Narrativas de História do Brasil em Livros Didáticos utilizados em escolas capixabas de Ensino Médio (1980-2000)

Abstract

This study investigates processes of elaboration, selection and use of History textbooks, which constituted one of the main pedagogical tools used by male and female teachers in public high schools in Espírito Santo between the 1980s and 2000s, with the aim of identifying, understanding and problematize continuities and ruptures observed in narratives about the history of Brazil. The documentary corpus used comprised: a) History textbooks adopted in Espírito Santo high schools during the research period; b) government documents, having as references the editions of the National Book and Teaching Material Program (PNLD), the Law of Guidelines and Bases of Education (LDB) 9.394/1996, and the National Curriculum Parameters (PCN's). For the analysis of the selected sources, we used the evidentiary method that looks for singularities and irregularities in the apparently smooth and homogeneous surfaces of history and historical facts. To realize the importance of these irregularities, we used the game of scales, in a process of constant approximation and distancing, which allows the location of the object in its different contexts (GINZBURG, 2007; REVEL, 2010; LEVI, 2020). In the analysis of the sources, we noticed that the permanencies and ruptures of the historiographical narratives of History textbooks for High School obeyed two levels. The first, the context of production, which indicates the tensions and power relations that characterize the authors' choices on the subjects that will be worked on in textbooks. The second level relates to the historical periods on the History of Pre-colonial, Colonial, Imperial and Republican Brazil. The researched textbooks present differences in their narrative structures. But they also present differences in relation to the theoretical-methodological references. We noticed, from the contextualization, that the positivist method is used, going through the history of mentalities and approximations with the Marxist reference. Regarding the themes, the authors do not differ much, with emphasis on some and the absence of others, which points to the reflections of the contexts of production in the elaboration of the texts.