As políticas do INEP/MEC, no contexto brasileiro dos anos 1950/1960

Abstract

This paper reports on the research project entitled “The INEP in the context of the MEC’s public policies in the 1950s and 1960s”, which is financed by the CNPq. The research group is comprised of professors and postgraduate and graduate students from different universities in Rio de Janeiro. Created in 1937, the INEP, since its origins, has had an ambiguous institutional status, as a research institution that has simultaneous executive attributions. On becoming its director, in 1952, Anísio Teixeira proposed a reform of the institution, with the intention of transforming it into a centre of reference for the teaching profession, as well as a pole for the articulation and renovation of the National Educational System. Pragmatism and developmentalism were the basis for the institution’s principal strategies, which included not only research that would inform public policies, but also publications and experimental schools, which would also function as centres for teacher training. In order to concretise such a project, Anísio Teixeira created, within the INEP, the Brazilian Centre for Educational Research (CBPE), to which five Regional Centres were also linked, constituting a web articulated with public universities and secretariats of education but, at the same time, enjoying a large degree of autonomy in relation to the State bureaucracy. This research used existing documents in Anísio Teixeira’s private archives as its principal source, such as the journal published by the institution, as well as newspapers of the period, publications of the CBPE and the sociological literature of the 1950s and 1960s.