EDUCATION OF INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED PEOPLE IN THE PERIODICAL MENSAGEM DA APAE (1963-1973): A PEDAGOGY FOR MODELING AND SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT

ABSTRACT: This article discusses how the education of intellectual disabled people was represented and thematized, under the influence of Associação de Pais e Amigos dos Excepcionais (Apae), between the 1960s and 1970s in Brazil. To this end, the printed periodical Mensagem da Apae is taken as the source and object of research, in its first phase (1963-1973), from the perspective of the New Cultural History. By the material and textual organization of the periodical, we can perceive the discursive investment as a way to legitimize an institutional identity and justify Apae’s work to this public. In an institutional pedagogical perspective that aimed to (re)habilitate, train, and adjust intellectually disabled people to society, offering them semiprofessional, non-qualified, and repetitive jobs. Thus, the education offered was not a consistent process of professionalization, much less schooling, but a form of social hygiene. Thus the focus was not on forming citizens but rather to prevent the emergence of offenders, as well as to free parents and caretakers to work and be productive, preventing the disruption of national progress and foster an alleged harmony of the social fabric, in particular a context marked by political-educational technicism and civil-military dictatorship.