School as a place of ethnic relations: the case of "German schools" in southern Brazil

Abstract

This article presents the research on school organization of elementary schools in a colony founded in 1897 in Santa Catarina. We analyzed documents of the Hamburg Colonization Company. Results shows particularities as German teaching and a curriculum focused on Calculus and learning of the German Language and culture through subjects as Reading, Writing, Poetry, Singing, Religion and Latin. In despite of this, there were subjects as Portuguese and History that treated Brazilian aspects. At the beginning that institutions kept pedagogical aspects that characterize them as typical expressions of ethnic schools phenomenon: German schools. They answer to school needing based on ethnic educative practices sharing foreign and Brazilian aspects. The use of German language constituted an essential ethnic indicator. The comprehension of these institutions in the Brazilian history of education is given by parameters between curriculum and culture, considering the ethnicity as a central aspect of the social relations.