This paper analyzes the model of sanitary education formulated during the wide campaign of physical, intellectual and moral regeneration launched by the São Paulo Institute of Hygiene, created in 1918, in cooperation with the International Health Board of the Rockefeller Foundation. It also tries to understand the representations of childhood and the practices through which the doctor-hygienists from São Paulo tried to interfere on the bodies and minds of children. Therefore, its sources are documents produced within the department of School Hygiene of that Institute, especially those that allow apprehending the role attributed to primary school in the education process and in the conformation of childhood to the imperatives of the hygienic rationality.
Schooling; Hygienization; Sanitary education; Childhood