“In the struggle for life, useful to themselves and to the nation”: a biographic and professional profile of Teacher Benjamin Flores

Abstract

Benjamin Flores (1872–1950) searched to promote conditions of existence and work for Belo Horizonte city society in the first half of the twentieth century. His actions included a professional school for women when this city opened up to a greater feminine social performance and production in the public sphere. His action may be seen as ahead his time and matted in a process of self-awareness of his social reality. This article focuses on his professional performance to recognize in his actions antecedents of his educational project. It is based on letters, newspapers, school bookkeeping, interviews and photographs, read with a historical-dialectic gaze looking for continuities and permanence, convergences and contradictions, coherence and fragmentation. Results reveal a man of sensibility regarding the social demands that sought to act in various instances as a public agent and, above all, as a teacher who understood teaching in his various facets.