Representações de ciência, tecnologia e diversidades em livro didático de história do Brasil: 1937-1945

Abstract

This dissertation addresses the ways in which knowledge of science, technology, and diversity is represented in Brazilian history textbooks during the period of the Brazilian military dictatorship which occurred between 1937 and 1945. It relates the way in which society constructed meanings and attributed significance to the facts and symbols that built the history of Brazil. In the multiplicity of perspectives on understanding reality and social experience, conflicts arose between peoples and nations. Education was widely debated in the country during the provisional government, marked by the creation of the Ministry of Education and Public Health in 1930, and by the creation of secondary education with the reforms of Francisco Campos in 1931 and Gustavo Capanema in 1942, which established the pathways for organizing education into levels (primary, high school, classical, teacher training, and higher education). The educational system organization was complemented by the organic laws of primary education (Decree-Law no. 8.529, of January 2, 1946) and normal education (DecreeLaw no. 8.530, of January 2, 1946). Two biases stand out in the analysis of the Brazilian History textbook: (a) national representations are collective and deal with knowledge of science, technology and diverse practices, that is, there are numerous ways of appropriating realities; (b) worldviews are marked by the cultural distances portrayed in the textbook (1400 to 1800), by interests, differences, conflicts and traditions. The main objective is to analyze the techniques and forms of producing realities through representations of scientific and technological knowledge and diversity practices in a Brazilian history textbook from 1937 to 1945. The methodological approach is qualitative, comprising the analytical exploration of works found in the literature review methodology, as well as other titles, and analysis of the texts from a copy of the textbook used for student training. The textbook brings the historical facts from the discovery of Brazil to its independence, as presented by the author João Pereira Vitória. The dissertation is divided into five parts: introduction, literature review, political contexts, science, technology and diversity and final considerations. It is concluded that the representations of Science, Technology, and Diversity of Practices (STD) found in the textbook anchor the educational political contexts of the historical period studied. These representations of STD in the textbook could be traced back to ideas of land ownership, imperialism, and the power of the Church and the State as legitimizers of actions concerning territory and people.