The salesians and the civilizing process through education in the old south of Mato Grosso

Abstract

This article analyses the growth of the Salesians’s institutions of education in the south of the old brazilian state of Mato Grosso between the end of the XIX and beginning of the XX century, and discuss the ideal of a civilizational process by education undertaken by the Catholic Church and carried out by the Salesians, who sought to keep the educational prerogatives while the brazilian State was becoming a lay one. This analysis is based on the works of Riolando Azzi (1982), who bolds the role played by the Manual Civilizador wrote by the Salesians congregation in his book Os salesianos no Brazil à luz da História. As a theoretical supply, we emphasize the contributions of Norbert Elias in his book O processo civilizador (1994).