The history of education became consolidated as a field of educational knowledge in the mid nineteenth century, associated to the idea that the past holds many lessons. In this reading, the study of history allows educators to use the past to illuminate current pedagogical practices and to better plan them for the future. This notion of history as magistra vitae, which predominated for centuries, no longer finds supporters among specialists, although it continues to be a strong representation of the function of history among the lay public.
In the academic-educational sphere, a space in which the readers and authors of RBE are located, the criticism of history as a repository of valuable examples does not indicate disinterest in the study of the past. Thus, if the past does not offer lessons for the present, knowledge of the past would contribute to an understanding of the human and social reasons that have led to the crystallization of forms of teaching and organizing teaching in different cultural contexts and times. Moreover, an understanding of history allows the "denaturalization" of the social world, showing how educational processes result from choices, from various possibilities, made by individuals and social groups, either in confrontation or in collaboration and in distinct positions of power.
In keeping with this revised perception of the function of history, this issue of RBE combines eleven articles, eight of which are directly or indirectly related to the history of education. In the first, based on pedagogical, architectural and urban planning perspectives Ester Buffa and Gelson de Almeida Pinto present and problematize the campus as a model for the organization of Brazilian universities. The authors highlight the modernist-rational architecture of this model, which has been implemented since the 1960s in Brazil, using as references and as a counterpoint experiences of European and North American universities. In the second article, Rosa Fátima de Souza discusses some approaches and methods that guide a comparison in historic and educational terms. From this perspective, the tensions between regional, state, national and international political perspectives were identified, as well as those over identity representations. The author points to challenges and possibilities for studies of this nature, understanding comparison to be instrumental to reflection, both of academic production and of the educational realities of different countries.
José Anchieta de Oliveira Bentes and Maria Cristina Hayashi examine the context of the creation of the National Institute for the Deaf (INES-RJ), by analyzing changes in perceptions and conceptions of special education. To construct their argument, the authors reflect on the process of production of the concepts of normality, diversity and alterity. Adding a historic vision to the perspective of special education, Maria Edith Siems-Marcondes presents aspects of the trajectory of the implantation of special education in the federal territory of Roraima (1970-1990). The author constructs an analysis of "history seen from below", inspired by E. P. Thompson, to analyze the experiences of subjects and reveal how Roraima became a field for the application of policies designed by the military regime.
Educational legislation is the object of study in two articles. The first, by Juarez José dos Anjos and Gizele de Oliveira, uses as sources Instruction Regulations and laws concerning mandatory education, found in the school legislation of the province of Paraná, between the years of 1857 and 1883, to discuss the processes of childhood education. Law 11.645/08, concerning the mandatory teaching of history and indigenous culture in basic education, is discussed by Kelly Russo and Mariana Paladino. The authors study the implementation of this law in the greater metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro, based on representations and practices of teachers from municipal and state schools about the law and teaching about the reality of indigenous peoples.
Cláudio Dalbosco focused on the theory of history to problematize the Rousseauean concept of time. The author works with the hypothesis that this concept is neither specifically cyclical (ancient) nor linear (modern), but ambivalent, and its original synthesis is based on the notion of perfectibilité. The essay concludes by arguing how this notion of history influences the educational project sketched in Émile.
Concluding this block of articles, directly or indirectly associated to the historiographical field, Daniel Luciano Gevehr addresses the teaching of history, discussing the impacts of modernity and its different cultural dimensions. It examines how redefinitions of the models of teaching history, which had previously been based on memorizations, linearities and an emphasis on "heroizations", now present new problems. It understands that the spectacularization of events and the instanteity with which they are represented, imposes the need for the teaching of history to focus on the reading of the world and its spaces, thus seeking an articulation between where we want to reach, and where we now are.
This issue also presents two articles about curriculum. In the first, curriculum is studied through an analysis of public policies, and in the second it is seen from the perspective of curricular theory. Cláudia Valentina Assumpção Galian analyzes the National Curricular Parameters and proposals prepared by two Brazilian states, to identify the knowledge of the natural sciences and art considered relevant to be provided in elementary and middle schools. The analysis uses the concepts of "recontextualization" and "powerful knowledge". The results suggest that the debate about curricular definitions tends to intensify when concerning a discipline that is socially recognized as relevant - such as the sciences - more than when it involves thinking of the formative potential of the arts. From a discursive potential, Hugo Heleno Costa and Alice Casimiro Lopes, based on studies that focus on curriculum policies, discuss the thinking of Ivor Goodson with a focus on the interpretation of disciplinary communities, understood as subjectivations produced in policy. The article focuses on what Goodson leads us to think about disciplinary communities and how his notion of disciplinary subjectivity, in the production of curriculum policies, should be the object of critical analyses when seen from a post-structuralist perspective.
Concluding this session of articles, Cristina Albuquerque, José Ferreira and Graça Brites consider the relationship between education and entrepreneurship. In this articulation, education is considered as a strategic element in the promotion of more inclusionary, ethical and holistic development models. The authors present entrepreneurial pedagogy associated to training and education for citizenship.
The two reviews that conclude this issue are related to the themes of education history and curriculum. In the study reviewed by Rafael Severiano, "Beberagens indígenas e educação não escolar no Brasil Colonial" [Indigenous Brews and Non-School Education in Colonial Brazil], the author Matia Betânia Barbosa discusses and criticizes the concept of education that emphasizes school knowledge and silences the various forms of non-school knowledge. Finally, "Internationalizing the Curriculum", by Betty Leask, reviewed by José Marcelo Freitas de Luna, focuses on the process of internationalization of institutions of higher education and as a consequence forms of considering curriculum.
We hope everyone enjoys the pleasure of an excellent reading.
Rio de Janeiro, outubro de 2016
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
Oct-Dec 2016
