O ensino de latim do Brasil após a LDB de 1961: uma análise sobre as causas da sua exclusão e a história da opinião pública através dos jornais das décadas de 1950-1990

Abstract

The exclusion of the teaching of Latin in basic education schools in Brazil after the enactment of the Law of Directives and Bases of Education of 1961, Law No. 5,692 of 1971 and its opinions, lasts until the present time. Hence, it is investigated the causes, linked or not to the establishment of these laws, who contributed to the maintenance of the exclusion of the teaching of Latin of the Brazilian school curriculum. Therefore, the main objective of the work is to observe the facts that made the teaching of Latin remain outside its traditional position of more than four hundred years in Brazilian basic education, since the LDB of 1961 was promulgated. Therefore, it is necessary to research on how the teaching of Latin was in the period of scholasticism and humanism, and the relations with the modern and the modernity's ways of seeing education, man and the world; to report on educational reforms in Brazil and how Latin teaching fit in; to describe what were the impacts of the LDB of 1961, of Law No. 5,692 of 1971 and subsequent opinions; to identify the public opinion, of the intellectuals of the time, in the newspapers, on the teaching of Latin in basic education, and to define whether it contributed to maintaining the exclusion of Latin from basic education; to discuss the current state of Latin teaching in Brazil. The methodology of this work uses bibliographic and documental research, the latter based on the concept of History of Written Culture. In several chapters, it is commented on the association of Latin with humanism and on how classical teaching was “modernized”, and it is precisely modernity that is the main obstacle to the conservation of Latin in the curricula, followed by a poor preparation of teachers, the lack of training of Latinists in universities, the inexistence of a convincing “reason” and/or a scientific explanation for teaching Latin in secondary schools – which ended up generating a lack of interest in the subject by students and those responsible for education in the country –, the Church's decision on mass taking place in the vernacular and the pedagogical renovations. The initial hypothesis of the research was that there were other explanations for the fall of Latin, in addition to the enactment of laws, which is confirmed, since there was, before the laws, a worldwide movement of retrogression of classical studies, and also, after these, new causes maintained Latin restricted to universities. The general objective was achieved, because the listing of a good number of events and ideas that had an influence on maintaining the exclusion of Latin from the Brazilian school curriculum served as an answer to the proposed research problem.