Mens Agitat Molem: The Pedagogical Congresses of the Liga Nacional de Instrução (Lisbon, 1908–1914)

In this article the authors develop an exploratory analysis of the Portuguese “Liga Nacional de Instrução”, founded in 1907, and its four “Pedagogical Congresses”, which took place in Lisbon between 1908 and 1914. The main sources of study are the four volumes of the congresses, which include the reports presented at the congresses and the summaries of debates, and other periodical publications of the “Liga”. The “Liga Nacional de Instrução” and the congresses as organizational infrastructures, which provide “social substrata” for the development of educational knowledge in Portugal, are described and analysed. Questions are addressed related to their intellectual and political contexts, as well as to the networks that sustain them. The “League” and the “Congresses” are described and analysed as spaces of confluence, dispute and coordination of different interests and actors (such as teachers, teacher trainers, national and local school administrators, school physicians and other “researchers”, politicians and laypersons). In this article the authors seek to characterise the congresses regarding their structure and participants (roles, disciplinary and institutional origins). However, attention is also paid to their contents. Therefore, the reports and debates on school hygiene – one of the main themes of all the congresses – are analysed, and particularly the strategic dimension of science presentation. This allows us to see the efforts of those who put most stock in scientific reason to legitimize socially and politically the indispensable nature of their “solutions” and establish an order in the educational terrain