Paulista Education through sources: 1943
The history of school education in the State of São Paulo is as complex as the formation of the State itself, the same complexity also appears when we take a look at the Municipality of São Paulo. The social and political transformations caused by the city's industrialization process after the 1930s - 1940s are urgent and precise.
For Benjamin (1987) ‘history is the object of a construction whose place is not homogeneous and empty time, but a time saturated with “nows” (p.232)’.
The only record we have of this building is a photograph of which we do not know the author or date, only by analyzing the various documents found we came to the conclusion that this was the first building that housed the Grupo Escolar Nossa Senhora Aparecida, which was called in some records from “Grupo Escolar da Vila Carioca”. As a characteristic of the period, photography is in black and white.
The use of photography as a historical source is the result of the increasing search for a broader view of man and his complexity (cultural, social and political), something that new historiographical currents have proposed to do since the mid-20th century.
When we look at the photograph below we see a building adapted for use as a school. It has a small sidewalk and a very narrow gate with four windows that are positioned in front of the building in the access area to the public road. On the facade we can see the writing “Grupo Escolar Nossa Senhora Aparecida”, from the shape of the letters and the wear on them we can deduce that the photograph was taken after the building had already housed the school for a certain period of time.