School material culture

preserving the right to historical memory as part of cultural citizenship

Abstract

This article aims at discussing and questioning the project “Littera Culturalis: Organizing, Cataloging and Preserving Municipal School Documents in Criciúma (SC)”, conducted by the Research Group History and Memory on Education (GRUPEHME). Six schools were studied. The overall objective was to call the attention of school directors and the administrative officials of the Municipal Department of Education to the importance of preserving and keeping school documents for the sake of history
education. As the final phase of this project, we are completing a digital collection of documents containing digitized images of schools and interviews with some people who built (and continue to build) the experiences of these establishments. As this project finishes, some questions related to the organization, preservation, and keeping of documents were not answered, but we believe that the project contributes to the participants’ awareness of the importance of correct procedures, especially in relation to school archives. With this work we contribute to the socialization of these documents as sources of scientific research, to the historiography of education in Santa Catarina, and, especially, to the guarantee of the right of access to culture by citizens and school communities and, thus, to the preservation of the collective memory and historical past.