagogical experimentation in mathematics laboratory classes at the State High School of Bahia between 1966 and 1969. We highlight “principles” and certain “philosophy of education” that were the bases of the project, analyzing interviews with its coordinator, professor Lêda Jesuíno dos Santos, and its mathematics teachers, Jolândia Serra Vila and Vera Lúcia da Conceição Baqueiro Wasconcellos. We argue that student discipline and control were necessary bases for the success of pedagogical experimentation, as reflected in the psychopedagogical techniques adopted to monitor the students out of classrooms, as well as in the methodologies and didactics adopted in the classrooms. We compare such tactics with analogous ones violently leveled against students, teachers, professors and local educational authorities by the dictatorial Brazilian government authorities of the period. We also compare such discipline and control with recognized liberal and democratic principles of the original conceptions of John Dewey, brought to Brazil by Anísio Teixeira and Isaías Alves, this last the first director and professor of the Faculty of Philosophy of Bahia, where Lêda Jesuíno, Jolândia Vila and Vera Wasconcellos graduated and worked.