The Dichotomy of the Racially Developed and Degenerate: Eugenic Educational Plans for the Ministry of Education and Health
Eugenics was an important science in the early twentieth century that influenced the educational plans of Brazil. Psychiatrists in Rio de Janeiro who formed the Brazilian League of Mental Hygiene (LBHM) contemplated, in the first republic and the Vargas Era, eugenic solutions to deal with the population, not only for those who were sick, but also created proposals to treat children and adolescents, proposals which aimed at the racial improvement of the Brazilian population through education. The dichotomy promoted by eugenicists between “good characteristics” and “bad characteristics” of the development of the human race was a strongly considered an influential perspective for public policies and, consequently, these policy proposals promoted in education by the Ministry of Education and Health (MES) for a long time promoted the institutionalization of racism.