Global Journal of Human Social Science, C: Sociology and Culture, Volume 21 Issue 5

and publication of numbers of failures. A social understanding of school exclusion prevailed as a matter of course, and indeed, in quantitative terms, that was the rule. An analysis of enrollment books in Porto Alegre shows that the time spent in school until at least the 1920s is very shor t 5 the nineteenth century incorporated pedagogical discourses that defended the educability of childhood, the civilizing role of education and, within this reflection, the definition of an ideal period for the acquisition of elementary education. In the 1800s, this was increasingly understood as having to take place in school spaces. Public education projects were . Most of the students attended school for only 1 or 2 years; those who attended the same school for 3 and 4 years were rare, and those who remained for more than 5 years were even rarer. It should also be noted that the period of the year in which children could be enrolled in school, that is, when they could begin to go to school, is extremely broad. For Rio Grande do Sul, decree no. 89, of 1897, in art. 46, indicated that children's registration could be done from the beginning of the year until September. In several of the books analyzed, initial registrations appear concentrated in the first months of the year, from January to April. At any rate, the most noteworthy is the continued enrollment of students throughout the entire year, almost always up to the deadline set by law (October or November). This implies considering, as Rita de Cássia Gallego proposes, that school times were defining themselves slowly. From documents of São Paulo, this author emphasizes the historicity of these aspects by remembering that school time, as one of the social times, is also diverse and plural. It consists of a social system of temporal references from which the functioning, rhythms, coordination and synchronization of interactions within the school are defined, organized and regulated; thus, it is the result of a cultural and pedagogical construction (Gallego, 2003, p.18). With regard to examinations and failure, it should be emphasized that the very notion of the calendar year as a time limit for checking learning and for setting the outcomes, such as pass and failure, is something that will only be effectively established in the twentieth century. Also the ages of learning were being established in this process. Maria Cristina Gouveia points out that, in Brazil, compulsory schooling laws established the age group of students, corresponding roughly to what Rousseau indicated as the learning period, that is, between 7 and 12 years. According to the author, in the Brazilian case, 5 We analyzed 22 registration books of isolated schools of Porto Alegre, located in Rio Grande do Sul Historical Archives, covering the period from 1895 to 1919. In those documents the characteristics of the entrance in school were examined input of the institution, as the age of the students for instance, and the trajectories of the students enrolled. directed to the child in the 7-14 years age bracket (Gouveia, 2004, p. 275). In agreement with this author's and other interpretations, the results of the empirical research we did on enrollment books has evidenced that the process of defining childhood by the student condition was slow. For example, in 1897, the laws of Rio Grande do Sul indicated that “only children from 7 to 13 years of age can be enrolled in public schools” (Decree 89, article 39). An analysis of the enrollment books, however, shows the possible presence of 4-6-year-olds and also the attendance of some individuals above that age bracket. This allows to argue that the normalization of learning times and the definition of the annual progression in school, although predicted earlier, did not prevail in school practices until at least the 1920s. Well, to assume failure and repetition as distortions of the students' flow through the school grades presupposes the standardization of these times in the laws and in the discourse that prescribes pedagogical practices. But it also implies a change in school culture, and this is not an immediate and automatic consequence of that standardization. Thus, it is with the broad adherence of pedagogical thinking and teaching practice to the idea ofhomogeneity and standardization, as well as with the effective expansion of vacancies in compulsory school, that makes it possible to see in the exclusion of students who do not learn an educational problem. IV. G rades and H omogeneity of C lasses The organization of primary education in grades along the nineteenth and twentieth centuries throughout the West will be constituted as denotative of the pedagogical rationality considered as coherent, durable and adequate for the universalization of education (Souza, 2006). “Based on the homogeneous classification of students, the existence of several classrooms and several teachers” (Souza, 1998, p.15), the use of grades in schools will imply, among other things, the development of an appropriate architecture, the creation of specific furniture and learning materials and a new understanding of school times and learning rhythms. In Brazil, the first initiative in this sense took place in São Paulo, in the midst of the proposals headed by the republican elite that wanted to organize society in line with the new regime. In 1893, school groups were created in São Paulo, where the teaching was organized in grades, each arranged in its classroom governed by the same teacher. This implies emphasizing that the grade-based school in São Paulo presupposed simultaneous teaching, in which the contents were taught to all students in the same way and at the same time. Volume XXI Issue V Version I 47 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2021 C © 2021 Global Journals School Grade Repetition in Brazil: History of the Configuration of a Political and Educational Problem