Azevedo, Fernando de (1894–1974)

Fernando de Azevedo (b. 2 April 1894; d. 19 September 1974), Brazilian educator, editor, sociologist, and cultural historian. As city director of public education from 1926 to 1930, Azevedo led in the implementation of school reforms in Rio de Janeiro. Later he was secretary of education and culture in São Paulo. In 1934 he founded and then later directed the humanities faculty of the University of São Paulo. As editor of the Biblioteca Pedagógica Brasileira and Brasiliana series, he introduced new ideas and revived Brazilian classics.

Azevedo wrote on sports and physical education, classical Latin literature, educational sociology, and the sociology of sugar mills and railroads. His major work was A cultura brasileira (1943), published as a supplement to the 1940 census. This ambitious survey combines a social and psychological history of the development of the Brazilian people with an institutional history of the Catholic church, the professions, literary and artistic achievements, and the sciences. It interprets Brazilian culture through the history of education from colonial times through the 1930s, calling for a unified system of public education to build national unity.

See alsoEducation .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fernando De Azevedo, História da minha vida (1971), and A cultura brasileira (1943), translated by William Rex Crawford, under the title Brazilian Culture (1950).

Maria Luiza Penna, Fernando de Azevedo: Educação e trans-formação (1987).

Additional Bibliography

Teixeira, Anísio, and Diana Gonçalves Vidal. Na batalha da educação: correspondência entre Anísio Teixeira e Fernando de Azevedo (1929–1971). Bragança Paulista: EDUSF, 2000.

                                          Dain Borges