Parques infantis no Amazonas: 1940 a 1996

Abstract

The objective of this study is to understand the historical aspects of the Children's Parks (PIs) in the State of Amazonas. The research is linked to line 2: Public Policies and Regional Development and presents original characteristics, since the scarcity of historiographic research in the field of early childhood education in the Amazon continues to be a reality. The social and cultural history is the research, whose theme is the period from 1940 to 1996. For this, we identified the relations between PIs and the Amazon as influences of the local, national and world scenarios. Through documentary research, around 2,786 documents were handled, from which 178 were selected, the tools for the study. In 1940, the mayor Antônio Botelho Maia created the Municipal Service of Children's Parks in Manaus and started the construction of the first Children's Park: Parque 10 de Novembro, inaugurated in 1943, then was inaugurated the Parque Infantil Ribeiro Júnior, in 1944. These parks have some characteristics were launched in conjunction with its purposes: to offer recreation to the child through sports / recreation activities (without graduation), with its initial proposal of social service, through the work developed by Judge André Araújo in the Juvenile Court of the Capital. In the decades, later the configurations of these spaces were being transformed, denominating Infantile Parks the apparatuses mounted in squares in the capital and in the interior, by the municipal and state administrators, located next to schools or churches. There was also a third version for the "Children's Park", an internship event for offenders and "devalued" poor children, where, in addition to the playground, school events were held. With this, consider a possibility of work for the studies on the education of children, in local and national scopes.