Teixeira, Anisio Espinola (1900–1971)

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Teixeira, Anisio Espinola (1900–1971)

Anisio Espinola Teixeira (b. 12 June 1900; d. 11 March 1971), rector of the University of Brasília (1963–1964) and one of Brazil's most influential educational reformers. In his career as educational administrator he took steps to expand, democratize, and secularize public education. He was born to a landowning family in Caetité, Bahia. After working in Bahia from 1924 to 1927, Teixeira, an admirer of John Dewey and aspects of the North American educational system, earned an M.A. in 1928 from Columbia University's Teachers' College. Moving in 1931 to Rio de Janeiro, Teixeira became a leader of a group known as the Pioneers of New Education. Accused of being a subversive, a populist, and an atheist by various conservative groups, he lost his administrative post in 1935 because of political purges and stayed out of government work, alternately managing a prosperous export business in Bahia and living in Europe, until the end of Getúlio Vargas's Estado Novo in 1945. He then resumed work as a high-level educational administrator, running two national institutes—the Coordination of Training for Advanced Scholars (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoa de Nivel Superior—CAPES) and the Instituto Nacional de Estudos Pedagógicos (INEP)—and earning the wrath of conservative political groups and the support of intellectuals.

In 1963 Teixeira became rector of the University of Brasília, only to be ousted by the military coup a year later. When the new government threatened to prosecute him for alleged administrative irregularities, a wave of protests from international academic circles came to his defense. Granted special permission to leave Brazil by President Humberto Castelo Branco, Teixeira traveled to the United States, where he accepted university teaching positions. He returned to Brazil in 1966.

See alsoEducation: Overview .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Teixeira's personal archive is held by the Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação de História Contemporánea (CPDOC) of the Fundação Getúlio Vargas. A partial list of his publications includes Educação para a democracia (1936); Educação progressiva (1950); Pequena introdução à filosofia da educação, a escola progressiva ou, a transformação da escola, 7th ed. (1975); and Educação e o mundo moderno, 2nd ed. (1977). Works about Teixeira include Fernando De Azevedo, "Anisio Teixeira e a inteligéncia," in Figuras de meu convívio (1960); Hermes Lima, Anisio Teixeira: Estadista da educação (1978); Dicionário histórico-biográfico brasileiro, 1930–1983, vol. 4 (1984).