This paper deals with the military and educators encounter in the Associação Brasileira de Educação (ABE), mainly in its Seção de Educação Física e Higiene. With frequent proposals and debates, that institution was a place of ideas and people circulation. Important contributions to delineate pedagogical ground of Physical Education were yielded by means of disputes or negotiations and persuasion. Particularly we examine the construction of a "National Physical Education Project" held in the first half of 1930 decade. By different disciplinary orientations, ABE educators and Brazilian military tried to elaborate an unifying project and they came across with tensions and contradictions that took place there.
history of education; physical education; military; pedagogical ideas