In Portugal, the measures adopted by the New State (1926- 1974) for the construction of "national education" obeyed to a strategy of imposition of the official ideology's values and of revaluing religious and moral education. The school and the educational actors suffered the regime's heavy control. These characteristics were especially felt at the level of compulsory education and the image that was most conveyed was that of an obedient school, marked by great coherence between its different forms of expression, from government rhetoric to school grammar.In the school institutions, the educational actors marked everyday life. In the regularity of the daily routines we can pick up traces that reveal an invisible reality (the occult curriculum) and that remained inscribed in the multiple discourses the school produced regarding the way it worked, as well as in the memories of the educational actors themselves.Discipline was a central issue in school life and in the process of education. The means of educational control consisted of a set of norms and practices that regulated school life; there was a constant call for discipline, namely in fulfilling duties, carrying out tasks, in all domains of personal, social and professional life. Behaviour, attitudes, bodies and consciences were discplinary objectives.The heavy control that was practiced aimed to discourage behaviour that violated the established norms. This seems to be the main reason for the small amount of disciplinary problems recorded in the documents of the school archives (such as the school board's minutes) and in the educational actors testimonies. Thus, a pedagogy of inclusion was permanently exercised. Transgressions were only assumed as such when behavioural deviation from the established normality became more evident, and then punishment was necessary; the forms of punishment became more intense as the transgressor insisted on his reproachful behaviour and they were applied in a condescending manner. This pedagogy of inclusion had a heavily integrative, socialising function and it aimed to maintain normality.This was clearly a disciplinary society, in the sense that Michel Foucault attributed to it, where each of its elements should know the place it occupied and understand the code of procedures to carry out in its own specific space. This imposition of normality was evident in the most palpable, visible aspects.In this context, the uniform became a symbol. The photographs of this time are filled with the white overalls of students and teachers. They were required to use them in primary school and in teacher education schools. They were also compulsory on the route between home and school. This uniform was a symbol of the teaching profession and should be impeccably clean. But this symbol also had a social function - it was a levelling tool that composed the physical image and hid the clothes beneath, thus eliminating distinctive features that often expressed social differences.