(Mis)directions of the teaching African history in the curriculum of the Basic Education

Abstract

As result of curricular, political and social disputes, the BNCC had been prepared in order to standardize the curricula of public and private schools in Brazil. In this article, we aim to analyze how the BNCC, for secondary education, configured proposals for teaching African History and its reverberation in the textbook, which was evaluated in line with the competencies and skills prescribed in this document. The moment when the BNCC was sanctioned, in 2018, is the initial point of our research, and it is justified by the fact that the BNCC is a normative document that governs the construction of teaching materials, the work of teachers and the minimum knowledge that all students in the country must acquire in their basic education. The time frame ends in 2021, because of the distribution of the Humanities and Applied Social Sciences textbooks to schools in Brazil. In accordance of our objectives, we used the decolonial approach based on Quijano (2005), as well as the discussion of curriculum by Arroyo (2013) and Sacristán and Pérez Goméz (1988). We note that the Base expresses an educational project by conservative groups in society who gradually aim to undermine the teaching of History and, consequently, the teaching of African History, in secondary education, since they are based on ethnocentric criteria when they conceive, for example, Africa only as stating point to verify the presence of Afro-diasporic peoples in Brazil.