A anatomia de uma interdição: narrativas, apagamentos e silenciamentos na construção da BNCC de história

Abstract

The word anatomy, which is part of the title of this dissertation, derives etymologically from two Greek words, ana (up) and tomáo (to cut), therefore, it means cutting into parts. The Common National Curricular Base (Base Nacional Comum Curricular - BNCC), the main object of this dissertation, can only be understood in our and in future times if we look at its backbone and understand its missing parts. This implies looking at the mutilation stemming from memory policies that insist on erasing, silencing and interdicting subjects, narratives and knowledge. This was the experienced by the history section of the Curriculum in the process of building a proposal for a core curriculum for Brazilian education in the 21st century, a time marked by many challenges for science and for researchers and teachers As a result of the National Education Plan (Plano Nacional de EducaçãoPNE/2014), which established several goals to be fulfilled until 2020, The Common National Curricular Base should outline the rights and learning objectives that would unify 60% of the contents to be studied nationally, while the remaining 40% would respect the local diversity and autonomy. The first proposal for the base, written between 2013 and 2014, focused on granting authorship to the schools and teachers, yet it was never publicly discussed since it was arbitrarily dissolved by the Ministry of Education. In 2015, a new version was published, and it mobilized an enormous public debate about the BNCC. Within this debate, the History section received most of the attention in this public dispute, which led to attacks to its development and to the team that wrote, it, since it proposed actions to overcome a quadripartite historical narrative and it brought socially relevant issues to the center of the debates, such as discussions about Law No. 11.645/2008, which made the presence of African-Brazilian and Indigenous history obligatory in school curricula. While facing rejection mobilized by conservative sectors of both academia and civil Society, which was also supported by private interests and by the Ministry of Education itself, that inadequate version will be dissolved in the name of another version made by actors outside of the field of History Teaching. They were able to reinstate a canonic organization of subjects, thus ignoring the research investments made through three decades by the disciplinary community of History Teaching. Narrating this story thus becomes a duty of memory. From that standpoint, in this dissertation I sought to understand: how did the processes of creation of the first versions of the BNCC, proposed by members of the field of History Teaching take place? And from there, understanding: which reasons led to the interdiction of both versions? Among the theoretical references that allowed me to understand this scenario, I highlight Ivor Goodson and his understanding of curriculum as “invented traditions”, built socially by a disciplinary community. In order to define the curriculum as a memory policy, I sought out the discussions led by Paul Ricoeur and Michael Pollak. Finally, in order to understand what it means to discusses the curriculum in times of barbarism, I found the inspiration in Walter Benjamin and his clarity about the nefarious effects of progress over History and historical subjects. Against the attempted erasure in the creation of the BNCC, my methodological option was to hear those who had their proposals interdicted. In that sense, the narratives of some of the authors of the first versions for History became the protagonists and showed the complexity that the curricular construction of History in the base involved, often marked by the defense of territories, by potent inventions, by disputes over borders, by battles fought and by silences, which crossed the political decisions that were imposed to Brazilian education.