Teacher Marianna Augusto, “chosen by God” and linked to science: contributions to the creation of the first university children daycare center in Brazil (1940-1970)

Abstract

Marianna Augusto was born on February 8, 1921, in Botucatu, a city in the interior of São Paulo. She studied at the Escola Paulista de Enfermagem (EPE) during the 1940s, where she later became a professor and maintained professional and emotional ties until the end of her life. She specialized in Childcare in France and Switzerland and was responsible for establishing a daycare center to care for the children of students and faculty in the Nursing program. This center, called Comunidade Infantil, would later become the Early Childhood Education Center of the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp). She also contributed to the implementation of the Postgraduate Program in Pediatric Nursing and Childcare at EPE. Marianna often said she had been “chosen by God” to carry out this mission. A committed scholar engaged with to issues concerning children and women', she used her social network to support young students studying abroad and also wrote manuals on childcare practices, linking them to educational concerns. The aim of this article is to examine the trajectory as a professor, nurse and intellectual Mariana Augusto, while they worked. The research methods included semi-structured interviews, and the sources were analyzed through the lens of social memory, which views memories as constructed expressions of identity shaped by social frameworks.