Childhood, education and sexuality in civilizing process

Abstract

This study aims to discuss the issue of children‟s education in given historical periods, considering the changes in the course of Civilizing Process in respect to the formation of behavior standards concerning sexuality. Those social changes, in what concerns the behavior standards imposed upon children, took place in the context of the families and society, leading to a differentiated conception in the education of boys and girls. Elias point such transformations, located in his researches in the interval of time that goes from 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, interval in which he detects what he calls a „conspiracy of silence‟ in what concerns the education of the young ones. This change transfers the issues of sexuality to the „background of the social scene‟ and integrates the behaviors that privatize and separate the relations between the public and the private. Considering such aspects, the documentary sources of this work constitute in fragments of histories of life of men and women who in their childhood had their initiation established in what Elias calls "conspiracy of silence", showing the difference between the education of boys and girls who lived their childhood in the first half of the 20th century.