A construção do “novo nordeste” no concerto do ensino superior: intelectuais, política e educação na URNe

Abstract

The 1950s and 1960s are characterized by the linkage of educational debate to developmentalist perspectives. In this context, the "regional imbalances" gain visibility through the work of intellectuals who, at the forefront of institutions such as the Superintendency for the Development of the Northeast region of Brazil (SUDENE), begin to identify differences between "levels and rhythms" of "growth" of Brazilian regions. The analysis resulted in the characterization of two countries: an "archaic Brazil", underdeveloped, located mainly in the northeast region; and a "modern Brazil", identified by the "progress" and "development", located in the south-central region. Higher education, based on "science and technique", emerges as a mechanism able to invert the historical underdevelopment that characterizes the northeast region. In the city of Campina Grande, Paraíba State, Brazil, the developmentalist debate reverberated in the creation of a set of institutions such as the Foundation for the Development of Science and Technology (FUNDACT) and the Regional University of the Northeast (URNe). These institutions emphasized the primacy of higher education in the "New Northeast" construction project. The present study aims to analyze the project of development of the northeast region of Brazil from the creation of the URNe. For this purpose, we will privilege the work of intellectuals in the city of Campina Grande who, by occupying prominent positions in the written press, defended higher education as a propelling element for regional development. The study period was from the "beginning" of the movement of the intellectuals in Campina Grande, who aimed to create a university that would privilege the study of the "regional reality", to the late 1960s, when political changes reverberated in the URNe and when changes in the regionalist thought led to a change in the project, which initially aimed at the development of the northeast region and, consequently, the university development. The sources of research consisted of newspapers (A União, Diário da Borborema, Jornal de Campina), infra-constitutional legislation of the URNe, and educational materials, such as those from the curriculum of Sociology, taught by professor José Lopes de Andrade at the Central Institute of Human Sciences (ICCH) of the URNe. The printed sources will be problematized from the theoretical-methodological contributions of the Linguistic Contextualism of Quentin Skinner and John Pocock. We will try to understand the journalistic text as "enunciated", i.e., as an intervention that aims to demarcate and establish ways of thinking, thus intervening in the political debate. The results suggest a broadness of higher education in the "New Northeast" construction project. From the dynamics of the journalistic field and occupying leading positions in higher education institutions, intellectuals such as Edvaldo de Souza do Ó and José Lopes de Andrade promoted several campaigns and activities and established institutions that culminated in the creation of the URNe.