Body education and open-air life: nature and physical education in São Paulo (1930-1945)

Author(s)

André Dalben

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Faculdade de Educação Física
• Defense date: 2009-03-18

Examining board members

Carmen Lúcia Soares; Heloísa Helena Pimenta Rocha; Silvia Cristina Franco Amaral

• Advisor: Carmen Lúcia Soares

Abstract

The research has sought after comprehending and discussing about the different medical imaginaries, from the beginning of the 20th century, in respect to Brazilian nature, as well as the distinctions drawn between the urban and the rural environment. Mainly from the emerged relations between the sanitary, hygienist, eugenist movements and the physical education, the consolidation in Brazil of an imaginary which conceived nature as an ideal environment was observed, for healing and disease prevention, as much as the strengthening and the education of the body, through physical exercises such as gymnastics, sports, games and therapeutic practices as heliotherapy, hydrotherapy and climotherapy. Following the ways of such a conception of the nature, the Department of Physical Education of São Paulo State, an organ under the Secretariat for Education and Public Health, stands out, once it was responsible, in the 1930s, for important interventions with two extracurricular institutions which kept nearness to the imaginary of healing and educational nature: the playgrounds and the summer camps. As for the school institution, it was the Department of Physical Education of São Paulo State responsible for creating and running the D. Pedro II School of Outdoors Application, which configured itself as an institution of experimental education located inside a public park and that kept nature and physical education as central objects of its pedagogy. (AU)